Mammoth Peak
September 25th 2004
I’ll give a little story to go with the photo this time. This is Mammoth Peak, in Yosemite — or, really, Tuolumne Meadows, the part of Yosemite that most people don’t visit. This is where I go… whenever I can. It is my second home; a place where I feel as comfortable as I am in my own backyard; because it is, really.
So I climbed this mountain with my dad a few years ago. If there ever was, or ever will be a time when I consider myself growing up a notch, that was it. I conquered a mountain; I stood above the rest of the world, looked down, and stood in awe.
Actually, it’s quite hard to think profoundly at 13,000 feet. It’s not the lack of oxygen, but something else, I don’t know what. All you can do is watch. Thoughts come later, like when you’re sitting at a desk getting electrons shot at your eyes all day; you close them, and the view from the top of a mountain is there, and all you can think about is how amazing it is, how much you want to be there right at that instant, free from everything.
If only life was always as simple as a mountain….
Thanks for this… you just reminded me that lifes challenges can only be dealt with one step at a time. So just breathe and take a step, breathe and take another step.