A #FBF in honor of today’s National Take a Hike Day. As mom was downsizing, she would photograph and write an essay about items that were hard (usually for me) to let go. So, mom photographed her now-vintage boots along with her Sunset Magazine articles and photos about hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Mom’s boss at Sunset Magazine (Walter Houk) actually gave her these boots after she wore her tennis shoes on their first hiking trip together to Baden Powell in 1967. She didn’t have any hiking boots, so Walter offered to buy her a pair of nice boots if she’d continue on these hikes, as he envisioned many more Sunset articles documenting the San Gabriel Mountains.
In mom’s hiking boots essay, she admitted that didn’t LOVE hiking exactly, but she did love spending the work day outdoors. She wrote, “And I am happy to say that I climbed to the top of Old Baldy, one of the three tallest peaks in Southern California. I used to want to climb the other two: San Gorgonio and San Jacinto but I got over that as the years went by. I was happy to just discover, one day, a place east of Los Angeles where one can see all three peaks at the same time.”
…wonder where that is…
Victoria Bernal 
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