I didn’t know what to expect.
Or what I would find.
Or what I would do.
I knew only one thing.
The Bugaboos are Rad.
More Rad than me.
And in two months,
I was going to scare myself silly.
Wear myself thin.
Dig down deep.
Reach for the heights.
As I ask the mountains,
to show me the way.
It’s not easy to turn back the time.
It’s not even easy to slow down enough to find a sense of that lost peace.
So I’ve approached the mountain,
slowly and carefully.
I’ve asked her for her real name.
I’ve asked her to show me the way.
The way through,
to another place.
A place of peace.
A place without time,
or a place that hasn’t forgotten its memories.
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| photo courtesy of Steven Gnam |
My life is one that has been marked by mountains. This is were I live and it is where I thrive.
“Some things are meant to be secrets”
she whispered to me from behind the clouds.
“On clear and calm days, everyone is welcome to tread here upon my breast, but it is only on those brutal windy and frigid cold days that I reveal my secrets, and only to the kind hearted and peaceful warriors that endure and enjoy the test of my moods.”
As a climber we all know those days that test a person’s metal.
The days when the mountains are doing everything they can from letting the world destroy it’s self, and you.
The difference here, and the forgotten memories that have been all but erased from the minds of men, is the mountains are our mother and the giver of life.
It’s not the mountain that is trying to destroy us.
It’s not the mountains that we are doing battle with.
And it is not the mountain the we are attempting to conquer.
It is only ourselves that are trying to destroy us.
Our own egos.
Silly in its attempts to be greater than the world,
and separate it’s self from the breast of our mother.
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| The Misty Mountain, and the frozen labyrinth of time. |
Ancient cultures knew all about this. They new thousands of years ago that the mountains are these perfect beings of impeccable strength that hold this world together.
These primitive peoples knew that it was the mountains that protected them from the sky crashing down upon them. It’s the mounains that hold the tides in check as they are the backbone of the their Mother Earth.
It is the mountains that turn chaos into order,
and piles of rock, into a perfect summit pyramid.
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| Christopher on the summit of Crescent Tower after soloing the Ears Between Route photo courtesy of Steven Gnam |
