At 75, Mollee’S Hitting Bhutan’S High Points

Give Mollee Hecht sturdy hiking boots for her 75th birthday next month. True to her nature, she’s celebrating with her son on a three-week trek through Bhutan, a reclusive country in the shadows of the eastern Himalayas.

The trip will disrupt her busy schedule. Mollee plays in the hand bell choir at Sandpoint’s First Presbyterian Church, where she’s organizing a volunteer visitation program for shut-ins. She serves on the Pend Oreille Arts Council, is a master gardener, cans everything and is working on a comprehensive history of her family.

Between all that, she runs, bikes, hikes and saves abandoned cats.

“She and I did Bloomsday together this year and she graciously slowed her pace so I could keep up,” says Mollee’s neighbor, Teri Maurice, who is 52. “I tell her we’ll grow old together because I figure when she’s 92 and I’m 70, she’ll finally slow down.”

Mollee’s blue jeans bag on her lean legs and a straw hat and worn, long-sleeved shirt protect her from the sun. Freckles dot the tops of her busy hands and a webbing of smile lines surrounds her mouth. Her face seems most comfortable in a smile.

She embraces visitors to her white farmhouse in a hearty bear hug and greets strangers as warmly as if she’s known them forever. Her kitchen smells of baking chocolate chip cookies, rhubarb bread and huckleberry coffeecake. Striking yellow and purple irises from her garden burst from a glass vase on her dining room table.

“I forgot my daughter’s birthday,” she confesses guiltily as she whisks newly browned cookies from a baking pan onto a cooling rack. Homemade cookies are part of her gift. Family is a priority.

Mollee blossomed at 40. A divorce that year ended her high society life as a San Francisco-area stockbroker’s wife. She packed her five children into a car and headed to Sun Valley, where skiing and a new love awaited. Skiing lasted, the man didn’t.

The whole family worked to live and ski. Mollee cleaned houses and worked in restaurant kitchens until she’d saved enough money to open a bookstore.

By 1976, her children had grown and gone, and Mollee was ready for adventure.

“I’d wanted to do adventure-living from the time I married,” she says. “But my husband was serious. It was the 1940s. I did what my husband wanted.”

At 50, she took off for Alaska with 19 people to manage the Glacier Bay Lodge for five months. The great outdoors beckoned. She spent her spare time kayaking and canoeing around glaciers.

The following year, Mollee headed to Yosemite National Park to help manage a restaurant. That year, she tried high-elevation backpacking in the Sierras, reaching 14,000 feet.

“It was the first time I was by myself in my whole life,” she says. “I was so lucky.”

The next year, Mollee settled in Tacoma to care for her dying mother. To counter the stress, she began running and racing. Running helped her through her mother’s death, then through three years of caring for her granddaughter, who has spina bifida.

“When we were growing up, she used to chant this mantra: `They’ll all grow up and go away someday,”’ Mollee’s son, Christopher Hecht, says laughing. “Then she followed us.”

Mollee visited Christopher in Sandpoint in 1984 and decided to stay. The Bonner County Library had a job waiting for her. Schweitzer Mountain had ski slopes she loved. Christopher transplanted his family to the British Isles, but Mollee sank roots.

By the time Christopher returned a few years ago, Mollee was a town institution.

“I was here first, but when I returned everyone said, `Oh, you’re Mollee’s son,”’ he says. “She knows hundreds of people.”

Christopher found Mollee the farmhouse northeast of town five years ago and convinced his brothers and sisters to buy it for her. The property included an orchard, two towering Douglas firs and a red barn topped with three eye-catching turrets.

Mollee rode her mountain bike from town to look it over.

“She said, `I could just die here,”’ Christopher says. “It’s wonderful to see her blossoming along with her environment.”

Mollee pruned the apple, pear, plum and cherry orchard and dug four gardens.

She put an English country garden on the north side, with orange Oriental poppies, pink painted daisies, lavender Chinese money plant and columbine. A vegetable garden is fenced in back, with garlic, cabbages, peas, peppers, tomatoes and more.

On the south side, she planted lilac, blueberry and raspberry bushes, yellow day lilies and Shasta daisies. A yellow garden grows in front, with everything yellow.

Christopher invited his mother to celebrate his 50th birthday and her 75th in Bhutan this fall with his wife, Cheyenna, and friends.

“To me, being a successful parent means your kids want to spend time with you,” he says. “I want to spend time with her. I want to give her an opportunity she didn’t necessarily have being burdened with motherhood.”

Mollee’s runner’s heart is strong, and her adventurer’s spirit burns bright. Last winter, she hiked to 9,000 feet in Mexico to see butterflies. She plans to hike to 12,000 feet in Sun Valley this summer to prepare for Bhutan.

“I’ve never had any adventures in my life,” her neighbor Teri says, sighing. “I’ve led a boring middle-class life. Mollee could work and backpack. I worked and kept house. I think she’s one of the coolest people in the world.”

Mollee vacillated about the trip, but Bloomsday proved to her she was fit enough. And, she couldn’t say no to her family.

“It’s so flattering they would ask,” she says. “It’s so wonderful when your kids grow up and become your friends.”