Getting High

I’m practicing my journalism skills by creating an eye catching and provocative headline that only loosely relates to the topic at hand. You like? I’ll bet it got Dad’s attention! Now on to Marc’s question…

I’ve always had a fascination with heights. My first recollections were that of buildings in cities. I’m still the guy that walks down a major city street looking up at the huge buildings. When I was in college I started becoming interested in hiking and rock climbing through a good friend Jamie Kurt. His head was firmly in the clouds, dreaming in college of and now actually living in Denver, the gateway to the most plentiful mountain region of the continental US. Through his friendship and my/our hiking adventures, my perspective began to change and I started to recognize nature and the beauty and tranquility of mountains.

I’ve matured significantly since my college days (in some ways) and that maturity has, among other things, calmed my mind enormously. The mind of most 20-somethings is wild and chaotic, and mine was on cognitive red bull. I’ve learned calm my gray matter a bit, and sustain the mental focus that allows me to appreciate experiences more. This includes allowing myself to be humbled by the beauty of nature. My experiences along this path have been “escalating”: initially through my college adventure experiences, more recently doing significant research and reading about expeditions in faraway places, and now planning some larger scale adventures myself. It is not unlike a quote on a different topic by Michael Hyatt: “You are not as smart as you think you are, but you have more potential than you can possibly imagine; and the secret from one to the other is humility, if you'll be humble and learn, you'll get there and make a big dent." My own maturity and humility at the prospect of nature’s marvels has allowed me to truly appreciate their grandeur. What a better place to realize one’s enormous and God-given physical potential than through the exploration of our world!

So, in a time when humanity is advancing on and destroying the precious few unspoiled natural landscapes of our world, the mountains to me seem one of the few final frontiers where a true connection to a natural and untamed landscape can be made. One of the few places where our mind and our body can connect with a “field of play” this is at once harsh, trying, but above all fair. There are rules, and although we may not always understand them, they don’t change. And don’t I owe it to myself and my Maker to find my outer limit?

This post is reading like an Ed on an airplane at 37,000 feet, but I will close with two quotes from a wonderful book by explorer Mark Jenkins:

• Real alpinists know how to turn off their head. From years of experience they realize that half the time the body knows better than the know-it-all-mind. The mind is too fickle. Optimistic one minute, pessimistic the next, pitching back and forth like a rowboat on big seas. Not the body. The body doesn’t exaggerate or self-deprecate or play mind games. The body is a machine, a realist. If it’s hard and painful, well then it’s hard and painful. If it’s a cruise, then it’s a cruise. The body doesn’t make mountains into anything. The body is an animal. It moves and lives, only in the present.

• Adventure is no longer simply about exploitation or education; it’s about the quest for understanding. You don’t need a mountain or a river or a jungle – you need only an open mind. Your goal does not have to be a first; it only need be something that takes you to a new place and challenges you physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.

Let the heckling begin!