‘Forget Me Not’ is a story of love and loss

Jennifer Lowe's husband Alex died tragically in an avalanche in the Himalayas, but she eventually got remarried — to Alex's best friend and longtime climbing partner. In "Forget Me Not: A Memoir," Lowe explores her loss, her recovery and the redemptive power of love. Here, an excerpt, starting with an author's note.

Author's Note
Sent: 7 July 1999 (9:26pm)
From: Alex Lowe (on the wall) Trango Tower

Dearest Jenni,

Mark, Jared and I are starting our third day on the wall. We're still just fixing rope up the world's largest slab to the base of the steep headwall. Everywhere I look the little Alpine forget-me-nots are blooming more profusely each day. Thus you are always with me as I work away. I know how much you love those delicate little flowers and I have pressed some and keep them with me, with my little stash of family photos. Do you think you could come up with an idea for a painting that ties together these flowers and our love for each other?

It seems natural to converse with you via electrons. I can hear the marmots whistling far below. Occasional grumbles from the glacier emanate upwards. There's nary a cloud in the sky, the Karakoram is magnificent today and I love you! You remain in my heart always and I will do nothing that jeopardizes my safe return to my family.

Infinite Love, Alex

When my husband Alex Lowe's life ended and the events following his death began to unfold, I knew right away that someone should tell his story. In his forty years, Alex had achieved legendary status as a mountaineer. His sum of climbs was impressive, but what I didn't realize until he died was that Alex, the person, had made an impact on a vast cross-section of humanity. It was his character, his pure magnetism that drew people to him. Alex was on fire for life.

"There's not enough time in this life to do everything," he used to say. "If only there was more time."

Alex and I were together for eighteen years, but during that time we spent many months apart, adding up to years apart. The words we might have spoken to each other were, instead, routinely penned on paper or postcards and mailed. At times they were carried by porter, yak, or any willing hand to mail drops that were days or weeks away. In the last year of Alex's life, e-mails were added to our exchange. Thus we communicated and sustained our love, even when we were apart. The words remain to be reread, relived, and now shared.

I read my letters from Alex many times since his death, knowing that he often wrote to reassure me but also to reassure himself that he would come home. "I always come home," he once told me. "What if you die in the mountains?" I asked him, and his answer was "I won't, because to die would be to fail as a climber. Staying alive is the first rule. Besides, I have too much to live for."

"Right," I persisted, "but what if you do die in the mountains?"

"Just throw me into a crevasse!" he said and grinned.

We both knew that objective dangers were very real at the level that Alex pursued climbing. We had lost good friends and realized that alpinists face a myriad of risk. We faced it together in our impervious youth, climbing as partners with Alex leading the way. He shared his passion for climbing with me when we were newly in love and I was a willing participant, always confident in his judgment and ability. As years passed, our life together evolved. I carved out my niche as an artist and mother, but climbing remained Alex's great passion. Although he was a loving spouse and proud father, it was climbing that defined him. It was his gift, and he pursued it with measured care and persistent glee.

In sharing my picture of adventure, love, and sorrow, I have made every effort to provide an accurate account of the people, places, and events relating to Alex's life. I have relied on his many letters, my own memory, and the memories of friends, family, and fellow climbers. But Forget Me Not is my perspective on Alex and our life together. My story continues after his death. Any misrepresentation of facts is unintentional. I have attempted to confirm all details, but some inconsistencies may remain, for which I apologize.

Alex's request that I do a painting with Alpine forget-me-nots has remained a poignant yet nagging thought at the back of my mind since his death. In fact, it's the only written request he ever made of me, transformed in my heart to be his dying wish. In this memoir, I hope to paint a picture of the life that I lived with Alex, touch on his many accomplishments, and remember him as the extraordinary, but very human, individual that he was.

Chapter one

Love and Risk
There is a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood
And they climb the mountain's crest.
Theirs is the curse of gypsy blood
And they don't know how to rest.
-Robert Service

I have a vivid memory of the day I met Alex Lowe. I was young then, around twenty, but already tied to another. Barely out of high school, I had married my first boyfriend, Tom Ballard, a high school crush who was a rock climber, skier, and the proprietor of a bicycle shop in Missoula, Montana, where I grew up. Alex was three years younger than I, perhaps still a senior in high school, and so I observed him with a distant curiosity that day. Still, I felt the magnetism of his presence.

He had come into the bike shop to get the beta, or inside scoop, on a local climb, and I happened to be there. He politely introduced himself with a confident grin: "I'm Alex," he said, emphasizing the X. He was very boyish, tall and slim with wide shoulders and long limbs, truly gangly. I remember him with thick shaggy dark hair, tattered clothes, and the essence of climber, that hint that bathing wasn't high on his list of priorities. I was struck by his handsome features and his open enthusiasm, but most of all by his smile. He was a kid and could barely contain his excitement over climbing. The information he wanted that day was about the particulars of a route in the Bitterroot Mountains' Blodgett Canyon. Not long after, he came back to report on his success.

