. The skies were gloomy, but my mood couldn’t have been sunnier. I was tromping up the Horn Fork Trail in Colorado’s Collegiate Peaks Wilderness in a light drizzle with two friends. It was the last weekend in August, and the willows that lined the path were just beginning to take on the yellow of autumn. Low clouds obscured the summit of 14,421-foot Mount Harvard. The weather report had forecast rain all morning, but it was supposed to clear up before the weekend was over. Abby, Erica, and I had met as college interns at the same outdoor startup. We’d all landed in Colorado following graduation and had been looking forward to this girls’ overnight for months. As we walked, Abby regaled us with the plot of a horror movie. Then, to lighten the mood, we sang show tunes, grateful that the trail was empty—and just flat enough to grant us the lung capacity to really belt it out.