The Song of the Mountain
The mountains have always been poetically alluring to me. They have a very special call; not one that speaks to the ears, but one that sings to the soul and dances with the spirit from within. The romanticism of the mountains and their great glories pulls me in and away from the rest of the world. Whatever sorrows or pain life calls upon me to feel, they dissolve in the air of the pines. My thoughts become still in their stillness, and my heart is calm, even when stretched beyond what I know is safe and familiar. But that’s what mountains do: they challenge us. They give us opportunities to become more than we were before. They do not care about our human trivialities, nor pay any mind to the affairs of our human world. Their song penetrates much deeper than this. The mountains are as the mountains are, and while they do not ask that we dispel them all our sins, they gladly receive them, and help us learn about ourselves by bringing us as intimately close as possible to the core of our beings. On the mountain, as in life, it is our thoughts and our choices that bring us either success or failure.
When I was first asked to climb Denali this summer, I immediately thought it was the craziest thing anyone had ever asked me to do.
I also immediately said yes.
That was in October. I was stoked. I formed a detailed, day-by-day physical training calendar, and started researching with books, films, internet forums, and, of course, YouTube.
Then November came, and I lost one of the most important people in my life.
Grief is a heavy shadow to lay with, and while it lingers to this day and will in every day forevermore, it does become easier to see the light in the love that I was so blessed to have and know. While I desperately wish I could hear Syd’s laugh again or feel her strong embrace, I have felt her with me in every moment. She tells me to keep going, so I do. She tells me not to give up, so I don’t. Training for this climb while dealing with months of depression, stomaching little throughout the weeks and trying to keep full-time school and the work that provides my income all in a straight line, all I could do was my best with the day given to me. Sometimes my best got me to the top of a peak on a long training day, and sometimes my best merely got me out of bed. I tried not to put any pressure on myself. If I couldn’t do the climb, if I never had that moment where I really thought it was going to happen and I was going to manage all that it asked me to, then I wouldn’t do it. Simple as that. “I can’t” ran through my mind an uncountable number of times during those winter months. Not to mention I hadn’t been able to train with the guys yet, I didn’t know them, and I didn’t know enough of my own capabilities to be comfortable. Sure, I’d done some stuff in the Army (said like an old lady vet), but nothing — nothing — like climbing a twenty thousand foot mountain.
Still, I bit my tongue. I never said the words out loud. I carefully expressed my hesitations to my team leader a couple of times at the beginning of the year, but he had a great way of talking me back from the ledge and resetting my perspective to see the journey as achievable. I held onto that, and, of course, when I saw the initial wave of gracious donations from our sponsors, including new skis and boots, full layering systems and a number of other things that added up to what a real professional athlete might receive for her endeavors, I knew I was in it.
By February, I finally started to get some good training in with the guys. I still haven’t quite grasped how it is that I came to attempt a climb up North America’s tallest peak with a team of Special Forces Green Berets, but there I was and here I am, like I had been for years before, training alongside these Special Operations mountaineering instructors like it was any old thing I might do.
The mountains were a great distraction from my grief, and all the existential processing I was wading through. I learned a lot, revisited and re-honed many of the skills I had once learned, and got into some of the toughest terrain I’d ever faced on my skis. I had challenging days. Days that pushed me beyond my comfort zone and forced me to confront my fears. Days that made me question my abilities, and doubt what I could truly handle. Mountaineering can put you in positions where the only choice you have is to look fear right in its eyes; where the only choice you have is to authentically confront your deepest self, and grow from that place. I’ve learned that respecting the demands of the mountain teaches you how to respect the connection you have to it. If one approaches things with timidity, the process is shaky and the outcome insecure. If one approaches things with mindful confidence and trust in oneself and one’s team, the process is firmly rooted and the outcome is secure. Of course, one is always gambling with mountain ventures, for there are many variables both seen and unseen that are at play. It is for this reason also that we lay our respect at the mountains’ feet, and approach them with honest modesty and humble wisdom. When we do this, no matter how many tumbles we may take, we strengthen the foundation on which we and our endeavors take root. Every day spent doing my best, whatever my best looked like, was a day making my best better.
Now, June patiently awaits just around the corner, Alaska is on today’s horizon, and all those days spent questioning, struggling, feeling great and feeling terrible have added up to these finals moments. I’ve fought my way up and down mountains for the last several months, learned and relearned all my knots and pulley systems, read books and listened to podcasts all in an effort to be as prepared for this journey as possible. Because of life’s recent circumstances, I’m not the strongest or fastest I’ve ever been, nor am I the most experienced that I could be. But I do know that my love for the mountains, my burning to answer their call and to feel their voice in my heart beckons me forward into the great unknown. I know too that these next few weeks will test me in ways I’ve never been tested, and show me things about myself I have yet to learn. I am nervous, and fear lurks quietly in the background of the things I do not and cannot know.
