I wrote today’s essay earlier this week, before the events of Saturday, January 24, unfolded on screens big and small and in the streets of Minnesota. Of course, the decision to sometime write these essays ahead of the publication date means that I don’t always have the time or capacity to address events as they unfold, something that feels unduly difficult in 2026. For now, I post the statement shared by Alex Pretti’s parents following his murder yesterday morning:
We are heartbroken but also very angry. Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the hero term lightly. However his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you
Today’s accompanying tune: “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn
All season, the mountain had remained formidable. A relatively abundant winter had encased the peak in snow and ice well into June, then July. The sky was not aware that winter remained on Earth, and, as soon as the calendar ticked over into August, it unleashed torrents of rain, flooding the trail and leaving hikers stranded as monsoon season roared into being. It wasn’t the trickiest year for those attempting the summit, nor was it the easiest. When all was said and done, roughly a handful of weeks provided optimal conditions for dry trail hikers while the remaining months turned folks away for one reason or another. And as luck would have it, my attempt happened to fall right in the middle of one of those weeks.
Hiking the 22 miles to summit Mount Whitney — a full-day endeavor that included more than 6,000 feet of elevation gain and loss — was the first time I’d set a goal in adulthood that scared me. I closely followed a training plan that started more than a year prior to the day of my summit attempt, a plan that including hiking to the summit of other prominent peaks in Southern California that were achievements in their own right. I carried loaded packs as I looped smaller peaks closer to home, building the strength and endurance I would no doubt need as I set out to hike to the tallest mountain in the Lower 48. I started running, started learning how to enter spaces within my mind that could carry me through the monotonous hours on my feet. I studied maps, read guides, calculated calories. I prepared as much as I possibly could, intent on ensuring that only the mountain would turn me away, that I had done everything I could to not give it a reason to send me back down.
There were, of course, a multitude of factors outside of my control. I followed forums in the months leading up to my attempt, eagerly following trip reports that featured decisions to turn around due to a formidable snowpack. Others detailed sudden onsets of altitude sickness or bags being swiped by a bear near the trailhead. There were high winds, whiteouts, wet granite slabs, and snow bridges. So few hikers had made it to the summit that conditions after Trail Crest — a rocky 1.9 mile ascent to the summit on the west side of the mountain — were relatively unknown even as June turned to July. All I could do was prepare, set myself up with the best chances of success. I knew that what I left to chance, what relied on luck, was unlikely to end at 14,505 feet.
Luck was rarely on my side. So rarely that, when I was younger, I believed I was cursed. That, somehow, I’d done something in this life or the ones that came before to tilt the scales away from me, away from the ease of a life steeped in lucky breaks. I had never had to wonder about the consequences of my actions — they came swiftly, brutally, consequentially. My parents had emphasized how grateful I should have been for the life they’d given me, the roof over my head, the food on the table. They insisted that it was luck that had brought me to them, that some combination of that and divine intervention was the basis of our shared surname. For years, I figured that their presence in my life had used up my allotment of luck, that every string had been pulled and the reservoir drained to make it happen. Even if I didn’t feel lucky, even if the forced gratitude never converted to the real thing, I figured this must be the best it would get. That instead of luck, I’d have to plan, to prepare. I’d have to work so as to never give luck a reason to desert me, though it still managed to time and time again.
By the time I entered my mid-20s, my lack of luck was almost comical, a comedy of errors so consistent as to never have been left to chance. Everything that could go wrong, would go wrong. The most unlikely situations unfolded with alarming regularity and little embellishment. I developed intense anxiety, convinced the worst case scenario was bound to envelope me, my life, my body at any moment. I prepared for the worst, imagined the bleakest outcomes, lost trust in the world, in people. Time and again, the anxiety was reinforced, renewed, reinvigorated. It rooted deeper, choking off the trust and confidence I had known in my earlier years. It fed on itself while insisting I remain grateful. That I express gratitude that things weren’t worse, that this was, in fact, as good as it would get. That a life of constant vigilance was one to celebrate, to give thanks for. That I should be so lucky, to have any life at all.
