Some of my favorite photos from our trips aren’t of glaciers, pyramids, or sand dunes. They’re of my dad walking ahead of me with his hiking poles.
To most people, the poles might look like a sign of age. To me, they represent something else entirely: his fight to maintain his mobility.
While hiking Jebel Jais, the highest peak in the United Arab Emirates, I took a photo of him from behind as he made his way toward the edge of a cliff.
I have versions of that hiking-pole photo from every trip. My dad in Greenland, in Egypt, in the UAE — always with his poles, always still going.
Years from now, the views will live in someone else’s photos. My dad’s tenacity, however, will live only in me.