But I am ready to give this thing my damned best shot, because it’s the only thing left to do.
Recently, I went out to do some rock climbing with one of my teammates. The air was cool but the rock was warm under the midday sun. I stood on a rocky outcrop some hundred feet above the snaking river on the canyon floor below, safely tied to an anchor bolted into the route while waiting for the next move. There were only the sounds of the birds and the occasional clink! of metal climbing gear as I leaned back in my harness and watched nature simply be itself. I looked at the rocks we had scaled, and the rocks left to negotiate until our climb reached its end. I observed the various crags and crannies, the oddly balanced boulders and the fragmented crumbs of rock filling in space wherever they could. I thought about the might of the rocks as a whole, then each of the pieces, large and small, that came together in such a way to create the whole as it is.
And then I thought, people are kind of like this, too.
We’re all made up of broken pieces that come together in such a way to create the being we call “me”. The mountains do not look at the broken parts of themselves and think any differently about what they are. The mountains are mighty and sturdy in their great heights, not in spite of their broken parts, but because of them. Our broken pieces make us who we are. It is how we navigate our brokenness and what we do with it that makes us better or worse. Becoming a skilled climber or mountaineer requires that we push ourselves beyond what we know. Becoming skilled in life requires the same.
The mountains teach us that it’s our choices which guide us toward success or failure. Negotiating the terrain appropriately is necessary for safe and successful passage. The mountains themselves do us no harm. It’s our decisions within them that does. Similarly, it is the decisions we make with our broken parts that either do us good or bring us harm. More often than not, these consequences extend to the world beyond. When we operate from the place of our broken parts, we operate in chaos, hurt, distrust, insecurity, deception, and pain. When we can look at our broken parts and see how and where they affect our lives, and make the decision to learn from them rather than run from them, we help ourselves heal. When we heal, we find much sturdier footing on our path, and the journey itself is imbued with deeper grace and wisdom.
However you’re getting up a mountain, whether by rope or skis or good ol’ boots on the ground, it’s one step at a time. When we do this calmly, from a place of trust, respect, humility, and self-awareness, the journey flows gently from one step to the next. Control over our thoughts in moments of adversity, danger, and fear keeps us grounded in the present moment. The art of walking up a mountain is just as much an external journey with the earth as it is an internal journey of the self. Life is the same. Nobody comes into this world nor leaves it unscathed. To live is to know pain, because how could it be any other way? If we did not know the valleys we could not know the mountains, and how tragic an existence that would be, indeed!
I’ve thought about what I would write if it was the last thing I ever did (no bad vibes, I’m just saying!!!), and it would be this: Realize that the whole of the world, and every person within it, is made of their own broken parts. They are neither more nor bigger nor less relevant than yours; they are only different. We are all climbing the same mountain we call Life, and each of our journeys are intertwined with every other. While the journey itself is an individual one, it is made possible, and made better or worse, by others on theirs. In order for everyone’s journey to be made easier, we must honor our relationship to ourselves, the mountain, and every other climber we climb with. I suppose it’s easy to overlook, in our world of “us” and “them”, that humankind is, at its core, one team. But if we never learn to see our oneness with all things in the cosmos, from the tiniest pebbles to our fellow man to the mountains we all trek, then we will never reach the summit. On this mountain, there is always a next step until it is time to leave it all behind. The next step is the coming moment, and how we navigate it is how we navigate the mountain. By grounding our footing in peace, compassion, empathy, kindness, and love, we carve a quicker, easier path to the summit, where peace and freedom for all beings exist. It is when humankind finally learns that the route is quicker and the load lighter when we help rather than impede others on their journeys that we will enter the True Kingdom of Heaven.
Thinking about all the preparation, physical, mental and emotional, that has led to this point burns at my core like steady embers ready to hold a flame. I am open to what the Great One has to teach me, and the unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime experiences that await. No matter what the outcome is, I will walk away from this mountain knowing I did my absolute best.
Our best is all we can ever give, and all that the mountain ever asks of us.
When we each do our best, every day, the world becomes its best. Find your footing, help others find theirs, and see that the summit of glory is entirely within our reach.
Here’s to the next great adventure.
