Frankie has been wanting to climb Mount Marcy since he was tiny, but was always somewhat discouraged by the length of the approach. Then in 2018, he picked up an activity book at a National Trust Property in Northern Ireland that inspired him in terms of timing for his goal. See, the booklet was focused on fun things for kids to do outside, and included a checklist of things to do before you are 11 and 3/4 years old, really great things like dam a stream, go camping, catch a falling leaf, roll down a big hill, play Pooh Sticks, go swimming in the sea, forage for wild food -- and "climb a huge hill." Frankie has always loved activity books and he was taking this one very seriously, marking off things he'd already done and working on some of the new ideas. We climbed some pretty big hills on that trip (Slieve Binnian is the third tallest peak in Northern Ireland and Slieve Bearnagh the fourth). However, Frankie refused to count them, as he had already decided: Marcy would be the huge hill that he would climb before he was 11 and 3/4. He was only 7 then, and 11 and 3/4 seemed a long way off. But he never forgot. Last summer he talked about it a lot, how we had to make sure to get up Marcy soon because his "deadline" was approaching.
