mise à l’échelle

Maybe it’s all in the symbolism of looking through photos of having climbed the mountain or perhaps it was just a reflective day. Whatever the case, my mind was racing through so many things last night as I looked through the photos of this site I both live and work at.

This year has been a year of high mountains and low valleys and I can say I have felt the deepest kinds of sadness mingled with the greatest kinds of joy. What I remembered while looking through the photos was a particularly difficult day almost a year ago now as I drove home through the rockies for twelve hours on my own and feeling the deep kind of ache I could only describe in that moment as the depth of the chasm between two mountains. The tears fell long and hard periodically that day as I would find bouts of strength in the midst of my weakness. But what I felt as I looked through the photos wasn’t the reminder of the event that caused all the pain but rather the feeling of the pain itself of the way I felt when I walked into a room unraveled by grief and the look of horror on peoples faces in unbelief.

So I have started back from the bottom of the mountain and I made every switchback with steady stride and stopping occasionally to catch my breath. I took in the sights along the way and felt my heart beating strong inside my chest. Finally above the treeline it was freeing and I think it’s true for me now on a more personal level. I’ve been feeling above the treeline for a while, I don’t want what was, I long for the next adventure, I have hopeful anticipation for greater things. I’ve come to see that the best years of my life aren’t behind me but are in the present and are ahead of me.

How easy it would have been to stay at the bottom, to wallow in the past and feel sorry for myself and only look at the mountain in front of me but I’m glad that I developed a new courage, a new sense of self, found a rhythm for my footsteps to follow and finally found the place with the 360 degree view of the villages trickling down the hillsides all the way to the sea and cities and the alps behind me. I made it to the top.