INTERLUDE IV Life with Neil: Through the HazeBy the time Neil was a junior at UNH, he and Jeremy had climbed several of New Hampshire’s four-thousand-foot mountains. They’d started with Mount Liberty as soon as one of them was old enough to drive, and they’d kept going. These mountains are scattered across the upper mid-section of the state, so the boys grew very familiar with the routes, the trailheads, and the terrain. They encountered other four-thousand-foot hikers who’d done summits Neil and Jeremy hadn’t yet climbed, people with information about those as-yet-unknown peaks, and their knowledge of the area grew until it seemed encyclopedic to me.
This familiarity did not, however, breed either contempt or lead Neil to take the mountains for granted. He was an adventurous climber, but
