When he wasn't whistling or telling tall tales, John Maeda was singing.

"You Are My Sunshine," "Old McDonald Had a Farm" or Bob Marley's reggae anthem, "Redemption Song." My favorite number, given the situation at hand, was John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads."

After more than 12 years of leading hiking groups up Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro, Maeda understood, more than many, that a successful trip to the summit was all about pacing and rhythm. So he sang to the literal mountaintops in his buoyant, Swahili accent.

"What teacher would want his students to fail, hey?" he said matter-of-factly.

As we plodded through the rain forest where the blue monkeys played, and farther into the misty heath forest and moorlands beyond, other hikers would pass us. Maeda would shrug.

"What's the rush to get to some tent? Enjoy the mountain," he said. "Polepole."

Invoking the Swahili word used liberally on Mount Kilimanjaro, Maeda made sure we would go slowly.

We ate our first meal under a canopy of trees in a clearing beside the trail. The crew had draped a red-and-blue checkered Maasai cloth over a fold-up table, one of many creature comforts they would provide. Pineapple juice, yogurt, sliced oranges and a stack of white bread awaited us, while soup was warming over the fire.

"The secret to making it to the summit," Maeda said, "is to eat well, dress warm, drink enough -- and listen to your guide."

Later, as we tromped up the red clay path, I sent out a silent thank-you that it wasn't raining, as it so often does in the lowland forests.

I tried to pick up small pieces of trash that had been left behind, until Aristedes Mality, our assistant guide, suggested I save my energy for more important things.

We passed a wooden sign that warned: "Avoid wildfires. Do not throw burning cigarette butts."

And here I had been worried about whether my healthy lungs would still be working two days hence.

•••

Mount Kilimanjaro's reputation as "Everyman's Everest" had brought me, along with a yearly average of 25,000 others, to its slopes. The giant juts 19,340 feet out of the flat Maasai Steppes in northeastern Tanzania, making it the tallest point on the African continent and the so-called "rooftop of Africa."

There are at least six routes up. I chose the Machame route, the second most popular, because it was said to be the most scenic. It also offered an extra day to acclimate.

I was to climb with a group of seven. A last-minute family emergency kept the bulk of our group from traveling, which meant that I ventured beyond the clouds with just one other paying hiker: Howard Morris, a 53-year-old librarian from St. Paul. We had plenty of help.

For seven days and six nights, Morris and I moved up the mountain with a mobile village of about 15 Tanzanians, who cooked nutritious meals, boiled water for us to drink, and hauled our clothes and camping gear (plus their own) on their backs and heads up the rocky slopes. We carried nothing more than a daypack with water, snacks, camera gear and extra clothing.

I first thought of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro 14 years earlier while working on a story in the highlands of Cameroon, my first trip to Africa. I had never shaken the urge. At 47, my knees weren't getting any stronger. I wanted the physical challenge and liked the idea of experiencing this magnificent mountain up close.

And experience it, I did.

Early on, Maeda kept us to the gait of a parent holding a toddler's hand. Morris and I overrode the impulse to rev it up and fell into the groove.

We hiked up, up, up. For six or seven hours a day, breaking midday for what always felt like a gourmet lunch.

That pace carried us from the well-marked path at the trailhead and far above the tree line, where we hunched into our windbreakers and stood amazed as equatorial sunsets turned to pitch black in an instant.

One day as we approached the campsite, Mality pointed across a ravine to a trail that doglegged over a distant ridge.

"Tomorrow," he said, with a knowing smile.

I found a new way to be grateful for the decades I had spent staring at the bottom of the pool as a competitive swimmer: stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe. Kilimanjaro is a mind game.

I started singing.

•••

"How do you like my office?" Maeda asked us at least once every day. He opened his arms wide, his voice and body expanding with pride. Kilimanjaro means more to him than a workplace.

Like many who work on the mountain, Maeda is a member of the Chagga tribe. The Chagga are one of Tanzania's largest ethnic groups, and have lived and farmed around the base of Mount Kilimanjaro for centuries.

Maeda made his first trip up Kilimanjaro when he was 18. Now in his early 30s, he has worked his way up from bag carrier to a higher-paid position as guide by improving his English, getting certified in first aid, and proving that he understands the dangers and thrills of the mountain.

