This morning, as I sweated my way up Agnew Pass in the Eastern Sierra, dreaming about eventually throwing my overheated body into Gem Lake at nearly 9,500 feet, I kept muttering one very motivational thought under my breath: If Dolly Parton could spend fifty years walking around in five-inch heels, I could make it up this damn mountain pass. This was the week the world lost the legendary Dolly Parton, and apparently I chose to 
process my country girl grief by hiking straight uphill for four miles in the Sierra Nevada. Everyone else was sharing favorite Dolly songs on Facebook while I was somewhere without cell service, sweating through my hiking clothes and wondering how much longer my quadriceps intended to participate in this relationship.
But honestly, Dolly would have understood the drama. She was tiny, blonde, bedazzled and tougher than most men I’ve ever met. She could wear five-inch heels, write songs that made grown adults cry, run an empire, give away millions of books to children and still somehow make self-deprecating jokes before lunch. That’s an American icon. And somewhere between Agnew Pass and my fantasies about Meyer Lemon Ice Cream Cake, I started thinking about my grandma.
I feel incredibly privileged to be a woman living this life in 2026. I can spend my mornings climbing far away from technology into the pine-filled mountains of the Eastern Sierra, sweating so profusely on some godforsaken uphill that I begin to question whether my body is actually trying to return itself to nature. Always then my reward is to hike down to a crisp, cold alpine lake, strip down to my bathing suit and plunge right in—even if, at forty-six, I’m not exactly emerging from the water looking like the cover of Sports Illustrated.
I’m pretty sure nature-loving Dolly would have appreciated that kind of freedom: mountains, fresh air, a little bit of stubbornness and absolutely no concern about whether your thighs are ready for bikini season. And maybe that is part of why I still love escaping into the wild places of America, where for a few hours the modern world goes blessedly quiet. Yes, some of my liberal loved ones may no longer talk to me because apparently politics in 2026 can divide family and friends faster than Thanksgiving dinner and an open bottle of wine, but when I think about how much the world has changed during my grandmother’s nearly one hundred years, our current squabbles suddenly feel very small. She was an eleven-year-old Jewish girl living in Boston when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, growing up while a world war raged and millions of Jews were being murdered in the Holocaust. She lived through an America before the modern civil rights era transformed the country, through wars, assassinations, enormous advances in women’s rights, the moon landing, the Cold War, the birth of the internet and technology that would have sounded like science fiction when she was a child.
Now we live in a world where groceries can appear at the front door without
us setting foot in a store, cars can practically drive themselves and a tiny computer in my pocket can connect me to almost anyone on Earth—and, unfortunately, social media makes sure I hear all of their opinions. It is a wild, complicated and sometimes exhausting world, but when I look at the span of my grandmother’s lifetime, I’m reminded just how extraordinary it is to have the freedom to live the life I choose.
Maybe that’s also why I keep retreating to the mountains, to something that hasn’t changed nearly as much since John Muir himself trekked these trails. There are still aspens turning gold in October, dusty dirt trails disappearing into the wilderness, and icy alpine lakes waiting at the bottom of a long hike.
So even in a world that now feels a little emptier without that country and western muse, Dolly Parton, I’m going to keep appreciating the America I love in the simplest way I know how: turning off the phone, hiking into the wilderness and dun
king my forty-six-year-old fat ass into a freezing mountain lake.
My Grandma Marsha is 96 years old, and until last week, she still lived on her own, which, come on, is absolutely incredible! For most of her life, she has been fiercely independent, and I have always said that if I am lucky enough to live that long, I want to be exactly like her. At 85, Grandma was still out staining her own front porch while the rest of the family was telling her she probably shouldn’t be climbing around doing home improvement projects anymore. Please, Grandma, let your grandson, who owns a construction company, handle this for you. Family telling Grandma what to do? Good luck with that. She has mellowed slightly now that she’s 96, mostly because the family finally put its collective foot down, but stubborn independence clearly has some longevity benefits.
