The Mountain I Didn't Summit
You can't always get what you want...
I attempted the Emmons Route on Mt. Rainier in a pair of plastic mountaineering boots I borrowed. They were too big.
I thought extra socks would do the trick, but every step I took they knocked back on my leg, and after two days of kicking my steps into crusty snow, my nerves revolted and the pain in my shins was just too much.
By the time we were making our headlamp lit summit ascent, I was in so much pain and moving so slowly I had to admit I was going to keep my friends from traveling fast enough to summit. I untied from our rope, anchored into the ledge, and crawled into my sleeping bag to stay warm until morning. As their footsteps faded into silence, I cried bitter tears. I was livid with my body for letting me down. I was aggrieved and ashamed. I’d worked so hard to get there. Why couldn't I have this? Why couldn't I just be tough enough?
There was a cloud socking the mountain in, so I couldn't see anything. I was 12,000 feet up the 14,400 mountain originally known as Tahoma, high above the treeline, surrounded by ice and only ice. Nothing moving. Nothing living. A hazy absence of light. The only sound was my breathing and the yammering belittlement from the voices in my head. I don’t know how long I sat there in the darkness, maybe an hour, maybe two. Eventually my brain got sick of beating me up and focused on how cold we were. I did sit-ups to generate heat. When I was warm enough and bored enough, I dozed off.
It's a disorienting thing to wake up tied to a glacier on a volcano by yourself in the middle of the night. It’s like dreaming and waking trade places. The cloud had risen, and I opened my eyes to stars beyond stars beyond stars. I now think the stars only really show themselves to the creatures that get themselves above the treeline. A shimmering intergalactic symphony of silence. A silence so deep, its like your eyes become ears, and you learn how to listen.
It was just me, the stars, and the mountain. I came to climb the mountain, not be on the mountain. I came because I wanted to BE something. I wanted to be someone who had climbed this mountain. It had more to do with me than the mountain, but sitting there in the quiet, looking out at those stars, I got a chance to just BE with that mountain. All my internal voices, the shaming and the wishing, They were like kids in a church pew at a candlelit mass. They wiggled and kicked, but even they were too awestruck to try to speak. I learned that while you can see, and taste and smell and even hear while you are moving and doing, you actually have to stop to listen. When dawn began to illume the eastern horizon, I cried again, because tears were the only reasonable way to articulate how alive I felt.
If I’d gone on to the summit it would’ve been great. The internal fountain of “I did it” would have lasted for weeks. The actual peak experience- we would have stopped up on top for maybe 15 minutes, we'd have given each other hugs and high fives and I would have seen the rainbows that that the summit makes above its shadow as the sun comes up. Then we’d be trying to get down as fast as we could before the glacier started shedding. I'd have passed that ledge again at about 9 am, which is when the footsteps and conversations of my team of friends descending started to reach me. I wouldn't have noticed it. I would have remembered the peak. I would have been proud of myself. The mountain would have just been the path up and down.
I've been at the top of a mountain lots of times. There’s nothing like 360°, but there are only so many high highs in a lifetime. We spend a whole lot more time on the sides of our mountains. We spend a whole lot more time in the practice room than on stage. The ledge we rest on isn’t just a part of a path up or down. It has its own place in the silence.
I hope to stand on many more stages. I hope to have those moments of transcendence where all the preparation is just a jumping off point, and I hope it for you too. I hope you get the gig. I hope you get the grant. But when you don’t, I hope you can still see the stars from your practice.