Mountaineering my Soul

It was a different world and a different time.  A place where time forgot and the world did not know.  

My childhood.  The great before.

"Let's go get lost in the breaks," I would pronounce as we galloped on our horses across the plains.   The ridges were easy as one could see for miles upon miles.  The breaks and draws weere mysterious and exciting.

Our horses would pick the best way down to the bottom of the draw and we "tried" to get lost.  The truth about a draw and the breaks, however, was it never got lost.  So being in it, always took us to where we knew we were.  The same place.  We would ride up and down and explore every inch and never get lost.

Once, it began to storm and we were in the far breaks.  In fact, a few hours from home.  Knowing how dangerous lightening was (Mom was terrified of it) we got off the horses and took off the saddles, found a hollow in the shale in a great deep break.  Dragging the saddle and holding the bridle reins with a death grip, we huddled under the saddle until the storm past.  Or until we were too scared and we saddled the horse and ran like banshees for home.

My heart felt so free and alive and wild.  Even today, when I'm either feeling a sense of "it is too much" or I just need to remind myself of the finite amout of time I have left on the world...I drive to the grasslands.  

There I never hold my breath.  I breath and I feel as if I can take in the whole entire world.

This is where I am free.

Reading about William H. Murray's mountaineering, has helped me remember.  All exploration is not outwardly.  All of my life, I've been exploring.  If I cannot explore the land, I explore people and ideas and books.  

The past year and a half has been my scariest exploration ever.  The one place I did not want to go or to know.  My soul.  Mountaineering my soul seems so accurate. As with the plains, every undulating hill, seems to be so close...until you hike in that direction.   Small hidden alcoves, hollows, hills and draws weave the land together.

In my childhood exuberance I would push every limit and try every shale and high hill.  Jumping my horse off the edge to feel his rump behind my head as we slid down to the bottom.  "That's not the way you do it," was an automatic challenge to take the way not traveled.  To do it differently.  

And yet, when my lust for adventure was spent, I was content to settle in to my horse and follow his meandering ways.  To embrace the process.  

These were timeless times.  Times where I did not feel part of my troubled self and felt part of the land and the sky and the wind.  

So in this journey and exploration of my soul, when I stumbled upon the concept of acceptance.  Resisting and avoiding the pain, only makes it worse and creates gaping wounds.  

Embrace the process and accept and observe yourself without judgement or evaluation.  These concepts were simply words, until they took me to that time.  

The times in the breaks when I would lose track of time.  When I accepted the world as it was and myself as I am.  

Just as I am, without one plea or excuse or justification or minimization or distraction.  Just as I am.  He wants us this way.  God.  He knows this is where we begin to heal.  Where life convergences and He meets us.

We may feel lost.  We are right where we need to be.