Measuring Family Milestones, Beneath America’s Tallest Peak

My younger son was 8 months old when we set out on our first adventure as a family, a combined cycling and camping trip in Alaska. We traveled several hours north from Anchorage and began pedaling toward the unknown, which I have come to recognize as the only reliable destination when traveling with kids. The tallest peak in North America was high above the tundra, and there was a beautiful backdrop for a bike ride. Two boys in a bicycle trailer, their forms as small as the mountains, were nestled among sleeping bags and coats in the foreground.

I began that weekend to relate to a bike as a symbol of change, a time traveler whose shadow mirrored my own. I followed it up steep gravel slopes and down rutted washboard roads. It lingered nearby when my sons dropped their training wheels, each of their personality reflected in supersize: one child exceedingly cautious, the other terrifyingly bold, and rendering my voice hoarse from admonishments. Five years ago, on a beautiful May day, I knew that my family's trip through Alaska was the beginning and the end.

The cliffs of Polychrome Pass marked our turn around point. It wasn't our speed or distance that was noteworthy, but the fact that we made it at all. We stopped frequently along the way to stretch our legs, nurse the baby, change the diaper and feed the toddler. One day, we almost rear-ended a black bear, and the next, we dodged a rock fall, because we had children on board.

I should hold on to this moment, before it disappeared, because a single glance at my boys' smiles, their joy magnified by the promise of spring, was sign enough that I should hold tight to this moment. There was a vision of a bicycle at the center of the view of the mountains and rocks. The blurred frame of a family in motion, the tug of time, and the wheels spinning so fast they looked still.

I didn't know how much would change. The park road was closed because of melting permafrost and the bike trip to Polychrome Pass was locked into the archives of the past. I couldn't see past the chaos of family life, each hour messy and loud, to a picture of my older son one day pedaling himself to kindergarten. I didn't have a place for the long Pandemic months at home when biking felt like the only normal thing we did. I realized that bicycles would always take us places. It was the closest thing to freedom I had known since becoming a mother of two.

Our cycling styles have aged with our sons, who are now 7 and 5 years old. We covered a lot of miles in the summer without complaining. We have tunneled through snowdrifts and slid on ice, often not in the way we wanted. Our fleet shifts with our lives throughout the season. The only lesson worth recalling is that nothing stays the same for long.

During a weekend spent with my sister's family in the Talkeetna Mountains, we found bicycles to be as essential for entertainment as they were for transportation. We headed out in the rain along a muddy track with one balance bike, three pedal bikes, four children and three sweating, backpack-toting adults. When the trail became too steep to ride, we stashed the bikes behind a tree and scrambled up to an Alpine lake where we pitched the tent and peeled soggy clothes to assure our kids that we would someday make it home again. They might have climbed the world's tallest peak after biking a marathon up a mountain. It felt like it was almost as long for the adults, weary from being bribed and wondering who the bad idea was. Everyone's complaints faded with the rain by the next morning. The kids whooped and cheered when we came back to our bikes.

Our speed is both a gift and a terror as our range has expanded. I found myself sweating as I pushed uphill and shivered as I waited for my son to come home from school, with a promise that we were almost there, or at least I thought we were. As we neared the end of the loop, the trail narrowed and the boys jockeyed for position, the younger one making a poorly timed pass. They careened around the corner and past a bull moose that had just stepped into view below us. I panicked and pedaled after them. When I arrived at the bottom of the hill, I squeezed the two boys hard to make sure they were okay. We sat down on a log and I counted the gummy bears from their damp, dirt-stained palms.

It would be difficult to say that biking makes our family unit cohesive and cheerful. Bicycles don't work miracles. Instead, they help carry us back to ourselves, giving us a mirror in which we can see time as fleeting, parenting as difficult, and family adventures as mostly worth chasing. They never left us the same as we began.

With the excitement of our newfound mobility, the boys now aided by strong legs and multiple gears, I attempted a mom-and-sons snow-biking adventure. In the wake of warm days and cold nights, I set my sights on a popular route across a frozen lake. The packing took most of the morning and the devil was in the details. With the sun high in the sky and the car loaded, I took us out the door, showing a spirit of mulishness more than adventure.

The only place the boys wanted to go when we started pedaling was home, because tempers were short. The lake was too big and the snow was too soft. The rule of family pursuits is to let go of expectations. They were still kids, though they were capable on their bikes. I dug a tow rope and a chocolate bar from my backpack when the wind blew. I lost my enthusiasm before we traveled a mile. We wouldn't make it to the end of the lake that day.

The boys dropped their helmets and began climbing after finding a fort made of driftwood. They arrived at the perfect place. I tried to ignore the fact that we barely left the parking lot.

When I told them it was time to leave, my younger son asked me a question.

Do you want to be buried? What is the other thing you call it?

Cremated?

Yeah.

What makes you ask?

He explained how he thought about what would happen when we die after seeing a log in the ice that reminded him of the word buried. My son was thinking about the afterlife while I was silently angry about the distance we didn't cover.

He said that it would be hard to decide where to put him.

The day's lesson was crystal clear and sparkling as the snow's textured surface had been. mileage alone can't measure a destination.

Just as abruptly as our conversation had begun, it was over, the tedium of parenting pivoted to the profound and back again.

After I put the boys to bed, I searched my archives for an old family photo. Five years ago, my husband and I were silhouetted on our bikes by the massif of the Alaska Range. There were sticky hands, muddy boots, love-worn stuffed animals and faces bright with wonder hidden in the bicycle trailers. With my tea gone cold beside me and the strings of my mom-heart pulled taut, I suddenly saw everything at once: now and then, past and future, a frozen moment and a looking glass. In the shadow of a peak was a family on wheels, pedaling over the next rise and into the unknown.

The Sun is a compass is a memoir written by a wildlife biologist.