pacifitrek

Mt. Rainier was amazing yesterday.Though it was a little chilly and I ended up buying an ultra-glam touristy pink sweatshirt, my hike was an adventure. No matter how much I've worked out, neither the number of minutes the machines jubilantly proclaimed I'd completed nor the large stack of weights I grunted and strained through prepared me for an actual outdoor hike on the largest mountain in Washington. From the first shaky step up what seemed like a constant fifty degree incline, I knew that I would be done before the mountain was. But I climbed anyway, even as the boulders, eroded by hundreds of tired hikers into inviting settees, beckoned with their siren's call to just stop and relax, enjoy the view...quit. The call was too strong for my partner, she was done and no amount of coaxing would get her up off of the bench. But not me. Vacilating between tenacity, stubborness, and just being obtuse I decided not to stop. I would reach THAT place before I stopped, up there where those people were. How dare they think they could get all the way up there, directly challenging my drive? So I kept going, even as the cacophony of the pulse in my ears and throat joined with my rapidly increasing heartbeat to produce a tribal drum beat. Even as my oxygen deprived body started mildly hallucinating and I became convinced that the crows were calling my name. Even as my lungs simultaneously felt like they had been doused with nitrous and shoved in a pile of burning embers. I climbed and climbed and each time I told myself I would stop right THERE, there just didn't seem like the place to end my journey. Until finally there was right. There with the clouds that wrapped themselves around my tired, sweaty body like a cool kiss on a feverish forehead. There where the ground was still covered in ice and the paths left unpaved. There is where I stopped and took my final picture and where my camera died moments after the shutter snapped. I didn't need to go any further, the volcano gods destined that I would go no higher, today was not the day I would sacrifice myself to them. So I made my slow, painful journey back down to the bottom where my dog and friend were waiting to share my victory meal...a yummy peanut butter and jelly sandwich.