two 14er's and other "unrelated" stuff

Gear Up. Leave Fear. Climb.

Last year we climbed Grey's Peak, a Colorado 14er. I remember being weary and cursing many languages on the way up and fraught with doubt and shudders on the way down. Fearful musings of falling and tumbling like a weed only to crash into a rock filled my melon. Dramatic fantasies of death as a shadow following me down the steep. And really, what's the worst that would've happened within those tiny avalanches speaking under my feet? Falling down and spraining an ankle? Taking a trekking pole to the ribs? Cuts and scrapes? It is in these times I remember, I am entirely too dramatic and my brain takes pains in adding such sensationalism to that which is really quite okay.

This past Saturday, we climbed Mount Democrat. A much steeper Colorado 14er outside of Breckenridge. It was cold and the mini-avalanches were slippery slushy snow underfoot whilst traveling uphill. Coupled with a rather steep, rocky climb to the summon. "I'm not going any further." I said, knowing I would end up doing it. It's almost as if somehow the fear of falling added to the dramatization of the "great feat" ahead of me. I mean really, isn't it more fun to make something really big and accomplish it? I'm just saying.

I can't say I've ever been one to feel the need to prove anything in this particular way, physically, so why bother? I'm not really sure, I think it was just the right time. Like the way life sometimes feels so enormous that the smallest of accomplishments become their own reward. Or the way, as of late, it's seemed my insides have been on a slow and steady climb on their way to some proposed view at the faraway top. Simultaneous internal and external determination amidst aggrandized fear and it somehow makes sense.

At least to me.

And in between all of this, something once again occurred; tell stories, paint pictures, make music and be out there. The reason humans create, sometimes just inside the mind, but to put forth all the extra that mundane life has no time for...

Alarm Sounds
Wake Up
Take Shower
Make Coffee
Eat Breakfast
Dress
Drive
Work
Workout
Eat
Sleep
Repeat

But these insides? They are busy 'doing' other things. Like writing great works about bettering the world or at least relating to some random individual, and momentarily, we are connected. Or postulating on the state of world affairs and how to better them. Or mapping a way to financial freedom to have the time to find one's purpose and impact the greater good.

I don't know. Maybe this is just the way I think. All I know is, after climbing 2 mountains in under a year, I still came away with that which is otherwise intangible. The sullen stripping of ego and understanding of inherent dichotomy and mundane imprisonment. Is that weird?

And that's all I have to say right now.

some pregnant lady

I get that most people have more going on inside than meets the eye. But still, I tend to experience myself as being someone you'd truly never guess what's happening up there.

Image from here. Depiction of the High Priestess.

I muster through small talk, I'm good at mixing and mingling. I can make an impression when I set out to. And this shell willfully disguises the musings of it's underworld.

All this to say. I was rolling with the Zimbilly's on this lovely Sunday afternoon. We had several visitors drop in on our driveway/yard/garage festivities. I walked outside after a bathroom trip to find a very pregnant lady and her husband had stopped in for a spell. She was so very very pregnant. Her big old belly standing out from her scarcely swelled hips. She looked so lovely. Many thoughts went through my head, from the other neighbor guy, who has a thing for pregnant women (he wasn't there,) up to the thought that I will probably never be that lady. Never walk through those nine months of radiant agony and have everyone around know exactly what's happening under my skin.

But, in that moment of her glowing radiance, something to me occurred. How I've spent most of my adult life pregnant with thought. There's always something gestating in the room above my neck. Little seedlings about life, the after life, meaning, aliens, the unseen, the unexpected, what would the world could be, what it should be, what I would be and everything in between.

Alas, these thoughts, they've seldom birthed. Always stillborn short stories, or a femerell for something otherwise aloof.

I wondered how life might change should I actually make the time and gestate one of these seedlings to full term. Breathe life into it and make it so. Let it take on my eye and hair color, maybe house the skeletons of my genetics into flesh. And still, my personality is such that I'd probably abort it last minute. Shred it beyond recognition and internalize its excrement.

I guess we'll see...