Alex rather quickly ticked off the local climbers' test pieces, or most difficult routes, and after a short go at college he was on to bigger places. He sporadically dropped in on Tom and me over the next few years with tales of his travels, the climbs he had done, and his grueling work stints in the oil fields of Wyoming. I recall seeing him huddled over a climbing magazine with a group of friends. A picture of Ray Jardine leading a very difficult roof climb called Separate Reality in Yosemite Valley was featured, along with the new camming devices of the time, called Friends. Everyone else was incredulous at the difficult-looking route — except Alex, who exclaimed, "I can't wait to try that!" The other guys' response was "Right, dream on!" But within the next few years Alex went on to climb it, along with dozens of other routes that most Montana climbers only dreamed of.

Alex paid his last visit to Tom and me in the autumn of 1980. We were living near Boulder, Colorado, where Tom had taken a job after finishing his degree. That summer it had dawned on me that the age of twenty had been too young to get married. I knew I wanted children, and Tom knew he didn't. Love had waned. I had chased a ski bum with a bike shop, but now that he was an engineer with a mortgage, I had a bad case of remorse. I had attended art school but never finished my college degree, always needing to work at menial jobs to help pay the bills. Suddenly I felt trapped. I was miserable and panicky that my youth was slipping away. I wanted out of marriage to travel, to get a taste of adventure, to find passion and my own path while I was still young.

Alex arrived out of the blue, but his presence seemed serendipitous. He had come to hang out in Boulder for a while and get in as much climbing as possible in the local playgrounds of Eldorado Canyon, Boulder Canyon, and Rocky Mountain National Park. His lifestyle looked like freedom at its finest to me. Unencumbered with responsibilities and material possessions, Alex was like a migrating bird, able to take flight whenever the impulse struck and to alight in whatever green field beckoned. He got a job at Lowe Alpine Systems (no relation), where I was employed, and he rented the basement of our house as I made plans to return to Montana. To have found Tom a roommate lessened my guilt about leaving, but I didn't foresee falling in love with that roommate.

I couldn't wait to leave my job, with its neon lights and acrid fumes of hot-cut nylon. I gave notice and bolted for the freedom of the hills, taking every opportunity to head to the mountains around Boulder. Alex had introduced me to his good friends Alice Phinney and Eric Winkelman, whom I warmed to instantly. He'd met Eric in Yosemite the previous spring and they'd hitchhiked to the Canadian Rockies for a summer of rock, ice, and alpine climbing. While there, they'd made the fifth ascent of Mount Kitchener's Grand Central Couloir, adding to an impressive sum of ascents. Alice had arrived later and joined Eric for some notable climbs of their own. They were a bright and fun young couple, and both were full of admiration for Alex, the "young gun" from Montana. With each passing day, my own admiration and fondness for Alex grew.

My first ice climbing experiences came early that winter, with Alice, who was excited to share the sport with me. A gifted athlete with a go-for-it attitude, Alice was a Boulder native whose parents had instilled in her a love of the outdoors and a passion for pushing her limits. (Her brother Davis became an Olympic bike racer who rode in the Tour de France.) Although Alice channeled most of her energy into studying, first for a degree in biology and then for another in mechanical engineering, she was driven to climb for a few years of her life.

As we approached our first climb in Rocky Mountain National Park, crunching along through the ice and snow of a subalpine forest, I was candid with my new friend about my unhappiness, and she was empathetic. We walked in the fog of a gray cloud that had coated everything with a crystalline layer of fragile hoarfrost. Alice was certain that the cloud would burn off with the rising sun, and she was right. As we gained elevation, the sun shone through the ever brighter mist and lit the world around us in a dazzling burst of white. We peeled off layers of clothes and smeared on sunscreen while breathing in the cold pine-scented air. The gnarled and stunted trees of that high place were bent by harsh winds and deep snows of long winter months. Few and far between, they'd grown in one direction and then another, their seeds rooted in crevices of stone with barely a grain of soil. Their warped forms looked as if growth had been painful, yet they were beautiful and artful, like nature's bonsai among a scattering of talus.

We came upon a waterfall frozen in gentle tiers, a stairway of ice. There, Alice and I strapped on our crampons. Mine were newly acquired "foot fangs" that I had purchased at work. They had corrugated red plastic bottoms lined with shiny steel shark teeth biting downward and little sawlike front points. With ice axe in hand, I felt like a knight in armor bedecked in spikes. Alice taught me to plant my tools with the same wrist action used to swing a hammer. I watched her lead the clean blue ice, then followed, ascending with care as Alice coached me.

I had grown up skiing, biking, and hiking with girlfriends in Montana, but the climbing I had done was always with guys. The first day I went out with Alice was a day that I treasure. She was not taking me climbing but teaching me to climb ice, and on our next outing, I led a pitch myself. Our forays into Rocky Mountain National Park were both empowering and enchanting. They helped give me the impetus to strike out on my own. Alex, with his romantic life of adventure, would certainly have an influence on me too, but it was Alice who gave me the courage to try climbing some mountains of my own.

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