Margaret Pater She has been able to walk since she was a child. And not in any geography, but in the mountains. It is an example of how it is possible to overcome eight decades without the limitations of age affecting us. It combines two passions that she has nurtured since childhood: the mountains and travel. “When I see a hill or a rise, I feel an irresistible urge to climb it,” he says on the day he saw one of his dreams finally come true: Get to know the Andes mountain range.
He began hiking in the mountains at the age of twelve. in his native England. “We were on vacation. My mother stayed at home with my younger brothers and I went to the northwest mountains with my father. He knew them quite well from his student days. We stayed in an old hotel from back in the day. That The weather wasn’t very good, but we still set off in the morning to climb a small mountain. The clouds came down and My father said to me: “Well, you stay here, I’ll see where the road is.” I knew there was a cliff nearby. I sat on a rock and waited in fear, shaking and begging him to come back… “He came back and we moved on,” he says, laughing.
These family vacations gave him the initial impetus as he continued to take these trips with his father. “It was a time when girls didn’t wear pants, only skirts.” remember. So it happened that her father told her to sit on one of the mountains where there was no road. “Of course, him with his pants…” That didn’t deter her, like almost no challenge in her life.
Family trips continued, always to the fields and mountains. Once they stopped at a farm. Since it was still very early and we didn’t want to wake anyone up, They had to climb down from the first floor window. At that time, the cows were kept in the lower part of the houses and the family slept on the upper floor. “From there “We climbed the highest mountain in England.” Account. It refers to Scafell Pike, 978 metres in height.
He still pursues his first passion today young translator from German to English and from English to Germanwent to work Bossey, almost Geneva, Switzerland. A Methodist denomination, Margaret has been a simultaneous interpreter for the church for most of her professional life World Council of Churches (WCC)an ecumenical body that brings together more than 350 Christian churches and represents more than 500 million Christians of various traditions, including the Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed and other churches, with the Roman Catholic Church occupying an observer or fraternal position.
Arriving in Switzerland, Margaret became famous among the young and not so young people who visited the Bossey Ecumenical Center. to participate in seminars and various Christian meetings. He invited everyone to go on long hikes in the Swiss Alps. She was so persuasive that she got “hiking boots” as well as borrowed coats and walking sticks for all the hikers.
Anyone who visited Bossey will remember the enthusiasm with which she persuaded them to enjoy the wonderful experience of enjoying the heights and mountain air.
His other passion: traveling, know other cultureswas facilitated by his work in the ecumenical world. He visited the five continents, viz He is ashamed when he thinks of how many cities in the world he has visited, Thanks to his amazing memory, he adds places to the list when asked. He left friends and pleasant and happy memories with almost everyone.
Your journey through the world’s airports is not without adventure. Since the CMI was always looking for the cheapest possible trips, she often had to wait long times during stopovers and often had to sleep leaning on her backpack or handbag. But he always faced adversity with an admirable spirit. He still talks about these setbacks with a lot of laughter today and always sees the positive side of the experience. Perhaps it is one of his personality traits that explains the youth he exudes at 86 years old.
At the end of the 1980s, when East Germany was still separated from West Germany by a wall, Margaret completed all the paperwork to settle in the Eastern Zone. where a shepherd friend lived. There were months of arduous paperwork and evidence worthy of one of the later released films about the rigidity of the Soviet system, but his persistence won over the bureaucracy. A few months after he was accepted as an eastern resident, the wall fell… But even this stroke of fate does not dampen his good mood.
There, in the German town on the Baltic Sea coast where he now lives, He continues to climb the three flights of stairs in his house. -which doesn’t have an elevator- and does her shopping with her old bike. Electric bike? “Not at all”, She says they are heavy and don’t fit in the space provided by a downstairs neighbor so she doesn’t have to carry them into her house. Naturally, Thanks to this training, he can go up and down stairs without holding on to the handrail.
She continued to travel mountains with her friend, now in Austria, Poland and what is now the Czech Republic. But when the wall hadn’t yet fallen, they had some adventures that they can happily tell you about. “Once We decided to go to Czechoslovakia to climb the mountains there, those that are very close to East Germany. There is a highlight that we wanted to visit. There were three ways up. One day we started on a path, but it was closed by nature. Well, we tried the second one, same thing. You weren’t allowed to go out there. We went to the third path and yes. That day we parked the car and started following the path. There was once a chapel at the top, but On the Polish side it was just the border between the two countries. I didn’t have a visa for Poland and she didn’t have an exit permit… But she’s a priest and wanted to see the chapel. I started looking away and she left with other people to visit the chapel. Luckily they didn’t stop me there.
But the adventure doesn’t end there. Above the place began a path called Path of friendship. Since we are friends, we decided to take this route. We were just about to start walking when a police officer appeared out of nowhere and told us, “Hey, stop, stop.” You can’t come through here and show your papers.’ She had her passport, I had my car license. From Switzerland. No passports. Well, we show everything. “He was Polish, he spoke nothing other than Polish,” he clarifies They narrowly escaped imprisonment in Poland.
After the end of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, they continued to travel through the mountains with greater freedom on every vacation.
This year Margaret was able to fulfill another one of her dreams: Know the Andes. He visited the province of Mendoza and took the high mountain tour and to his great chagrin, he found that Christ the Savior was unavailable during the snow season. She wanted to set foot on Chilean soil from Argentina, a symbolic gesture that connects her with her friends on both sides of the mountain range. But he could do it a classic trekking route, to Angel Waterfall, This arouses the admiration of young people who come exhausted to admire the imposing jet of water falling from the mountain. “Did grandma get here without help?”they asked in surprise. “Grandma walks better and faster than many of you,” was the unexpected answer.
Then what is your secret to staying so vital? The formula seems simple: good mood, a positive outlook on life, unshakable faith and a passion for continuous movement. She is the one living proof of this Longevity depends less on magical formulas and more on very human practices like emotional bonds, the desire to learn new things and something as old and basic as… walking.
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