Kit at 86
On September 9, 2023, Kit almost died. Like so many unexpected episodes in the last three years, he had a medical emergency that landed him in the hospital for three weeks of intensive care. When he was able to return to the Lodge—Golden Empire Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Grass Valley, CA—he had lost most of his muscle mass and months of progress with mobility that he had gained since moving there four months earlier. He gradually began PT and OT all over again. Now ten months later, he is cycling on a recumbent bike through landscapes viewed on iPad videos and plays balloon tennis with amazing hand-eye coordination.
For Kit’s 86th birthday on August 6th, I gave him a copy of author Peter Hessler’s newest book Other Rivers: A Chinese Education. It is a treasure of Hessler’s memories of conversations with his students while serving in the Peace Corps in China in the 1990s and with new students twenty years later when he returned with his wife and twin daughters to teach China’s next generation of students. I could have just given him a card and baked carrot cake muffins, but a book about teaching in China seemed the perfect gift. Though we are a million miles away from our own travels in China decades ago, it remains a place and time in his beautiful mind that reemerges in that magical way that memories filed away decades ago do.
Books have long connected both of us to writers and the magic of storytelling. For part of Kit’s rehabilitation these past ten months, I read aloud to him for an hour every evening. Our first major achievement was rereading Amor Towles’ grand novel A Gentleman in Moscow. We’ve now returned to Craig Johnson’s Longmire Mystery series that we have been fans of for years. Now deep into his recently published novel First Frost, we have revisited Los Angeles where our own journey together began in 1977 and Buffalo, Wyoming where we attended the town’s annual celebration of Longmire Days three times during our final years at Boomerang Creek.
Before beginning this morning’s blog, I scrolled through my considerable photo library of Kit pictures. There are so many, each attached to an episode in his life and our own years together. For his birthday, I’ve chosen a few to share with his circle of family and friends who know what a treasure Kit is and have experienced his special ability to bring joy to others.
When I was a student of Kit’s during a summer institute he directed at UCLA in 1977, he taught me how to read landscapes. In the decades that we spent working with teachers at National Geographic and in our own travels across the country and abroad, Kit never lost his ability to engage strangers in conversations about the landscapes both urban and rural that we traveled through. And as his sidekick on those adventures, I was always there with my camera capturing those moments and later writing about them.
On Father’s Day a decade ago, he and I were in Geneva, New York following a Salter Family Reunion in New Hampshire the prior week. We’d discovered a restaurant in an elegant home above one of the Finger Lakes and felt as if we’d stepped into another world—one in a setting filled with Roman statues and ornate gardens. After wandering the grounds while sipping a cocktail, we sat down to a magnificent dinner accompanied by music provided by a woman playing a harpsicord in the next room. That evening I toasted Kit and captured the spirit I so love about him and our adventures together.
This birthday our shared journey continues. It is nothing short of a miracle that Kit has reached this birthday milestone given what his body has been through over the course of the past ten months. Last night when he asked if I would drive him home, I explained that first he must be able to walk again. I said that on his birthday, I was taking him to an orthopedic doctor for Rooster shots or cortisone shots in his knees to cushion the pain they are giving him these days and help enhance his mobility. One step at a time, he agreed. Then hopefully, we’ll make it home again.
Happy 86th birthday to the amazing man I’ve been in cahoots with since we celebrated his 40th birthday together with Hayden and Heidi in Bear Lake, Idaho on our first cross-country road trip as a newly blended family all those decades ago.