The morning of my summit attempt was clear, the wind calm, the stars bright. We set out from the trailhead — bags safely out of reach of the wandering black bear — around 2 a.m. in an attempt to make it to the summit well before noon, when thunderstorms were most likely to develop. We’d slept in a nearby town at 9,000 feet in the days leading up to the hike in an attempt to acclimatize to the altitude and fend off altitude sickness. We stopped in at the ranger station and got more information about recent trips and projected forecasts. We’d packed our bags with the essentials and then some, the preparedness weighing heavy on our backs and legs. We ascended slowly in the dark, not daring to say out loud what we were both thinking. How lucky we both felt to be there, for the day we’d been given. How the mountain invited us higher, the sky beckoning us closer. There was still so far to go, so much longer we’d be placing one foot in front of the other, to give the universe a reason to deny us, to laugh in the face of our confidence, of our trust.
We trudged on, encouraged by the fiery glow of the rising sun and the quickness of the rivers and streams we passed, evidence of melting snow and an unpredicted deluge that drenched the mountain just days earlier. We balanced on granite rocks, weaved through countless switchbacks, chased off a few hungry marmots, reapplied sunscreen, and filtered water. We climbed higher, until there was nothing left above us but clear blue sky. It was then that we said it, that we acknowledged how lucky we had gotten. How the mountain had welcomed us, had allowed us to experience a pristine day scurrying up its flanks. How, for all of our preparations, it was that which was out of our control that mattered most. And as luck would have it, we’d caught a break.
Standing on the summit of Mount Whitney changed me. Maybe it was hypoxia from lack of oxygen, but the mass of granite beneath my feet convinced me of a truth I’d known but never voiced. That I hadn’t used my luck reserves long before I’d made conscious memories, that I wasn’t cursed. I was simply walking in the wrong directions, the universe attempting to steer me back on track with signs it considered obvious enough but were easily waved away as individual fault, as personal failing. I wasn’t incapable of feeling gratitude — it was the people around me demanding that I be grateful for the bare minimum that siphoned off any possibility of my ability to do so and instead pumped it full of guilt and anxiety. It was only after the path had been cleared, after I’d begun moving in the right direction, that it became clear how hard I’d been pushing against the current, against the obstacles erected with intention to divert my course. How I’d spent so much of my life forcing myself into spaces that didn’t fit, a puzzle piece just off enough to destabilize the entire image. How easily I fit into the right image, the one built of granite and sky.
I no longer wish for luck, though I appreciate it when it decides to make itself known. It is here, among the pines and ferns. It is in the desert, hiding among the rocks and creosote. It is a welcome surprise, an unexpected relief, a stretch of runnable trail. It isn’t the magic I envisioned so long ago — it is even better. It is the soft whisper of the universe confirming, yes, this is where I am supposed to be. This is what I am supposed to be doing, and this is who I was meant to be. Even in its absence, I am grateful. I am no longer consumed by guilt nor by anxiety. I have rebuilt the trust I lost so long ago, both in myself and in the world around me.
I still have plenty of work to do, as always, but I am so grateful that a hunk of rock out in eastern California showed me what it was like to have luck on my side. To show me where it was hiding, and how to coax it out again. I am grateful for the strength that it required, strength that I built, strength that I am so proud of. It never demanded my gratitude, but I am more than happy to supply it. The door that it opened was one I unknowingly hiked through without looking back, one I had longed to open for so long but was unable to do so on my own. It led me to myself, to the puzzle I always meant to be part of. A person who, today, is celebrating her thirty-third birthday with a sunrise mission to a peak nestled deep in the Mojave Desert, as she was always meant to do.
Here’s to finding a little bit of luck when we need it the most.
- Megan
Happy birthday! I hope you have an excellent hike :)