I have been thinking about the mountain.
So many ways up it.
I walk my way. Some days I feel the sun on my back and the earth gives easily beneath my feet. Other days I meet loose stones that shift, and I grasp for balance.
Others may be climbing too, though up other paths. One might wind through pines and mist. Another may open onto a meadow.
Some paths are long. Others short, a straight cut upwards.
Even trail may hold within itself both mercy and trial.
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The mountain changes. We change.
Clouds gather and break. A hawk hovers in an updraft. I hear water somewhere below but cannot see it.
My throat grows harsh as I pant in the dry air. Crunching gravel underfoot keeps time with my heart.
At a turn, I find a bunch of wildflowers emerging from a crack in the rock, their roots deep where no one thought to look.
We pass through shadow and brightness, hunger and rest. We learn the shape and heft of our own endurance.
All on one mountain.
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It is the same mountain for us all. Some have reached the crest. Some have stopped halfway, content to rest and, maybe, look up.
Some have turned back to the valley.
Others have never begun.
The mountain looms, patient and unshaken.
We climb together, even apart.
– from the mountain
Consider:
Where am I on the mountain?
Reading:
“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”
— Sir Edmund Hillary
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“Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”
— Anatoli Boukreev
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“I lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
— Psalm 121:1
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