Trails and Trials

I accomplished a major goal I had set for myself last year, climbing up Schweitzer Mt.

When I chose that as my goal, we immediately set out walking and hiking, no matter the weather: wind, rain, ice, or snow. The intention was to keep moving during the bad months in order to be fit enough for the climb by early summer. Though it started out as my goal, my husband is such an intimate partner & friend, my goal became his goal. It morphed into our goal.

But life got in the way, our world was turned upside down, and the structure of our walks and hikes, completely broken up with supporting our daughter through her very painful divorce, all but disappeared. 

We poured our energy into helping her, and our grandson, and it left very little energy, or time, for climbing mountains. Now that I think about it, we were climbing mountains, but emotional ones, rather than physical ones. 

To be honest, I'd forgotten about my goal. It had been subsumed with this other, bigger, need. But my daughter had taken time off for what would have been her 8th wedding anniversary, and she decided to go on an adventure. She loaded up her son and she drove to the coast for the week, all by herself. She wanted to experience the healing power of the ocean and escape, just for a small time, the place, the city, where all the chaos was happening. Her departure left us with a free week. 

When I remembered my our goal, and saw the opening to attain it, I also realized we hadn't been walking and hiking as much as we had hoped to prepare for it. However, I figured, worst case scenario, we could abandon the climb and go back down. We at least needed to try.

So, we packed up and headed to Schweitzer to tackle the 2,000 foot ascent in 2 1/2 miles. It was very doable, training or not, but I wanted it to also be fun and not torture.

Well, the first part of the hike up was, indeed, torture.

We had taken a wrong path and it went straight up the mountain. My head got light. Muscles fatigued. And my Apple watch recorded my heart rate at SLOW THE HELL DOWN!

We stopped and rested to catch our breath, which gave me a moment to open the All Trails App. It showed the nature path we should have been on versus our present location, way off the nature path. The only way to get back onto it was straight up even further.

At that point, I wanted to take plan B, go back down the mountain and quit. Hadn't my summer been hard enough without adding the hike from hell onto it, too? Wasn't my goal to make it fun? This wasn't fun. This was suicide by heart attack.

My husband encouraged me to keep going, which only pissed me off and made me want to quit even more. But then he used reverse psychology and told me we SHOULD quit, and that he wanted to turn around, right then and there, and go back. 

That stopped me in my tracks. How dare he try and keep me from my year long goal! The nerve of the man! 

That's all it took, and I was charging up the hill like a wild thing, (Apple watch be damned!) trying to make my way back to the nature path that winds a bit gentler up metaphor mountain.

Once on the nature trail (photos above) it was all, Happy Days Are Here Again.

Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So let's sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again
All together shout it now
There's no one
Who can doubt it now
So let's tell the world about it now
Happy days are here again
Your cares and troubles are gone
There'll be no more from now on
From now on

There were huckleberries to eat along the way.

And a lucky penny!

There was even a smiley face before our last and hardest ascent.

And at the top, wine and cheers.

A selfie at the summit.

If you climb up the mountain, as a bonus, you get a free ride down on the ski lift.

I had gone to the mountain that day praying for wisdom about our current trials and wanting to see God, like my own dad had said he did on one of our hikes together when he was still alive and about my age now. 

I came back with answers about both, about why my dad was able to see God's hand so powerfully in nature, and about how these major life trials are like those difficult mountain trails. 

Look at how similar those two words are--trails and trials. Not much separates them.