Climbing a Mountain

We started at the lake. The water was perfectly still and clear, an incredible color blue. I could see the stones shimmering on the bottom of the lake. The gold trees on the other side were reflected in the water. Stillness, total stillness. An image I will use when I am meditating and wanting to quiet my mind. That stillness is what I seek .

We went back to the car and then drove, up and up, around and around the switchbacks, catching glimspes of the tops of the peaks. It took a long time and we finally arrived at the Visitor Center that was closed for the season. Behind the Center is a board walk. Made of many planks, weathered to silver, it is wide and sturdy, safe and easy to walk on.

Bill asked me if I wanted to climb some. The board walk seemed safe and easy enough. I hadn't counted on the fact that it was going UP!. After the first few 100 feet, I thought I would die. I was gasping for breath, my latent asthma was commenting. I used my inhaler, and figured we could just go slow, a baby step at a time. I was laughing at THAT idea. Where had I ever heard such a concept!

So we climbed. Bill would say, you just need to go up that far. Ironically it turned out that *that far* happened seven times. I just kept climbing. Some folks were down below at the Center with one of those long horns they use in the alps. The music was rolling up the mountain. It actually looks like the alps up there. Bill said, *if you get to the top, you will be able to see the hidden lake. And there are some goats up there. perhaps we will see them*. I liked the idea of the lake and the goats.

We kept climbing. It was about 2 miles UP, very up. We did get to the top. We did see goats, a big male who sat there very still and looked me in the eye and then later, his wife and two babies. We stood at the top, looking at the blue lake below, very far below. I have never, ever seen anything like this. All my life, I have gone into REI for my *stuff* and fantasized about climbing a mountain. I imagined my movements, and the view, but it was my imagination. Here it was, now real.

Going down, I had to pee so I went off into a little stand of pines. After, I turned to my left and there was a big, flat mauve rock. I sat down on it and breathed the scent of pine and thought, *You are almost 59 years old, you climbed that mountain.* And my molecules said they want to do this more. They said they want me to have a body that suits me better. Inside I am so fluid, so supple, so joyous. My body has suffered from menopause and a little more *gist* that it wanted. Some extra pounds discovered themselves on my middle.

I want to be like that mountain goat, to climb, to be at ease there. I want to swim in the lake with a body that is me. The mountain moved me. Deeply. My body knows it did and my body will follow so that the mountain moving day becomes who I am.

(c)Kathleen DesMaisons 2006. All rights reserved.