Fear

I went on a 4 day backpacking trip with 17 people this past weekend. Not the ideal number to be backpacking with but surprisingly nothing went seriously wrong. Our trip leader is an engineer and detail oriented to a fault at times but honestly it was probably his attention to said detail that kept things smooth.

We climbed a 14,000 foot mountain called Snow Mass out near Aspen. Beautiful. Pictures will soon follow this post of course (providing they turned out) but suffice it to say that when you're standing in the shadow of God you tend sense something you may have missed back in the city.

It took three liters of water and plenty of swearing but I made it to the summit. I might add that I kind of forgot to eat which was a mistake that made itself readily apparent to me soon enough. Try hiking through snow on fatigued limbs while fighting the urge to spew what little you put into your stomach back out. Add to that the fact that I was fighting some mild diarrhea on the way back out the last day and you could say that I was a broken creature indeed.

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I experienced fear on this trip. I've never felt it quite the same way before. The day we made it to our 11,000 ft base camp I stood at the foot of this great monument we set out to conquer and I knew fear. The cold hard rock breaching the snow laced crown. Wind tearing across the heights, lifting wisps of snow high in the sky. From that distance it looked like little puffs of smoke. As if the peak chose to fire up a cigarette before the sun rested it's weary eye in the west. I know from past experience that when you see snow erupting off the peak by wind you can be sure it's blowing with combative force. It's nothing to smirk at.

I went to bed that night thinking about how frail humanity is. How untamed this wilderness was that we now found ourselves. As I crawled deeper and deeper into my sleeping bag, embracing the warmth that surrounded me, I could hear the wind tearing through the trees that night, across the crystal clear lake and up the massive peaks that loomed over our tents but underneath the brilliant stars that shone high above. I knew fear.

When the darkness in the forest at night takes hold in a way never known to the cities far below, you can see stars...many stars. Spiraling. Like celestial satellites. As if watching. Measuring. Like a billion mysterious eyes. A tension exists here. You can sense it in the cold. Warmth, the desired prize in the ongoing struggle to survive. As if nature's long fingers poke and search for a way into this frail humanity. Cracking and breaking. Protecting itself from our innate curiosity.

It's curious to me that this fear doesn't turn me away. Send me running into the embrace of a strictly urban existence. I suppose in a wildly unpredictable outcome it's this fear that draws me here. I guess fear isn't always a bad thing.

I'd imagine we'd be afraid of God if we stood in His shadow. It's a strange tension though. To be so afraid of something (or someone) but feel an intrinsic need to run toward it. I've come to understand that often fear is an element of respect. I respect the wilderness. I don't suppose I can hope for an equal respect in turn. After all I am pretty small. But as you reach the summit of a peak or the depths of a darkness you've feared for so long you learn that it's this respect that keeps you alive. Keeps the weights in the scale. You understand this unseen tension a little bit better and maybe realize it's what reminds you that you're truly alive.