A family jaunt up Mt. Tamalpais

I’ve been wanting to hike up Mt. Tamalpais for months now, and I finally got to do it on Christmas Day. My family all together for the holiday piled into my sister’s car and we drove up to the East Peak parking lot. The hike itself was pretty short, only twenty minutes or so, but it was a lot of scrambling over rocks and steep inclines, so we were definitely breathing heavy by the time we reached the peak. But what a view! It was certainly worth it; we had sweeping views of San Francisco, the northern bay, and the North Bay area. We could see all the way out to the Pacific, and watched several ships approaching the inlet. It was hard to see, but we could even see the Golden Gate itself!

Climbing Mt. Tamalpais was sort of coming full circle; my father had climbed the mountain with some frequency during his days as a graduate student at Stanford, and hearing him talk about it was the reason that I so wanted to go up the mountain myself. That I then climbed the mountain yesterday with him felt very fitting, and it gave him the opportunity to share more stories. He shared that he would wake up early in the morning when it was raining and race to the top of the mountain to try to beat all the commuters, so he could see the full sweep of the bay area while the sky was so clear. I’m going to have to try that sometime!

So many of our goals come to us through our family, directly or indirectly. This quest to hike up Mt. Tamalpais was more obvious, but many of my other goals and projects are influenced by my family. My baking is influenced by my sister; my programming is influenced by my father. But just as family helps me find these passions, they also help me progress in them. My sister lends me baking tools and shares stories of her own baking escapades; my father lends me programming books and shares stories even of his father’s programming exploits. I wouldn’t have the dreams I do without my family, and I wouldn’t have made the progress I have without them.

Sometimes it may take a holiday to drive it home, but family deserves our thanks.