Since his first ascent, he has watched with concern as Kilimanjaro's glaciers shrink. He worries how that will affect the livelihood of his people, who use the runoff from snow to help irrigate their crops.

"Ten years ago, we were camping on top of snow," he said. "Right now, we are on bare sand."

Whether by forest reduction or global warming, Kilimanjaro's peaks have lost 82 percent of their ice since 1912, when they were first measured, and have seen rapid melting in the past decade. If current climate conditions continue, the glaciers that have been around for nearly 12,000 years could be gone by 2022.

•••

The circuitous Machame route gave us views of the three extinct volcanic peaks that make up Mount Kilimanjaro. Kibo is the highest, and the one we summitted on our way to our ultimate goal, the famed Uhuru Peak. Mawenzi (16,898 feet) and Shira (13,000 feet) loomed in the distance. Round trip, we covered about 37 miles. That's five days up (polepole) -- and a mere 10 hours down.

I had never done more than a simple day hike in Colorado and Montana, and didn't know how I'd react to the altitude. Headaches, nausea and loss of appetite are common. All climbers are made aware of the risk of acute mountain sickness and even death.

Out of curiosity -- and for a talisman of sorts -- I packed an oximeter that had belonged to a late friend. The gadget uses a finger pulse to measure the amount of oxygen saturation in the blood.

At sea level, I clocked in at a healthy 99 percent. At the end of day two, when we pitched tents at 12,480 feet, I clamped the device on my index finger: 87 percent. Many insurance companies pay for supplemental oxygen at 88 percent saturation.

But with Maeda's sing-song pace, plenty of liquids and my own genetic good luck (aided by Diamox tablets, a drug that allows more oxygen to enter the bloodstream), I wouldn't feel any strong symptoms of altitude until summit night.

With a near-full moon lighting our way, we set out at midnight for Uhuru Peak. Maeda had asked Christopher Ngarabani, a tall and mirthful porter, to join him and Mality. Ngarabani was the strongest of the crew, and could provide extra muscle if an emergency arose.

We scrambled over some large flat rocks a half-hour outside of camp, and I was drained. With at least six hours to go, I let go of every morsel of my competitive spirit. This was not a race. I would slow down until I caught my breath, even if I arrived at Uhuru Peak summit at noon.

The ensuing hours and details are lost. I was woozy from the altitude, and a steep stretch through some dark, loose scree about did me in -- again.

Someone said "Break" and I collapsed, cold and exhausted, onto the mountainside. Ngarabani grabbed an arm and hustled me up another 20 feet to a landing where Maeda, Mality and Morris were waiting.

"Welcome to Stella Point!" Maeda said, and I knew the hardest part was behind us.

Though it's 45 minutes from the summit, Stella Point represents a mental and physical milestone. Climbers who make it this far still receive a certificate. But the trek to the coveted summit marker on Uhuru Peak would be on sturdier ground.

To my oxygen-starved brain, Stella Point looked like a spaceship. The glaciers glowed blue in the darkness.

The trio broke into "How Great Thou Art" in Swahili. They pumped me full of water, shortbread cookies and packets of syrupy goo. It gave me the juice I needed to complete the ascent, just as dawn broke.

Earlier in the trip, after a particularly punishing day fighting straight-line winds across a barren lava field, Maeda had told us a story about how the Chagga had come to name Kibo, Kilimanjaro's defining peak.

"They believed God always lived on the mountain," he said. "They would wake up in the morning and speak to the mountain and say what they are wishing.

"Because of bad weather, they couldn't see the mountain sometimes," he continued. "But when they wake up and see the sun shining and the peak of the mountain, they say, 'Wow!'"

In Chagga, Maeda said, "kibo" means "wow."

Whether the story is historically accurate is unclear. But along with the Swahili I was trying to learn on my trip, I found "kibo" to be a fitting tribute to the many glories of the mountain -- from the giant lobelia plants that looked like trees out of a Dr. Seuss book to the Great Barranco Wall that had been carved by glaciers thousands of years ago.

At the summit, we milled about in the festival-like scene for perhaps 20 minutes. We took pictures, looked across at the vast glaciers on the southern icefields, and believed we could see the curvature of the Earth.

As we began to head down, I remembered the oximeter in my pocket. I snapped it on my finger: 71 percent.

Maeda stuck his out: 81.

"Kibo," I said.

And just like that, the battery died.

Jackie Crosby • 612-673-7335