"What Would Sacagawea Do?" — The Wee Wanderer

I was 2 months pregnant and camping with Travis at Yosemite National Park. We were about to go to bed, and I was extinguishing our fire with a bucket of water. I hoisted the full bucket over the fire and, remembering our midwives’ warning against lifting heavy objects, I said, “Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this.” To which Travis, without missing a beat, replied: “What would Sacagawea do?”

A squabble ensued. During the previous 2 months, I had backpacked around Mt. Hood and in the Olympic National Park, run multiple trail races including a half marathon, and kept up with super-fit non-pregnant friends on 10-, 12-, 15-mile hikes. I had just gotten us 2 passes to scale Half Dome the next day. In my mind, I was bad-ass like Sacagawea.

Levi’s final hike in utero at 35 weeks - Did Sacagawea have zippers? I don’t think so. Seriously, how did I zip that thing?

(When she was pregnant, Sacagawea was enlisted to aid the Lewis & Clark exhibition across the mountains to the Pacific Ocean in a boat and on horseback. When she started out, her baby was less than 2 months old. When Levi was 3 months old I thought it was bad-ass to take him wine-tasting with me and my friends in Oregon. I had a car, beds, and Starbucks. My room had air conditioning and my cell phone had a white-noise app. Sacagawea had none of that.)

Although I initially wrote the comment off as Travis’s one too many beers combined with his general criticism of the human species as wimps, the question lingered: What would Sacagawea do?

Still Nordic skiing at 33 weeks. Maxed out my backpack strap, though. . .

Sacagawea became a recurring topic in my conversations with Travis and with myself about the physical limits of pregnancy and, later, what could (or should) be done with a baby in tow. We 21st Century human beings surround ourselves with so many layers of protection, it’s difficult to imagine that our modern “needs” are fundamentally the same as they were 200 years ago. When she was pregnant, Sacagawea did not have the extensive list of “rules” – Sleep on your left side! No blue cheese or beer! – that we have today. But did it matter? The woman brought her son on a 16-month expedition through literally unchartered territory. And she probably drank blue-cheese infused beer and slept on any old side she wanted. Everything turned out fine, and she ended up on the golden dollar.

After Levi was born, Sacagawea came to mind even more often. At first, Travis and I settled into stereotypical male/female roles when it came to ensuring our newborn’s survival. Consider the daily Herculean feat otherwise known as “getting ready to go.” Levi could survive for a week on the contents of the diaper bag I would pack for a stroll around the block, whereas Travis would leave the house for two hours empty-handed. When I announced my intention of YouTubing “how to bathe a newborn,” Travis just stared at me. (This is a man whose favorite topic of debate is the relative merits of soap.) And when it came to planning our first family camping trip. . . Well, you can imagine how that went.

Travis & Levi (6 weeks) in Olympic National Park

But we eventually struck a balance, and before long, we did with Levi whatever we would have done without him, only much more slowly and divided in half. (BB, Travis and I would cover 7 miles before lunch; AB, that same distance is a full-day extravaganza that truly earns us our nachos and beer, if more for the patience than the physical endurance required of us.) By his first birthday, Levi had been hiking, camping, and skiing more times in one year than many adults I know had in their whole lives. (And for those worriers out there, I’m confident he will have a healthy appreciation for soap too.)

Campground antics at Rainier National Park

As Travis says, humans love to “can’t,” and we’re allowed to can’t even more when we have kids: “I can’t make it,” “I can’t hang out tonight,” “I can’t leave the house.” Some can’ting is appropriate. (“I guess I really can’t run that trail race with a stroller. There goes my 90 dollars.”) But some is probably overboard. (“I can’t walk because this diaper bag/multi-day survival kit is too heavy.”) One of our challenges is to negotiate the boundary between appropriate and overboard with our intuition and our common sense. In other words, do fun stuff without taking unnecessary risks. A sample of rules the Menauls decided on: No downhill skiing (yet). Do not travel to the interior of volcanoes that have erupted in the past century (otherwise OK). No backcountry camping in grizzly territory (black bears fine though).

Into the heart of the Cinder Cone volcano in Lassen National Park

New Years Eve in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest

A Tukwila, WA skate park (Travis has only tipped the Chariot once)

The day after the infamous water bucket incident, Travis and I did climb Half Dome. The high point of the 16-mile hike is the iconic 400-foot rope cable system, which hikers scale to the summit. According to the National Park Service web site, “relatively few people have fallen and died on the cables.” In my opinion, both the rope cables and the NPS statement are horrifying. But I’d had Sacagawea on my brain since the night before, and as I made my way to the top, I thought about how she climbed mountains with a much heavier load – maybe even a canoe – strapped to her back, and an infant on her front, and there wasn’t even a trail to follow. Sacagawea got me to the top.

Me and Levi (still an embryo) on the rope cables on Half Dome. Seriously.

So the phrase I initially took as a criticism has become a mantra. Of course, there’s no way to know what Sacagawea would actually do in any given situation. But the wondering allows me to make healthy decisions that sometimes involve a little discomfort, which is good for us humans most of the time. (Running uphill, pushing a 26-pound toddler in a stroller is not for the faint of heart, people!) We spend a lot of time in the rain. Levi plays in campground dirt and falls off picnic benches. (This will be funny after it happens a few times, I promise.) We take long hikes in the mountains without cell phone reception. (Yes, even Travis packs extra diapers and wipes.) I’m guessing that’s what Sacagawea would do.