There’s a mountain called Sopris and it kicked my ass.
Trailhead: 8,300 feet and 5.5 miles later at 11,500 – 1,000 feet short of the summit – he called it. We’re done. The last quarter of a mile had taken us nearly 30 minutes to traverse and we (mainly me) were about done in. Plus it was nearing 1:30 p.m. and most everyone stays off the mountian after noon in preparation for the afternoon thunderstorms.
And I’d gotten moderately whiny.
“This is the point when I start questioning my life choices,” I said. And I’d started playing out-loud mind games, which were interfering with his.
“It’s so vertical right now that it’s level ground,” I said.
“Stop. That doesn’t even make sense. Plus I’m telling myself we’re climbing. This isn’t level.”
And he was right.
We were climbing a fucking mountain, vertically, and it was not fucking level. We had left the forest that embraces the base of Mt. Sopris and maybe that should’ve been a clue – when the trees give up growing on the mountain, maybe we should stop climbing. But we didn’t stop. We pressed onward past the tree line and up a vertical rock path that I, in my oxygen-deprived delirium, felt that if I stood up too straightly, I would fall tumbling backwards.
It’s not like the previous 5 miles had been a walk in the park. Quite the contrary. There were switchbacks and long stretches of highness.
“Do you remember this part on the way up?” I asked, on our way down.
“What about it?”
“It was fucking long and steep.”
Oh that. Yeah.
I started out very eager to summit Mt. Sopris. There are actually two summits – a western and an eastern one. According to websites, you can do both in one day. I, naively, thought that applied to me. How quaint. Didn’t even make one, which is fine – totally fine – because you reach that point when a few things could happen: you vomit, you fall asleep on the trail, you have no idea how your legs or arms or lungs or mind can get you up that last 1,000 feet.
I really had no clue how I could take another step up that mountain. All the cute things you tell yourself – one step at a time, one foot in front of the other, we’re almost there – cease being cute and the rubber meets non-existent road.
I’d scraped together all the will power I had to summit at 11,500 and I was finished. Well, not finished. We still had 5.5 miles to go. Down.
But first, I built our own summit monument, we ate a banana and some trail mix and we began climbing down. And me with an apparent bum knee (torn miniscus?), which adds nothing to the story other than my knee hurt like a mother-effer and now I wanted to vomit and at times cry from the pain.
We were about a half mile down the mountain and we ran into two hikers who we’d seen at the trailhead. They were still chipper.
“Are you having fun?”
And without thinking, I replied: “No. I mean, let’s be honest. THAT was not fun.”
It’s that same initial reaction after every major exertion – let’s never do that again, OK? But then 24 hours later, after my muscles aren’t sore to the touch and I can walk on one leg without dragging a knee and my other hip isn’t begging for mercy, I’m ready to do it again.
There’s something about being stripped entirely of your mental resolve and pushed to your maximum physical breaking point in the great Colorado wilderness that beckons you. Part of it is an underlying desire to fuck with you, but still, it beckons.
It’s impossible to describe to you the scenes that unfolded below us and above us as we climbed. Mountain streams that we dipped our hands into, numbed by the chill of the water. Or the crystal-clear lakes we passed and the one we ran into naked. The mountain meadows and the floral bouquets that unfurled around us. The peaks we reached and the pictures below us, making us feel as though we were two characters in nature’s most vibrant painting. The greens of the trees – so many shades – backdropped against a blue sky dashed with white clouds, later to turn black on the mountain. The trees that looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book and the ones so smooth we ran our hands up and down them without fear of splinters. And the ones fallen that we brushed with our palms gently as we walked by as if to pay homage to the fallen great.
What they don’t tell you about these scenes is how you feel when you’re looking at them.
Me – lungs heaving, muscles everywhere burning. It takes an awareness to stop despite all the physical discomfort and acknowledge: this is where I am, the ultimate sanctuary, and to let my mind focus on breathing in the beauty so as not to forget it, even though just minutes earlier I was cursing the very thing I never want to forget.
Some say cursing is the sign of a weak mind. I don’t know. I think maybe it’s a sign that you’re climbing a really high mountain and no other word will encapsulate all the emotions – good and bad – that you’re feeling.
We would sometimes speak in one-word sentences.
“Fuck.” And usually with an air of “You have got to be shitting me” while looking up at the next incline. And they were never gradual ones.
I started cursing in sentences that didn’t make sense. At mile 5.3 I think I called the mountain an ever-loving shithole. And I apologized as soon as the delirious words left my mouth. You are not a shithole. But, my god, you are winning this battle of wills. That’s what I meant to say.
I left the mountain a wiser person, if for nothing more than granting it the reverence it majestically (and relentlessly) commands. Inbetween breathing and mobilizing my legs and dragging a knee, I tried to make big-life correlations between the mountain and life.
Walk slow when you have to, and move fast when you can.
Despite pain and thoughts of vomit, enjoy the moment.
Strip down and jump naked in that mountain lake – you never know when you’ll be back.
Smell the flowers, but don’t pick them. Leave them for the next person and if there is no next person, let them return to the earth as beautifully as they came.
Have the wisdom to know when you’ve given it more than enough and when it’s time to build your own monument. And knowing when putting yourself at risk for the narcissic value of saying “I reached the top” is not a good enough reason to keep going.
Respect the chipmunks who are moving fucking fast up the mountain. How, we don’t know.
Appreciate how far you’ve come “Look at what we just climbed!” but be careful looking too far ahead – your mind will want to quit.
Don’t talk too much on the journey. Be busy climbing and breathing that you have no oxygen to spare for mindless chatter. Be comfortable in the silence.
Hate it and love it. Curse it and applaud it.
Puke it you must, cry if you want to, but always – be brave.
You were made for this moment and this moment has been waiting for you for a long time.
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