Merrill Hille, UW Biology professor emerita, and Bertil Hille, UW Physiology and Biophysics emeritus professor, were recently featured in The Whole U "People of UW."
Distinguished emeritus professors Merrill and Bertil Hille are partners in wellness and paragons of active — even adventurous — aging
Like many retired couples of a certain age, Bertil and Merrill Hille log their engagements in an old-fashioned paper calendar. Theirs would look pretty unremarkable, actually, if not for the sprawling range of scribbled triangles that blankets much of its orderly grid like crowded peaks on a topographic map.
“Each of these triangles is a mountain hike,” explains Bertil, an emeritus professor in the UW Department of Physiology and Biophysics. “This one is Grand Park. This is Fremont Lookout. And Coldwater Lake. Alta Vista. Cowlitz Divide. Sunrise Rim. Summerland.”
This litany of alpine ascents would test the quads of the sturdiest young body. The Hilles are in their mid-80s.
“Our son and his wife were visiting,” explains Merrill, a professor emerita of zoology at the UW. “So, it’s a bit full.”
She’s speaking of this past July’s schedule, of course. But she might as well be describing the life that she and Bertil have made together: full.
While remaining intellectually active after long and distinguished careers devoted to research, writing and teaching in the life sciences, Merrill and Bertil have continued to feed a lifelong wanderlust in retirement. Amplified it, really.
They train diligently for the hiking and snowshoeing adventures across the Pacific Northwest and around the world that pack their calendar. Recent travels have found them hiking across northern Norway, circumnavigating Mont Blanc, visiting Machu Picchu and trekking in the Italian Dolomites.
These trails they have traversed serve as a neat metaphor for their lives and careers, which have been, by turn, linear and meandering, straightforward and challenging, serving obstacles to negotiate and detours to explore. And though their trails diverge at times, they always come back together.
Read the full article on The Whole U website.