Don and I joined The Department of Chemistry within one year of each other 50 years ago. Our friendship bloomed when Don invited me to join a hike of The Three Brothers in the Adirondacks on an autumn Saturday. Don and Genevieve took turns carrying Juliet. Experience made me wary about approaching nightfall in a forest. My concern was relieved by finding ourselves at the border of the parking area in total darkness. We had set out without flashlights.
Not many years later with a visiting Chemical Society speaker, Henry Shine, I dropped by an Adirondacks cabin occupied by the Pattersons for a weekend. On the way I stopped at Canadian Customs to retrieve 4 bottles of wine impounded several weeks before on a return to Canada from the US. Don, Henry and I set off to do The Three Brothers. Close to the first Brother we were drenched by a sudden unrelenting downpour. We backtracked to the cabin and decided to open the hiking lunches. Sudden brainstorm…4 bottles of wine! It was a merry lunch followed by everyone passing out and joining the 3 Patterson children in dream land.
After a passage of time Juliet now nine years give or take a year led us over The Three Brothers.
With remarkable agility she happily jumped from boulder to rock covered trail and back again. The hike was made memorable by a striking photograph of Juliet taken by a hiking companion, Gordon Eccles a technician in the Department.
Although for more than 40 years Don and I did many of the high peaks together, The Three Brothers was always his favourite.