Completed Highpoint

Bookends to a Marriage (1992-2023)

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Mount Washington is known as the most dangerous small mountain in the world due to its unpredictable weather year round. It is among the deadliest in the U.S. When the fabulous Jeffrey Scott agreed to contribute to my performance art project about carrying weight, he specifically requested that I premiere his postcard composition, “Flume Gorge Echoes” on the summit of Mount Washington, the highpoint of New Hampshire and of New England. Both Mount Washington and Flume Gorge are part of the White Mountain range.

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Jeff did not know until after he wrote the composition that I visited both Mount Washington and Flume Gorge on my honeymoon in 1992, long before I knew I would ever live in New England. As of a few weeks ago, I am divorced after a 31+ year marriage.

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Glen Adsit and I carried a lot of weight together. We carried the weight of multiple long distance moves; the weight of building numerous music programs together at several institutions (including a middle school, a high school, and 2 universities!); the weight of buying and selling 3 houses, as well as the weight of renting and moving in and out of numerous other places we called home; the weight of putting each other through graduate degrees; the weight of many job changes; the weight of living long distance for 3 years in order to have jobs in our fields; serving in the role of trailing spouse (a weight for both of us); the weight of fertility treatment; the weight of pregnancy; the weight of childbirth; the weight of raising a child; the weight of each of us experiencing the death of a parent; the weight of experiencing the deaths of close friends; the weight of CANCER; the weight of a transplant; the weight and wait of recovery; the weight of a global pandemic; the weight of heart disease; and the weight of countless other challenges and successes both large and small.

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Many of these weights were also lightnesses, and both the heavinesses and lightnesses were infused with love. In the end, the weight grew to be too much for us to carry together and the balance tipped too far toward heaviness for too long.

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We have parted ways in marriage, but will continue to carry weight together as parents, as colleagues, and as friends. I truly don’t believe there is a better band director or conducting teacher out there, and my students are fortunate to be able to play in his ensembles. In fact, his ensembles don’t sound like his ensembles without my saxophonists in them! We discovered this during the 3 years we commuted, when his saxophonists were not my students. His ensembles still sounded good, but they didn’t sound like HIS bands. We realized it was the warmth of the unifying voice of the saxophone section that was setting it apart! His bands included my students at Pioneer Middle School, Plymouth-Canton High School, the University of New Mexico, and The Hartt School — spanning almost his entire career beginning in 1989.

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In addition, no-one else on the planet besides Glen loves my child as much as I do, and there is no-one I’d rather co-parent with. (18-year-olds still need parenting, don’t they?)

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So, Jeff, you didn’t know I had visited Flume Gorge with Glen in 1992. Your instructions include, “sweetly, but searching”, “slowly building courage”, and you end with “sadly”. You have titled it with the word, “echoes” and have portrayed a journey including beauty, strength, nostalgia, and loss. You portray the geography of an ancient area, including majestic rock, swirling water, and capture an emotional combination of weight, poignancy, awe, and above all, acceptance.

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For this reason, I premiered it in the intended location, which also created symbolic bookends to my marriage. Glen had planned to join me (I hiked up and down; he would have driven the Mount Washington Auto Road given the limitations of his foot), but a stubborn case of pneumonia kept him in town. With Mount Washington, weather is key. It had been covered in snow earlier this week, but a few days of unseasonable warmth created a short window of possibility late in the season. So I summitted.