We were headed down the mountain on Saturday before I remembered to ask Rich to get a picture of us. Rich still took the picture I’m posting, but it’s us. (Looks like his camera’s tilted too.) So here is Emma and me a hundred feet below the summit. Most of the peaks you see in the distance do not have names; perhaps some of them have never been climbed.

Emma is a good girl. She is an excellent student, courteous, talented, and a good hiker. She’s struggling with some issues of adolescence, but she’ll come through them.

It’s important for me to spend time with my children, even when I have many things clamoring for my attention. Saturday would have been a perfect to lay in wood for the winter, and I might even have finished splitting and stacking my six cords of firewood. But Emma is more important, so we climbed the mountain together. Tonight is date night. It’s Abby’s turn, and at her request I will take her to the church parking lot and practice riding her bike without training wheels. (Our gravel road is too steep and bumpy for a kid just starting out on a bike.)

I understand that some people, perhaps most people, think we’re irresponsible for having seven children. That is their prerogative. I do not expect everyone to understand our choices, any more than I expect everyone to climb mountains. I think it’s important to clarify, however, that we do not suffer for our choices. On the contrary, our lives are full of joy and satisfaction. Our children teach us laughter, patience, unconditional love. They make us laugh. They teach us tenderness, humility, and self-restraint; and they teach us to be wise. We cannot give them all the material detritus they are supposed to need, but we give them time, instruction, and love. We give them roots, and we give them wings. And doing so is at this time the primary focus of our lives–all material possessions and wood projects aside.

Our happiness may seem improbable to some; perhaps to the very people who misapprehend us. But many improbable things in this world are real–even down to a happy family growing up in the woods.