The last time I visited Grandma at her cabin, I happened to be wearing a Dolly Parton T-shirt. Grandma looked at me and said, “Oh my God, that’s Dolly Parton on your shirt. I love Dolly Parton.” Then, about twenty minutes later: “Oh my God, that’s Dolly Parton. I love Dolly Parton.” And later, once again: “That’s Dolly Parton! I love her!” Okay, Grandma. Apparently we have been hiding a major Dolly fandom for the last forty years.
What made this so funny to me was that I spent an enormous amount of my childhood at my grandparents’ A-frame cabin, and I do not remember them being music people at all. Baseball? Absolutely. From 
March through September, you could almost always hear Vin Scully calling a Dodgers game through some old crackly AM/FM tabletop radio, the kind with a giant tuning dial that probably weighed as much as a modern laptop. That sound was the soundtrack of my childhood. I would ride my mountain bike back and forth to my grandparents’ house, eat dinner with them—usually a salad absolutely drenched in Bob’s Blue Cheese Dressing—and stay overnight. Vin Scully was always there in the background. Dodgers baseball was basically another family member. Music? Not so much.
So when Grandma suddenly announced multiple times that she loved Dolly Parton, I started doing the math. Grandma was already a young woman raising children when Dolly was beginning the career that eventually made her an international superstar. My grandmother’s generation watched Dolly go from a young Appalachian singer-songwriter to one of the most recognizable women on the planet. Meanwhile, Grandma herself was living this incredible American story. She had three young children. She and my grandfather packed up their lives back East and moved across the country from the Boston area to Southern California in a station wagon, chasing a completely different life on the West Coast. My grandfather wanted sunshine, boats, sailing and eventually as much Los Angeles Dodgers baseball as one human being could reasonably consume.
Thinking about all of that now makes ninety-six years feel enormous. Grandma has lived long enough to watch entire eras of American culture come and go. Singers who were young women alongside her generation became legends. Baseball players became n
ames in history books. Station wagons became Cybertrucks. Radios became tiny computer phones. And somehow Grandma Marsha is still here, with plenty of opinions that MSNBC told her about. Maybe the secret to longevity really is stubbornness. That and lemon desserts. And relatively clean eating. Although Grandma also smoked cigarettes until 1955, so apparently even longevity has a learning curve.
Of all Dolly’s songs, 9 to 5 has always been one of my favorites because underneath that ridiculously catchy song is something I’ve understood my entire adult life: working your ass off for somebody who couldn’t care less about you. Hello, my twenties. Anyone who has ever witnessed drunk karaoke with me already knows that when 9 to 5 comes on, everybody else should probably surrender the microphone.
That song has always hit home because I spent years working for bosses who made incredibly inappropriate comments, behaved sexually toward female employees, pulled my hair and di
d things that today would probably result in an HR investigation before lunchtime. Except this was before #MeToo. Nobody told young women like me that there was supposed to be an HR department protecting us. The general workplace advice at the time seemed to be: Work harder. Don’t complain. Don’t make anybody uncomfortable by mentioning that somebody is making YOU uncomfortable. And if you rock the boat, enjoy your shitty annual review. True story.
So yes, 9 to 5 spoke to me. Eventually, experiences like those were part of what pushed me toward becoming a small-business owner. I work incredibly hard now, sometimes harder than I ever did for an employer, but I work for myself. There is something extremely satisfying about realizing I no longer have to spend my life bowing down to shitty bosses. Thank you, Dolly. You understood. And if something is sweet as sugar and still manages to have a little attitude, I have to believe the Queen of Country Music would approve of this Meyer Lemon Ice Cream Cake
.
Which brings us back to Agnew Pass. This week, while the digital world was exploding with Dolly memories, tributes and videos, my boyfriend and I were blissfully out of cell-phone range trekking up a mountainside in the Eastern Sierra. Honestly, we prefer it that way. There is something wonderful about spending hours where your phone cannot tell you what everybody is angry or sad about today. Our only immediate problems involved elevation gain, increasingly tired legs and determining exactly how much farther I had to hike before I was allowed to jump into freezing cold yes in August, Gem Lake.
