A Trip to the Mountains
If I were a part of the corporate jungle, I would describe this trip as a team-building retreat.
I saddled my horse who has trust issues, threw a pack on another horse who will reliably walk on the other side of a tree no matter where the trail goes and loaded up my dog whose abandonment anxiety prevents her from becoming a reliable partner.
My team would spend the next three days in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
My daughter, Abby, waved goodbye and listed her priorities for who should come home.
Fortunately, I was still at the top of her list.
I knew I needed this break.
I couldn’t find my to-do list, but that didn’t matter because I wouldn’t look at it anyway.
I was backsliding on my resolve to finish one project before starting another. Unfinished projects were scattered across the ranch like grocery bags after a windstorm.
Worst of all, I almost filled the diesel tank with gas.
Obviously, I was having way too much fun on the ranch.
It was time to go to the mountains.
Silence doesn’t exist in the mountains.
The birds sing, the water flows, the wind pushes on creaky burned out trees.
But those sounds don’t fragment my attention or ask anything of me.
They just are.
And they will be, whether I am there or not.
Somehow, they settle my whirling dervish mind.
I had not ridden through this area since it burned in 2015 so I was glad to see grass and shrubs growing through the fireweed.
The first evening, horses grazed in lush grass under a canopy of burned out trees while I set up camp.
The next morning, I picked up Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a gift from a friend.
As I turned page after page, I was glad the horses were hungry and my coffee was hot. I had not read more than three pages before the book hit my nose in a long, long time. The rushing water and chirping birds fortified Didion’s essays about the effects of drugs on a community, a murder trial that was really a trial of adultery and her questions about morality.
Eventually, the trail called.
I saddled the horses and followed the dog to the top of the world.
At least, almost the top of the world.
On the way up, I sawed through five logs and moved three more out of the trail.
At each downed log across the trail, the horses grazed while I sawed.
I didn’t count my strokes, just watched the sawdust collect under the cut.
Sweat stung my eyes and soaked through my t-shirt so I found a way around two more logs.
The almost vertical trail caused the horses to sweat, too, so we stopped to breathe once in a while.
A couple of brooks quenched their thirst and filled my water bottle.
We rode four hours to reach the top of that peak and one hour back down to camp.
Thunderstorms pounded my tent during the second night, but I stayed dry while I read more of Didion’s thoughts and the dog curled up on my sleeping bag.
As I considered Joan’s story, and by extension my story, I was struck by the words she chose.
And the words she left out.
I remembered, once again, that her story, and my story, and your story, are in our minds.
They can change.
The mountains are constant.
They change only imperceptibly.
The birds chirp, the water rushes and the trees creak whether I am there or not.
But their constant presence provides the structure for us to write our story the way we want it.
When I started up the mountain trail, I thought my team members needed me to rewrite their story.
By the time I returned, I reclaimed writing my own story.
Thanks to the mountains, once again.