Saturday, August 1, 2015

Summit Fever

I hiked my first Colorado 14ers the other day. I got up at 5:30 (and started hiking in my puffy coat because I was so cold) and walked my way up Mt. Bierstadt. It was beautiful. It was a big hill. I had been planning on continuing on to Mt. Evans, but having arrived at the top hungrier and more tired (oh right, it's called a 14er because it's over 14000 feet high...) than I expected, I was intimidated by the looks of the class III scramble ahead of me. And I was very intimidated by the prospect of continuing alone. But I was also very unwilling to turn around after only a few miles.

Then I met two lovely girls who adopted me and we proceeded to scramble down the peak, across the Sawtooth, and up a few sketchy looking ledges onto the slopes of Mt. Evans. And it was awesome! Everything that had looked hard from far away was easily navigable (of course, we had to regain 1000 feet from pass to summit). No big deal. In fact, the last few hundred feet to the summit, the steep gully down, and the swampy trek through bushes taller than our heads were a bigger deal. It was great. I had a lot of fun hiking with my new friends, and I was thrilled to have finally gotten not one, but two 14ers to my name. But I also learned something: there is no such thing as an easy 14er. Don't get me wrong, I'm lucky that I don't get headaches from altitude, and I love to hike so I moved fast and without stopping much (though I should've eaten more). But these are just big climbs at high altitudes.

So perhaps it was a funny moment to be reminded that I wanted to write an essay called "Why mountains are easy." But perhaps, if you'll bear with me, you might also agree that it was a fitting moment.

"But mountains are easy."

I was talking to a friend last winter, and she was recounting a hike she had gone on that weekend. She's tough - she's very athletic and she doesn't like to have anyone be better than her - but she had been hiking with two boys who were both tall, used to the cold and snow, and don't enjoy waiting around. She had shocked herself by considering turning back early. As a result, she was telling me that mountains are a good way to learn how tough you are. To differentiate between the weak and strong. The persistent and the exhausted. Not surprisingly, for our conversations, I disagreed.

Mountains are easy. You just put one foot in front of the other. You don't have to run, you don't have to maintain a conversation, you don't even have to make it to the top. It's just between you and the hill. Do you want a break? Catch your breath? Take a picture? The top won't get further away while you pause. Decided you've seen enough of the view and want to turn around? That's your choice. And it'll even be downhill on the way home (side note: I was so sad that the trailhead to Mt. Bierstadt starts going down so you have to finish by climbing back up to your car. It's just not fair).

You know what's hard? Running the last half mile of a race. Taking an exam when you have a fever. Paying attention in class when it's snowing outside. Researching something new when you don't know what you'll find, how long it'll take, or how many hundreds of new questions you'll open up along the way. Being there for a friend when they're having a hard time and you have no idea what to say. Asking for help. Telling someone you care about them.

What's hard are new things. Uncertain things. Things that make you vulnerable.

And maybe, for some people, that's a mountain. Maybe you're hiking with someone you want to impress. Maybe you haven't ever left the city before. Maybe you're trying to get up before sunset to take photos for an assignment with a deadline. Maybe it's the first hike after a knee surgery. Maybe it's your first 14er. Maybe you have summit fever.

Because for me, hiking mountains is easy. It's turning around that's hard. It's realizing that those dark clouds are stronger than I am. Or that the hike is longer than the daylight and I forgot a headlamp. Or that I promised my grandmother I'd be home for dinner. That something else matters more than the peaks that beg to be climbed.

Or that circumstances have changed. I worked trail crew for two summers. That's hard work. But you know what's harder? Remembering those summers while you wait for a friend to walk upstairs to borrow your keys because you were too weak to walk down four stories and drop them off.

But fundamentally, what's hard in these cases isn't the mountain. It's what we think the mountain represents. It's what we want to see in ourselves: athleticism, persistence, open-mindedness, responsibility. Success. And you know what's hard? Realizing that those qualities don't hinge on a single peak. Maybe my friend should've turned around on that hike, because if her friends told her she wasn't tough just because she decided that she'd had enough for one day when she was tired, then they weren't seeing the person who was making the footprints.

In fact, I would've been proud if her for turning around. Because you know what's hard? Deciding someone else's expectations don't matter as much as taking care of yourself.

Mountains are easy. You just put one foot in front of the other. Even on a steep hill, even at high altitude. Because you know what made that 14er hard? Getting to the top, and grinning, and realizing I had no one to laugh with me. And that I needed to ask someone for a favor if I didn't want to hike alone. And that talking with new people makes me nervous. And that my summit fever was not going to let me go back down the trail content with one peak while the sun was shining.

And you know what's funny? Sometimes the hard things are easier than you thought. Sometimes those new people are friendly and that scramble is easier than it looked and you wind up laughing at the top and grinning when you look at the pictures again later and wondering why any of it intimidated you. And then you look at a new peak, and realize how badly you want to climb it, and realize you have a new goal and you care about achieving it, and that there might be more than 1000 feet of elevation in your way. And you know what's hard? What makes you vulnerable? Caring.

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