Early in her 26-mile hike across the Grand Canyon in September, Jennifer Mitchell saw a pair of gnarled trees with gracefully twisting trunks.
She was so enthralled by the two Utah junipers, she had a fellow hiker capture a picture of her standing between them.
The scene guided Mitchell's mind back to memories of her mother, Anne-Marie Puckett, who relished being surrounded by trees and mountains.
Puckett died after a brief bout with brain cancer in 1987, when Mitchell, now 63, was just 26 years old.
"She just loved nature," said Mitchell, a Certified Medical Assistant at Duke Urgent Care Hillsborough. "She always saw the beauty in nature."
Her mother's memory is what led Mitchell to Arizona, where, amid blazing heat, she made the hike down from the Grand Canyon's North Rim, across its sun-baked floor, and back up to the South Rim.
The walk was organized by 3000 Miles to a Cure , an organization that raises funds for researching a cure for brain cancer, one of the deadliest forms of cancer.
Walking in honor of her mother Mitchell raised around $6,275 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute .
Mitchell was part of a group of 18 hikers from around the country who combined to raise around $80,000.
Each hiker had their lives touched by brain cancer, and during the trip, they shared stories of friends, siblings, children and parents lost to the disease.
Mitchell, an avid hiker who can often be found exploring trails in the North Carolina mountains and near her Alamance County home, decided last year to take part in the Grand Canyon hike.
Throughout most of 2024, Mitchell drew encouragement from her Duke Urgent Care colleagues who wanted to hear about her training hikes and would often join her on work breaks spent strengthening her core muscles by holding planks or walking up and down the stairways in the clinic's building.
"The support I got from the people I work with was incredible," Mitchell said. "I felt like they were in this with me."
Mitchell's preparations came to an end around 4:10 a.m. on September 23, when she and her fellow hikers started their walk by descending into the darkness of the Grand Canyon's interior on the North Kaibab Trail.
Over the next six hours, they descended roughly 6,000 feet before reaching the floor of the canyon, where temperatures soared above 100 degrees.
During the hike, which took a total of roughly 13 hours, Mitchell burned through around eight liters of water and was fueled by a turkey sandwich, nuts, protein bars and guilty pleasures such as Slim Jims and Cheetos.
After crossing the Colorado River, Mitchell began the daunting finish, ascending nearly 5,000 feet in a few miles.
In the final push, Mitchell recalls feeling discouraged by the sight of a seemingly never-ending ribbon of steep switchbacks between her and the South Rim.
During the day's challenging moments, Mitchell said she and her fellow hikers were buoyed by the memories of those they'd lost.
"Throughout the hike, every time we talked about how hard it was, we remembered why we were doing it," Mitchell said. "What we were doing wasn't hard when compared with what those people go through."
Mitchell's mother was 49 when she was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer that kills 95% of those who have it within five years. Puckett died seven months after her diagnosis.
One of Mitchell's last memories of her mother came a few weeks before she died. Weakened by the disease and unable to walk without help, Puckett asked Mitchell to help her walk out into her back yard to admire an ash tree. Mitchell won't forget her mother's determination as she strained to walk outside and savor one of her final doses of nature.
As she pushed herself up the final miles of her challenging walk across the Grand Canyon, Mitchell said her mother, and her struggles, were again in her thoughts.
"Even though it's been so many years since she's been gone, I still feel that loss," Mitchell said. "Time doesn't exactly heal a wound. It can ease it a little, maybe smooth it over somewhat, but there's always a scar. But in that moment, I thought she would have been very proud of me. She would have been my biggest supporter. And she definitely would have enjoyed the view."
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