Mountain Wisdom
It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.
Sir Edmund Hillary
You are not in the mountains. The mountains are in you.
John Muir
Nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain.
Aristotle
The main photo today on social media and on the blog itself is entitled “Mountain Wisdom”. It’s a beautiful mountain lake that I hiked to on one of my first solo camp trips with my pup. Because I am an organizer/trip planner, I had each hike and day carefully planned out. Since this was the hardest hike, involving a 14 mile round trip from 9000 foot elevation to 11000 foot elevation, I planned on doing the hike the first day so that I was fresh from not hiking any other trails. Sounds like a great plan? Yes?
That first night, though, I hardly slept a wink (a story for another blog) and I rolled out of my sleeping bag already tired and out of sorts. Still, determined to “follow the plan”, I set out to go do this hike. You are probably already imagining how things went. The first part of the hike was tough, but okay. I was tired, but elated to reach a favorite lake. Since there was still a long way to go, I didn’t spend much time enjoying that special lake, but pushed onward. As I continued onward, clouds began to close in and the sky became mostly a dull grey…totally reflected my mood. My pup and I had a final tough water crossing to arrive at the destination totally exhausted and disgruntled because it was cloudy and windy and we had a long hike back too. What should have been a challenging but awesome hike became a “one foot in front of another” trudge back to the car.
The photo is called “Mountain Wisdom” as that hike was such an important lesson that we need to hold plans loosely and be flexible. Had I done something short and easy that day, no doubt things would have turned out quite differently. But in my determination to stay the course, even without a compelling reason to do so, I allowed my stubbornness to create a memorable hike, but not in a good way.
Do you ever find yourself doggedly moving forward despite signs that it’s not a good idea to do so? Holding tightly to “the plan” when “plan B” might be called for? As you move forward with the original plan, things don’t go so well…. Don’t beat yourself up over it, but learn from the experience. Gain “mountain wisdom” from whatever your circumstance involved and do things differently next time.
On that camp trip where I gained mountain wisdom, I DID change plans for the next day. Since that camp trip, I now go camping with a loosely planned out schedule with potential options in case of tiredness, weather issue, or other unanticipated challenges. Even though that hike was very hard, I DO hope to try it again this summer to create good memories! The operative word is try…as this time, I’ll be flexible with my hiking plans!