By Kristi G. Streiffert Special To Women & Men

In my hand I hold an Associated Press photo of Alison Hargreaves, shown with her 4-year-old on her hip, her older child and her husband at her side. The world-class climber died Aug. 13, not long after the picture was taken; she was killed in an avalanche on K2, the world’s second highest mountain. I didn’t know Hargreaves, and don’t know her reasons for pursuing such a dangerous path, but her death raises questions for me.

Why do some parents pursue goals that take them away from their young families? Should parents of young children think differently about their endeavors and careers than non-parents and those with older children? Should adventure-seekers limit their quests to times when they don’t have young dependents?

I started asking myself these questions before Hargreaves died. I’m the parent of a 3-year-old, and adventure travel is my vocation (though on a much milder scale than Hargreaves’). A speaking engagement took me recently to Maine, and while there I piggybacked a writing assignment that involved whitewater rafting and sea kayaking. As my plane took off, I wondered, “Why am I doing this? What if something happened to me?”

What kinds of questions are Hargreaves’ children asking their father now? The 4-year-old will want to know where Mommy is and why she hasn’t returned. She wants to know in the worst way, and my heart breaks for her.

What is the commitment in a parent’s heart at first sight of unfocused newborn eyes? Is that commitment meant to be larger than our sometimes overwhelming commitments to other endeavors, and larger even than our commitment to ourselves?

Two years ago, while still nursing my daughter, I felt that my sense of self was being swept away by the tide of motherhood. I needed to touch my old self for a short time. And so, though there is a bite of danger in a whitewater river, even for the experienced, I took a weekend whitewater canoeing course.

A year later, seemingly not giving a thought to What Might Happen, I realized a dream of taking a 211-mile trip through the Grand Canyon on my whitewater raft. At stake was both that dream and the fabric of a marriage based, in part, on pursuing such dreams.

Danger. There is danger for any parent. You could be struck by a truck on the freeway. Cancer might take you while your children are young. But what about putting yourself at risk when you have a choice?

Hargreaves was a professional climber; she was the first woman to conquer Mount Everest alone and without oxygen. According to the AP reports, she told an interviewer just before she left for Pakistan, that K2, which she intended to challenge without oxygen, was a “killer mountain.” She said, “Anybody who went off thinking that there was a very high chance they wouldn’t come back - it’s a very unfair thing to do especially with a young family.” That’s why, she said, “when we go climbing we obviously minimize the risks and if we thought it was that risky we wouldn’t go climbing.”

I was recently asked to read and review a new sea kayaking book. It was written by a mid-40s mother of two young children. In the book, “Deep Water Passage: A Midlife Journey,” Ann Linnea tells of her summer-long trip around Lake Superior, the first circumnavigation by a woman. More than once she battled life-threatening storms.

As I read, I pondered her motives, the ethics of risking her life while her kids were still so vulnerably young. For Linnea, the journey was a spiritual quest, a voyage to prepare herself for major changes in her life, a way to learn necessary lessons and heal a pain that festered. She said she was “one woman with a longing for some vague dream of knowledge and transformation.”

Linnea tells of a storm that nearly took her life. As winds and icy waves threatened to engulf her, she fought back. “‘No! No!’ I yelled into the darkness. ‘I will not go over! I will not go over!’ Brian’s and Sally’s (her children’s) faces appeared on the waves in front of me … I had never been so angry …”

Nothing was going to claim her right to live. “… Not this storm, not any person, not any structure, not any rule. I, who am a woman, had a right to claim the fullness of who I am.”

But did she? In that way? At that time? I continue to question. I question both my own drive and that of other parents who cannot delay or sacrifice their ambitions, their life lessons, until a different moment in life, when not so much is depending on them.

We are offering our children less than we should if we do not show them what it means to pursue a dream, to relentlessly hammer away at a goal, to scramble and claw our way to the top of a mountain or down a river.

In the process, we also show them that some dilemmas have no easy answer.

MEMO: Kristi G. Streiffert lives in Coulee Dam, Wash.