French Alps, 2016

My phone rings as I start loading Mika into the baby backpack. My husband, Max, is checking in from work to see what my plan is for the day.

“Oh we just took the Montenvers train up, and I’m going to hike across to the Plan d’Aiguille cable car,” I report. “We” in this case is me and my two young boys.

“By yourself?” He asks, somewhat concerned about my overconfidence. Or maybe my lack of forethought. Or both.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” I say. “Worst case scenario, I brought a baby carrier, so I can carry Mika on the front and Mathias in the backpack,” I reply nonchalantly. “I’m thinking we’ll stop at the refuge at the end of the hike before heading down” I add, hoping more details will imply a plan. These classic European mountain huts make all the difference when hiking with the little ones.

Max releases a long sigh on the other end of the line, not surprised by my overambitious plan: taking a three- and four-year-old on a four-mile hike with 1,500 feet of elevation gain, at 7,000 feet of altitude, by myself. What’s more, is that it’s a traverse, not an up and down. So turning around halfway means we still have the same amount of work to get back. But I had faith in myself, and my ability to manage.

In Europe, the Alps especially, hiking is an intergenerational activity. It holds a precious spot in families’ weekly adventures throughout the spring, summer, fall, and even winter on snowshoes. People of all ages walk, hike, explore, forage for berries and mushrooms, and simply enjoy the incredible landscape.

But for me, hiking has always been a means to an end. A practical way to arrive at the route I was climbing. Up until my first pregnancy, Max and I spent our relationship weaving in and out of independent and shared expeditions to remote mountain ranges of the world. We were dirt bagging in cars, vans, and trucks, bivouacking on north faces, and making 40-plus hour pushes in Alaska.

Eventually we realized we had arrived at a crossroads where climbing seemed to be taking us too far. What was possible was endless, but not necessarily intelligent to seek out. And we were reckoning with having buried too many friends in too few years.

At that time, I’d had a few close calls of my own — like being stuck on a sharp ridge, watching lightning bolts touch surrounding summits while my earrings burned my ears in a halo of electricity. Or suffering a brain hemorrhage from a speed riding crash, which was just the latest and greatest sport we had decided to try.

I realized it was time to step out of the lane I was in. Not just because we were starting a family, but because survival had become the result of luck.

So despite having spent almost 13 years in the Alps, it wasn’t until I was pregnant with my first, Mattias, that I realized I had spent little-to-no time in the lower mountains on trails.

The hike from the Montenvers train across to the Plan d’Aiguille cable car hypothetically takes only one-and-a-half to two hours, but we are cresting well into our fourth hour now. Much to my surprise, Mathias is still going, sprinting — or whatever that means for a four-year-old kid — bumbling along a rocky path at altitude. Mika is in the backpack singing in tune with the bounce of my step.

There have been many stops and an epic number of snacks. There are sparkling rocks perfect for ogling, berries on the path perfect for picking, and small river crossings perfect for jumping in — all of which are desperately slowing our progress.

Every once in a while, there is a whimper because blisters are forming and because I forget that Mathias is actually only four years old, and I’m asking a lot of him. Then those blisters are quickly forgotten because there are marmots whistling somewhere in the distance. Or there is a sharply horned bouquetin prancing in the boulders beyond us.

Finally, we see a mountain refuge just on the horizon.

During my freshman year of college, my father passed away unexpectedly at the age of 43 — a year younger than I am now as I write. After transferring back to the College of New Jersey for a year to be closer to home, I got restless and knew I needed to move. My journey into the mountains started on a month-long NOLS course (National Outdoor Leadership School) the summer after my sophomore year, mountaineering on the glaciers of the North Cascades. I didn’t know it at the time, but motion and peace, what I found in being actively immersed in mountains, would become my comfort zone in various iterations for the rest of my life.

In the Cascades the days were long, the loads heavy, and at the end of each soggy, stormy day, there was still more work to be done. We still had tents to set up, water to melt, and meals to cook. Sleep was found easily with deep exhaustion and fulfillment; glacial sunsets and sunrises quieted my sad and confused mind. In each moment of a 17-hour day, I was present, trading chaos for understanding.

When the month came to an end, I couldn’t let it go. My Jack Kerouac dreams had been awakened, and I never wanted them to end. I had found deep within myself the capacity to go further than I had ever imagined and found strength and resilience I had never known was there. This discovery, this revelation, I could tell was only the beginning. I could see a path on the horizon but no idea where it would take me, and that is exactly what I was falling in love with.

At the hut there are cakes and people to talk to, to congratulate the boys on their tiny-people feat. And I begin to realize I’m exhausted from wrangling two small humans and keeping them motivated for hours. But fused inside the exhaustion is gratitude for this place where I am at peace as a parent. And gratitude that my kids play along and engage in what I offer them with smiles and appreciation that grows deeper year after year. I’m grateful I have found a way to keep the motion I need and empty my busy mind in this stage of life.

Mathias bounds up the last few meters to the hut with endless energy, bellowing a way-too-loud “BONJOUR” to the hut keeper, making us all giggle. With wild blackberry-stained lips and homemade pies lining our bellies, we walk slowly the last 10 minutes away from the hut to the lift that will take us back to town. Mathias, as always flowing with energy and with a mind similar to mine, launches into a barrage of questions. Are there other huts we can go to? And when? And can we sleep there, or at another hut, and when and where and how?

I don’t think I answer many, or any, of his questions because I’m physically and psychologically exhausted, and I smile because I realize that we have arrived, not at the end but at the beginning.

At first, I carried them, and now we walk slowly, but the future holds so much greatness in the folds of these mountains and the little magical sanctuaries, mountain huts, where we find cakes, and coffees, and beds, and stories, and chess games, and moments just to be, stepping out of the speedy lane of our busy lives.

It has taken me time to get here. It has taken tantrums and meltdowns to understand what is enough without being too much. And to understand that this indeed is it, this is the adventure: the bugs, the berries, the rocks, the oohs and ahhs as the sound of glaciers calve high in the mountains.

The Dolomites, 2023

This summer’s trip in the Dolomites was initiated by Mika, a dream grown out of a thwarted too-snowy spring visit a few years ago. This trip is his dream that I now get to join him on. It worked out that, although Max had to stay behind, my good friend Hanna Restorp and her boys could join us. On this trip, Mathias and Mika are the older kids and have more experience with long hikes and pack carrying. It’s magical to watch them take the role of leading, helping, and motivating. And for me, getting to share this with my best friend and her kids is also magical.

Now, 11 years into parenting, adventures to refuges are an integral part of our life. But these days, Max and I are the guardians, the helpers facilitating these magical adventures that form in our boys’ minds as they dream of what is possible on their own. They have found the magic I hoped I would share with them from the day they were born.

I never actually stepped back into my lane, my pre-kid climbing life, the way I imagined I would. I made peace with my ego and mountain ambitions, and stepped into this space, accidentally falling madly in love with my kids and their bite-sized adventures.

Zoe Hart is a climber and alpinist, and is the fourth American woman to get her International Federation of Mountain Guides Association (IFMGA) certification. She lives with her family in Chamonix, France.