B.A.B.E. week 44: Climb any mountain (Wilson's guest posting)

So climb any mountain

Climb up to the sky!

My love will find you.

My love can fly!

From Wherever You Are by Nancy Tillman

This week's post is going to be very heavily focused on the Baby and the Exploration of Muriel's BABE taxonomy.  We have settled in to our Airbnb apartment in Chamonix, France for the week and this guest post is written by the dad and husband.  I had frankly expected to write more posts during the last almost year, but Mu has remained so diligent, prolific and insightful that I have deferred to her.

We arrived at this mecca of skiing yesterday, after quite a challenging travel itinerary.  We had almost a full weekend at home in Nassau with dinner out, run/swim combo on our beach, and Elle's bestie's 1 year old birthday party, and then got on a plane to London at about 10 pm east coast time.  At the airport, Elle and I caught the last 5 minutes or so of Duke/UNC, so that was a nice indoctrination for her in the intensity of the rivalry.  She was quite a bit more interested in all the people waiting for the flight and other quirks of the Nassau airport.

The flight proved to be one where mu and I shared a 2 seater mini-row by ourselves, not great but not terrible.  Elle was her usual charming self, she slept really well on both mu and I throughout the flight and had everyone around us commenting about 'what a nice baby' and 'she is charmer' as we disembarked in Heathrow.  She, of course, lapped up the attention. But more than that, she reveled in being with her parents for these extended periods.  The burdens and frustrations of travel don't seem so debilitating for Elle, since she is enjoying some of her more treasured activities of being close and playful with her parents.

We then took the connecting flight to Geneva, which is a city I lived in for a summer before meeting Muriel.  That was a crazy summer.  And it was fun to return to the city yesterday even just in transit.  We come back to Geneva at the end of the week for a night and a dinner out with an old friend of ours and his family, which will be lovely.  Even in the passing time through the city in the transport, I was thinking about how important that summer proved to be and what a privilege it was to get to go.

The reason we, and the we is kind of generous as it has been a huge push from me, have longed to come to the Chamonix is its central role in the evolution of extreme skiing. And waking up this morning after arriving in darkness last night, the mountains are as massive as advertised.  Both sides of the valley tower over the town, and we can see both from the living room of our apartment.  On the left, a massive cirque of a glacier rises thousands of meters in elevation.  On the right, the mountain has the impossibly improbable top of the Brevent teleferique, a full 4,500 feet above the valley floor and nestled in steep cliffs.  It is a lair out of a Bond movie, and one that both Mu and skied off of today.  I even lucked in to the first gondola to the top after 36 hours of sustained snow.  Really, really lucky.

We continue to split time at skiing, while the other parent watches our precious angel.  This works well, admittedly better for me in terms of time out skiing than for Mu.  Having our home base of an apartment within easy distance of the three main access points we want to explore this week make things so much easier.  No car, no parking, no hassle.

This town is so walkable and with excellent public transport to get throughout the valley.  Those two things are in short supply in Nassau.  This week we revel in hanging out with Elle, crushing the steeps and deeps, enjoying the euro feel of this mountain mecca.  We are so thankful that Elle is a willing and able traveler.  She is a fantastic daughter and an even better little human.