After approximately four miles of sweating straight uphill, I finally made a birthday dec
laration: I’m too old for this shit. Also, I deserve ice cream cake. I love hiking. I guide hiking tours for a living. I willingly walk up mountains constantly. But sometimes you reach the top of a particularly brutal climb, stare at the gorgeous alpine scenery and think, “That was incredible,” followed immediately by, “We never need to do that again.”
And that’s where birthday dessert enters the picture. This Meyer Lemon Ice Cream Cake was the dessert I decided to make for myself during our summertime camping trip after days of hiking, paddleboarding, Jeep adventures and running around the Eastern Sierra like two middle-aged people who apparently refuse to understand the concept of relaxation. Eventually, I had earned an afternoon back at camp and crashed out in my camp chair.
Now THIS is vacation. Put me in a camp chair beside the motorhome with an iced latte in my hand, bald eagles cruising over the lake and a ridiculous lemon dessert setting in the freezer. This is exactly why we motorhome camp. Some people call motorhome camping “not real camping.” Those people apparently hate cold wine, comfortable mattresses, espresso and homemade ice cream cake. Have fun sleeping on the hard ground, Chad.
After an ass-kicking hike, I like the finer things in wilderness life. Good coffee. Nice wine. A hot shower. A freezer capable of producing birthday ice cream cake. Nature is wonderful. Nature with appliances is better.
My boyfriend and I also have one extremely successful relationship strategy: We usually hate each other’s favorite desserts. It’s fantastic. People spend thousands of dollars on couples therapy trying to reduce conflict, and we simply order different desserts. He loves lemon meringue pie. I love lemon cake. I also adore ice cream. Normally, this arrangement means we never have to fight over the last bite of anything.
Until now.
Because while dreaming up my birthday camping dessert, I decided to combine his favorite lemon meringue pie flavors with my obsession with lemon cake and ice cream. Bing. Bang. Boom. Meyer Lemon Ice Cream Cake. Suddenly our perfectly functioning dessert separation agreement collapsed.
The tart, fragrant Meyer lemon flavor keeps this cake from becoming overwhelmingly sweet, while the crea
my frozen lemon cream make it exactly what I want after a hot summertime hike. It has that bright lemon-dessert flavor my boyfriend loves, but it’s also cold, creamy and cakey enough to make me hover suspiciously around the freezer, making sure he hasn’t eaten my portion. Fourteen years together and this may be what finally tears us apart. Not money. Not politics. Not camping together in a 34-foot motorhome with a dog who won’t stop farting, lemon ice cream cake.
And as I sat at camp that afternoon, tired legs propped up, iced coffee nearby and my birthday Meyer Lemon Ice Cream Cake freezing away, I couldn’t help thinking again about Dolly. A woman from the mountains who worked incredibly hard, never seemed afraid to laugh at herself and somehow managed to stay wonderfully feminine while also being tougher than hell. Maybe that is why women from so many different generations loved her. My grandma loved her. I love her. And someday I hope I’m 96 years old, still stubborn, still eating lemon desserts and telling some younger family member for the third time that day, “Oh my God, that’s Dolly Parton on your shirt. I lov
e Dolly Parton.”
Until then, I’ll keep hiking mountains. Maybe not Agnew Pass again anytime soon. I’ll keep working for myself. I’ll keep singing 9 to 5 badly, loudly and enthusiastically at karaoke. And I will absolutely keep making Meyer Lemon Ice Cream Cake.
Because Dolly taught us plenty about working hard. But after working 9 to 5—or hiking four miles straight uphill—you damn well deserve dessert.
I Will Always Love You, Meyer Lemon Ice Cream Cake
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
2 teaspoons of vanilla
1 1/2 cups of whipped cream or Cool Whip
Juice of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 lemon
Your favorite graham cracker crust
1/4 cup of lemon curd
1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger
If you are making the graham cracker crust yourself, mix in the ground ginger before baking it. If you are using a store-bought graham cracker crust, just sprinkle the ground ginger over the crust before adding your pie toppings.
To create the lemon pie filling, in a blender, mix the sweetened condensed milk, vanilla, lemon, and lemon zest. When smooth, blend in your Cool Whip or whipped cream. Pour this into your graham cracker crust and cover the pie with saran wrap. Let the pie sit for at least five hours or overnight in the freezer before serving.
