Chris Smith on “My Mountains” and the Journey Behind the Memoir

In My Mountains, Chris Smith invites readers into a landscape shaped as much by grief, resilience and faith as it is by the rugged peaks surrounding his home in Pagosa Springs. The memoir traces the journey of loving a son through addiction, chronic pain and ultimately loss. Smith writes not as a hero or expert, but as an ordinary father thrust into an extraordinary trial, learning to climb emotional summits he never sought but could not avoid. In this conversation, he reflects on where the story begins, how the mountains became spiritual companions and what he hopes readers will carry forward from Keagan’s life and legacy.

You open the memoir with the moment no parent is prepared for: Blake’s call, the locked doors, and the agonizing walk toward truth. What made you decide to begin the book there, with the catastrophe rather than the climb?

Good question. My life up to this point seemed pretty ordinary.  I wanted to bring ordinary people like me into an extra ordinary event to show what it looks like for regular people when they make the jump and how they walk through it.  It was just a regular day…..until it wasn’t, and we made it through.  The journey is the beautiful part.  The part we can cherish and savor, but if the reader didn’t know we were climbing a real summit here, they may not cherish and savor the journey I described later.

Throughout the memoir, the mountains aren’t metaphors; they’re companions, witnesses, even spiritual anchors. How do you think living in Pagosa Springs shaped not only your family’s rhythms, but your theology of suffering and endurance?

I look at the mountains all around me in Pagosa Springs every day. I have climbed most of them and remember those singular adventures distinctly and affectionately.  I think of the approach and how I got to the base, in case someone asks how to prepare and start the climb. I think of the physical demand they took to summit.  Some were easier than others.  I look at each one with respect knowing they were difficult, but I made it.  I look at other peaks I have not yet climbed and think, “that looks hard, but I’ve climbed so many others like them, I could probably make it.”  Having them surround me feels like having sentinels protecting me, or like guardians quietly proclaiming I have conquered them and made it, and will not easily be subdued by anything else that may come at me.

You’re very candid about the opioid crisis and how it threaded its way into your home with “the quiet relentlessness of weather.” In your view, what are the biggest misconceptions people have about addiction within families who are loving, present and trying their best? 

A few things; first, you don’t really know what others are going through. We judge their choice to take drugs as wrong, but even for mental illnesses or emotional trauma, they just don’t have the ability to cope. Second, it may not be within your capability to be their solution.  Of course I wanted to be Keagan’s advocate, support and father, steering him correctly, but he was a grown adult and made his own decisions.  Finally, don’t allow shame to overtake you.  You may actually kill yourself trying to help someone making their own life choices. You may even go to those lengths to avoid the shame it feels like it brings to your family and reputation. Do not let shame have a place in your life.

You write poignantly about caregiving: the logistics, the exhaustion, the hope you kept trying to extend to him. What do you wish more people understood about being a long-term caregiver to someone in chronic pain? 

You can do it. Each developing step of increasing responsibility looks daunting as you approach it, but once you have to do it, you will find the ability to do so.  You will grow as a selfless human.  It is beautiful to be in a room and not need to get only what you want, but to want to do for others more than for yourself.  You need to go through the valley of serving others selflessly to appreciate the satisfaction and joy of living to serve another person. You should also learn about setting boundaries. Boundaries are the head knowledge you really need to help someone in chronic pain so you don’t harm yourself.

If Keagan were able to read My Mountains, what do you hope he’d recognize about himself in these pages? And what do you hope his sons, when they’re older, take away from their father’s story? 

People liked him. He didn’t have to push so hard to have others like him.  His pain was some kind of lesson God wanted him to go through.  I still don’t know how else he could have continued on, but God was in this all the way till he died. Little decisions, like not wearing his seat belt, are sometimes the daily habits we need to pay attention to. It may be that simple. Avoid big problems by listening to authorities in your life, like the cops who say, “wear a seat belt”.  Keagan wanted to be known as a Maverick. That is a risky identity to go for. Being a good adventurous person is also good. Maybe go for something like that.