Sunday Night Ramblings

The afternoon turns from blue to gray as the fog begins to cover the summer sky. I close the notebook which contains all my preliminary notes for climbing Mt. Langley next weekend, in order to meet with my cousin, whose in town for business, for dinner. What was a comfortable day, had been invaded by a midly caustic, but highly determined wind. Another typical San Francisco summer day. I throw on my long sleeve, watching the multitudes of tourists huddling together as their white t-shirts and khaki shorts have about the same level of resistence as I do in a bar that serves $4 Guinness.

The fog kind of makes you turn inward. It makes everything closer, and even though it moves through the city rapidly, it sings a melancholic melody; a light, three-chord progression to any who chooses to listen. Tonight, I chose to listen. Sometimes its okay to turn inward and to examine those soft, delicate parts that we've been told to protect. Weakness is supposed to be bad and one should never explore those areas without the help of a trained professional, sucking your bank account dry by the hour.

Ironic that these are my thoughts as I put the finishing touches on my preperations to climb one of the tallest peaks within the continental United States. However, I think this may be exactly why I climb. Each time I take myself out of my comfortable surroundings, which I work so bloody hard for, I consciously enter a world that is so much bigger and ferocious than my perception of day to day life. I enter with the full acknowledgement of my finite insignificance to the One who created it all; completely at the mercy of so many factors that are totally out of my control. It is an act of faith with each step forward.

However, the life that I experience everyday is no more "in control" than my experience in the mountains. I take my surroundings for granted as they turn familiar; my consciousness fades. What was once an act of pure, but epistimologically tested faith, now becomes routine--my motions more mechanical.

My trip to the mountains could not arrive soon enough. This prodigal son longs for the home that he hasn't seen since last September. I don't seek the mountains to conquer--that idea is wholly absurd. I return to regain my perspective of who I am and where I belong in this madness of which I have become so familiar.

Plus there is a really cool view on the summit.