Originally written Jan. 2019
Mountains. Why climb them? Why make the preparations, travel the distance to the base, regard the climb, and then commit to the journey to the summit? Why indeed, when that only marks the halfway point?
There are untold and uncountable lessons to be drawn from climbing mountains, more than I could ever find or put into words. There are endless experiences, too many analogies to name. I have only scratched the surface of the lessons I personally have drawn from my time on mountains, and that time itself is severely limited. Instead of trying to walk my way through those lessons, many of which I am still walking with and learning the implications of, I wanted to take the time to ask the question which more or less forms the foundation of it all: why do I climb mountains? What are my actual, honest motivations for going out and climbing a mountain with the goal of reaching the summit? What brings me to the base of the mountain, what keeps me climbing when I feel like quitting, and what brings me back to the mountains?
Honestly, ego plays a more significant role than I would like to admit. I have even had people tell me (funny how other people like to tell me about my own motivation), “You know it’s all about your ego, right?”, when referring to my decision to continue climbing mountains. But it does play a part, and I will continue to wrestle with that. There is a part of me that searches for recognition and admiration from my peers. It sees achievement as one way to get that, and to find some worth or value in that. There is the part of my ego that is constantly driving to outdo itself, to continue to strive. I hold pride in my pursuit to be “better than” a former version of myself, and it is often too easy to let that mentality pull me into a test or physical effort.
More so than wanting to satisfy my ego, and one of the reasons I keep returning to the mountains, is because I am searching for something that only the mountains can offer. Or at least something that is easiest to achieve through an experience in the mountains. Sometimes I am searching for a change in perspective. One of the best ways for me to change my view of something is to physically put myself in a different and challenging environment. Sometimes I am looking for a fresh start, or even something as simple as an escape from whatever situation I find myself in. And other times I search for an answer to the important questions I cannot seem to find answers to.
And yet, I think that the true and most honest reason I look at a mountain and climb to the top is because I am seeking hardship. The mountain offers uncomfortability in a way nothing else in my life does. It brings to me the suffering of a prolonged effort that serves as the knife to scrape away the layers and masks I wear and walls I put up, and allows me to see myself. It provides a primal encounter with who and what I am when everything superficial is stripped away.
A friend of mine whom I consider a mentor spoke recently on community and solitude at church. She described solitude as a furnace in which the masks we wear in our everyday lives are set afire. The furnace burns away the false faces we wear, and allows us to feel compassion for others. Through that, she said, solitude then drives us back into community. We need solitude, then, as it serves to bring us back into community both with others and with ourselves.
It had never been described to me that way, yet as she spoke the words, it almost seemed like she was speaking the words my soul yearned to express. The moments of retreat and solitude, the ones that break down the walls and tear off the masks, were grounded in that desire to return back to community. That deep desire to have any false faces, all my armor and walls broken down and pulled away, so that I could show up in community, to be fully present with those around me and with myself.
Coming down from the mountains is a fascinating experience, both in observing it in others and in myself. I’ve started climbs with a variety of emotions and physical states. I’ve been eager, exhausted, anxious, angry, confused, and a thousand other states of being. I’ve been the one craving the climb, I’ve also been the last minute addition to the group. I’ve been the rookie, and I’ve been the one trusted to take the end of the line. In every experience, coming back down is when the lessons sink in. The ascent has a goal. The summit. Reaching the highest point, rewarding you with the views, the emotional and physical high. The descent is just a necessity. You drive on because of the need to simply get down. The only reward is the chance to go home and rest. The descent is often the more dangerous, and I find it is when I grow quiet. Everything else gets louder. And that’s when the lessons of the ascent find their purchase.
I like to keep the sometimes overused, but still apt, mantra of “if it isn’t challenging you, it isn’t changing you” in mind through almost every aspect of my life. If my creativity isn’t being challenged, it grows stagnant and quickly gets discarded. If my faith isn’t being explored and challenged (usually by others as it’s hard to challenge your own deeply held beliefs), I find myself growing complacent and “stuck.” And often feeling fine with staying stuck. If my body falls into sedentary patterns, craving ease and comfort, it falls to atrophy as the aches and pains tend to be more enduring. Maintaining is not good enough for my physicality, my body craves being pushed and challenged, to strive beyond basic function. My mind rebels against and craves at the same time safety and leisure. It wants to peel away the scarred walls I have erected over years, but it also hates that idea, not wanting to see what I have hidden away for so long. The mountain is the arena in which I let go of the control I so strongly desire to exercise over my life, and face a challenge totally indifferent to my very existence with all that I am.
Challenge is something I love and hate, as there are parts of myself that I love and hate. But the thing I find more and more as I push myself (sometimes unwillingly) into challenge, the more I crave it. Like an addict returning to a fix, I see a little more of what could be, and a little more of what I was. That combination of never wanting to return to a place where I was, whether physically, mentally, emotionally; and never wanting to settle for less than my best, is the best reason why I climb. After setting that first step on the mountain, I am no longer the same. And I am the one, to a certain extent, that decides how and when I step back off the mountain. Do I persevere through the challenge and discomfort to reach the summit, which may or may not hold something that I am seeking? Will I fall short of my goal, and have to face the ramifications of seeming “failing” in my task? Will there be an answer to the questions I’m asking, or will the answer be to a question I haven’t even considered yet? No matter what, I always returned changed. That is the beauty of the mountains.
The Writer in White 