Forget Me Not: A Memoir

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Her love of nature, her fierce sense of freedom, the courage with which she moves through whatever life throws at her - what an amazing woman! Her work has been shown alongside well-known western artists such as Thom Ross, Howard Post, Larry Pirnie and Donna Howell-Sickles. Lowe-Anker first tells the story of her adventurous youth by the side of her first love, climbing superstar Alex Lowe.

They endured long separations so Alex could work as a professional climber while Jenni stayed home writing, painting, and raising their sons. But when filmmaker Michael Brown approached them about a documentary on the Khumbu Climbing School a mountaineering clinic they founded to address a lack of training options for Nepal’s climbing Sherpas they invited the cameras into their home. These are the bittersweet memoirs of a Bozeman, Montana based artist coming to grips with the loss of an extraordinary husband, a professional athlete who died in the mountains, leaving the love of his life and three small sons behind. This is a different kind of story, a different kind of lifestyle, and while I like reading about it, I'm glad to be where I am. She has been connected with so many talented individuals throughout her life, yet the one constant is Jenny herself.

Jennifer Lowe-Anker has combined the landscapes, animals and people of her native Montana with a unique approach to painting. I picked up this book because I was curious about the relationship dynamic between Alex Lowe and his wife, Jennifer Lowe-Anker (who wrote the book).

She clearly draws on carefully kept journals and letters, and this allows her to provide some really precise, immediate memories and descriptions of events. We follow the author as her desires crystallize; as she makes far-reaching choices about how to live her life; as she experiences the joys and anxieties that resulted, the burdens, the isolation and ultimately the tragic loss she must have foreseen.

If Alex would have lived long enough to getting around to writing a book it would have been beautiful and intriguing; he was someone who had a way with words. Jennifer Lowe-Anker is an artist whose often whimsical paintings are rendered in vivid colour and rich texture inspired by her Montana upbringing. She has seven pieces in the corporate offices of Patagonia in Ventura, CA and several paintings in private collections of such luminaries as Pater Fonda, Michael Keaton, Jeff Bridges and Nion McEvoy of Chronicle Books.

I felt like it dropped off a bit in the last two chapters, but I am grateful for Jenni's vulnerability in writing a book like this. The story of Alex Lowe in itself makes for an inspirational tale, but what shines in this book is the independent and free spirit of Jennifer. Rather than focusing on climbing, there was jealousy and constant tension: who was getting the most photos of themselves posted, who was getting credit for leading or summitting. The way she describes the Tetons and Dolomites and Alps and the other places she climbed and lived with Alex have an artist and naturalist's flair and will make you long to live a similarly wild and authentic life.Jennifer Lowe-Anker has done an amazing job of telling the story of her life and a good part of Alex's life as well. As a reader, I felt strangely honored by Lowe-Anker's candor in so many respects, especially as she narrated when she first met and fell in love with Alex Lowe; on the other hand, I was a little surprised by some of the narrative obscurity towards the end of the book. She has an artist's ability to really see something, and she's translated it for us, allowing readers to see what she sees, in all its color and movement and fragility. If people don't have an understanding that mountaineering, especially done at a "professional" capacity, requires sacrifice for both the climber, and their loved ones, I guess they walked away from reading this somewhat better informed.

Living in the west, loving the mountains and having been in so many places where this book takes you, I loved this book. Then eventually it grows into something blazing, which fixated me, and I was unable to step away from it. He had speed-ascent records, had camped on the summit of Everest, and he died walking into a crevasse. When commercial success came to the climber, it obligated him to commercial trips, first guiding and then sponsored trips. The story, while objectively sad – Alex Lowe, much-loved hero of the climbing world, husband, and father, dies in an avalanche and his family must find a way to continue without him – is narrated in a pretty emotionally bland way.

From the reviews -- and even, if taken out of context, a sentence or two in Krakauer's forward -- I had to assume this was some sort of angry or at least pitiable self portrait of a woman abandoned in life and death by her selfish climber husband. You don't have to be a climber or even an outdoors person to like this book, but considering the other reviews I've read, I am seemingly in the minority about the effect this book has on me. I see the film as a way of showing that, even after hardships, you can appreciate what you do have and turn it into something good.