Katahdin is the name that my husband and I chose to represent us in our life together. Our namesake, Mt. Katahdin is the highest point in Maine and the Northern most point of the Appalachian trail. When my future husband and I climbed Mt. Katahdin in July 1999, we had become engaged only two weeks before at our home in Durham, NC. We hadn't even told anyone about our engagement. I wanted my family to be the first to know and they were on vacation.

We started our assent from the Abel campground at approximately 1700 feet and carefully made our way up to the summit at 5200 feet. No roads will take you to the summit. The only way to get there is on foot climbing over boulders and up steep terrain. When we got to the top I remember thinking I didn't know we had anything like this in America. It is quite a view looking down at the surrounding terrain. Someday when our children are older we plan to take our son and daughter to Mt. Katahdin, so they can experience Mt. Katahdin for themselves and see why we choose Katahdin as our family name.

When my husband Don and I got married in 2000, we announced that we planned to choose a new family name. In July 2002 we officially changed our names to Katahdin after the birth of our son who incidentally was conceived in July of the previous year. Choosing names for a baby is a little trickier when you're trying to decide what the family name will be also. We wanted to be united under one family name, but our names seemed too long to hyphenate. We'd heard of people playing scrabble with the letters of their names, or taking part of their names and making a new combined name. Combining Sheppard and Weber to become Weppard or Sheber just didn't sound appealing. A couple of weeks before our son was born the idea of becoming the Katahdin's came to mind. I remember well how I felt the day we climbed Mt. Katahdin. Why not take that as our family name. The next hurdle was to find out what the word "Katahdin" meant. We were having difficulties getting that information. For all we knew it might mean “great pile of buffalo dung". Luckily it means “highest mountain” in one of the Native American languages of Maine.

At the top of Mt. Katahdin I remember feeling a sense of awe and accomplishment. Doing chimney moves a rock climbing technique added to the challenge of getting to the top. My husband is a barefoot hiker. On the way back down several people asked me why I was wearing hiking boots when they saw my fiance with his bare feet. I just asked them the same question. Don was enjoying leaving foot prints in the mud and on the stones all along the path.

Choosing a mate and becoming and being a mother are high points in my life. I will always associate my family name "Katahdin" with this awesome transformation. May birth be a transformative and awe inspiring event for you too!