Usually not the real big ones, but the smaller ones. It's every bit as hard as it looks, punishing my legs and lungs, amplifying every minor ache to painful crescendos. At times the mountain is the beast; it is every hardship and obstacle that threatens to break me down. Its sole intention is to make me quit, to reduce and overwhlem me. Only when I personify the mountain and use it to embody everything I want to overcome within myself, all my weaknesses, that I resolve to let it draw out my fatigue. I go back and face the beast in the rain, the mud, the snow, the ice, the heat, I have continued to do through the past years of hardship. Like Sisyphus, I pushed up everyday, always rolling back down to a world I was seemingly inept at handling with grace.
And then one day the beast is quiet. Like the persistent erosion of wind and water, something has given. The slope seems gentle. My body no longer trembles at the effort. Of course the hill is the same, but it's I who have changed, grown stronger even though I've never rationalized the purpose of the struggle. That intrinsic drive to just persist has yielded a flash of enlightenment.
It was important for me to stay near the mountains because I still have volumes of wisdom to learn through their trials. When I didn't know where to go, I went to the mountains because it felt right. I write this because my apprenticeship is going to continue.
Glory
Glory is the sun, too, and the sun of suns,
and down the shafts of his splendid pinions
run tiny rivers of peace.
Most of his time, the tiger pads and slouches in a burning
peace.
And the small hawk high up turns round on the slow pivot of
peace
Peace comes from behind the sun, with the peregrine falcon,
and the owl.
Yet all of these drink blood.
-- D.H. Lawrence
