“A Mountainous Day”

John Ingram Mitchell

[An edited version of a submitted essay at Boston University, Spring 2008]

So often the experience of travel symbolizes change or something new coming into being. It is true that change always seems new and is from the point where a journey begins.

This trip was no different. The heights of Mount Rainer were in my mind's eye on this expedition into nature and the self. Rainier, the lofty and ominous natural giant, was the unexpected starting point on an earlier visit, a decade before. The impact it had had previously was immense and seemed appropriate for this new journey into self that I was looking to make.

Nature is such a beautiful door to enter through into this realm. At different times, the same door can open into a completely different room of the soul and spirit. The mountain, with all its changing weather and various animal populations, lives in this biome, harmoniously as one together. These changes are like emotions that undulate within the body that start the flow of new thoughts. These human feelings are very much like surge of water in a river, from a recent storm input. This is my experience.

Many changes had come into my life a little more than 11 years earlier. They seemed impromptu and this visit had the potential to frame a new reflection and contemplation of then and now. Mount Rainier seemed the perfect venue for the purpose of seeing if the universe could again be harnessed and persuaded into supporting whatever decisions and actions manifested from these contemplations.

When it comes to making changes in my life, I want to hold onto pleasant experiences and relationships and discard the uncomfortable ones like others do. Yet, sometimes, as in the past, the hardest changes produced the most value in life. Nature was a great example of these processes, in action. Nature's growth is always taking place in different stages everywhere. I have looked for areas in life that do not change and I have not found any. Even in what appears to be dead, only changes in form and substance.

Whenever I have hiked before and found dead trees, I found they had parts still alive. They were in different ways. I only had to look a little more closely to see this reality. The same goes for human life, I found. Sometimes change had been a choice, and other times change was thrust into my life. It was always my perspective that either needed to change or be changed externally, when viewed in the final analysis. It was good, if only I would see it for that. When I, at my best, ask myself, “What could be good about this change?”. I can come up with a more productive and useful point of view. In so doing always remembering to ask myself, this question today was as ominous as the ascent itself. I had never done, nor planned outright. It was spontaneous. The coming changes would turn out to be for the better, even though I wanted to keep the status quo firmly in place.

Life is always about change and Nature makes it so, with its immovable laws. A change can appear simple, though not to be confused with being easy. Change and simplicity are very different qualities when experienced and reflected upon. This time the task, at hand, would be about what work I would do and what role I would have in my family. What my core values were or would become, and how they may need to change. I needed to get clear on what I valued, not what was easy, necessarily. This trip would prove to be the foundation for beginning the rebuilding and reforming of the values I had thought I had. I found some of these that resided within me, needed overhauling or recycling into different components of my character and foundation. This was a different beginning from where I had come from on the last trip here to this mountain. I had not fully appreciated the complexity of Rainier before, or my inner nature. It was hard to articulate the inner sense that change was bringing exactly. It was like remembering the flavor of a favorite food that one had not yet tasted. It was possible to think of, though not to know. Knowing that change meant a complete dismantling of my life, as I had known it, had been unsettling. It was not knowing what would manifest that was most on my mind when I arrived at Paradise Lodge on Mount Rainier. For some reason this was reminiscent of a naturally caused forest fire, which once begun, burns to an end that only nature knows why. At this point I had thought, “Nature knows its own processes only too well and their ultimate benefits.”. I know almost nothing about this part of Nature, yet I could smell smoke, but I could not see one anywhere, no matter which direction looked.

In relationships, when things go a rye, smoke can be the symbol of an unseen change or danger. Some friends have turned out to be acquaintances only. It was so odd how that has been. It seems so apropos to fit this change into an old template and plan a trip to Mount Rainer. This trip was one that I had wanted to make for more than 10 years. Before when I had been to Rainier, I had only spent a few days and looked around a little, nothing more. There was always a pull in my soul to return here; now was the time (I want to return there now as I am rewriting this today). I had the money and time then and certainly needed to reflect on life and where it could go. The change in the relationship was hard for me. I needed Nature, with all its beauty and wonder to inspire and support me onwards, and to comfort me too. I had hurt in a certain private and personal way then. I looked forward and made the necessary plans and reservations. The Paradise Lodge was to be my center of operations during that late summer visit. It had been closed when I was there before. It always was, even in late spring, as it was every year during the harshest times of the year. During these times, the snow comes up and covers part of the first floor, sometimes even into the second floor. It was a remarkable sight, even then, when partially covered.

The first day started out with resting up and getting myself acclimated to the altitude. On the second day, breakfast was the first thing after rising. The large dinning hall sat at least a few hundred guests, if not more. After enjoying the beautiful view form the table and quietly contemplating whether today was the day for a hike, or a casual walk, I chose to order a 'bag lunch' from the kitchen. I hike was what I had chosen. I figured this was a good idea, just in case I wanted to dine with nature privately. I checked my daypack to make sure I had enough water and inspirational reading for the journey. I brought a notepad for writing recording what might flow from the experiences of the day. I was good to go. It was amazing how romantic this all felt. I was embarking to hike up the mountain, by myself, alone. I had wanted to share this with a special woman. I had chosen incorrectly years earlier it seemed, and was now facing the result of this choice. That could not be wrong, since now I had a little daughter who was only a little more than a year old at that time. I loved her so much from the first time I saw her, and still do and always will. I knew I would always love my daughter; she is still the diamond in my heart. That light emanates from my eyes. I had thought I would only go for an hour or so. This little walk and picnic in the meadow that I had seen from the table at breakfast had now expanded in time. Possibly, after lunch I had thought of returning and nap in my room. Perhaps read on the deck looking up at Rainier had crossed my mind. The mountain flowers were in radiant bloom and offered subtle and pleasant fragrance all over the mountain. The possible choices had been vast for so early in the morning.

Nature provides an immediate bath for the senses; she never fails to inspire change in my thoughts. Reflections are hard to avoid when being enveloped with nature; for nature is the reflection of life itself. These perceptions are food to me. Digestion is the process where nutrients are taken in and distributed to the body. Nature is food for the mind, spirit and soul. When we are limited in our exposures and interactions with nature, we are as one starved off from food. When any living thing lacks nutrients, it is not seen immediately. The consequences do appear, eventually. When a human body lacks Vitamin C long enough, it gets scurvy. Perhaps getting out into nature is not the same. It is similar, I think, because the air in the mountains is cleaner to breath and is usually higher in quality. This directly affects our thinking and experience in life.

At first, this morning hike to see the mountain flowers seemed like it would hardly take any time all. I wondered how I would fill in the rest of my day after I was done. The further I went, the further I wanted to go. A few times, I stopped to reflect and took a few notes. I drew a few sketches of what I saw and thought some more, then walked onward to higher levels. Each small part of this morning stroll became a challenge, a tease from nature itself. I felt a beckoning to see a little more of the mountain with each step, until finally I realized that I had arrived at the snow line below the base camp for ascending the summit Mount Rainer. This is at around 11,000 feet, I think. I had prepared my attire correctly, for both the warmth of summer and the cold that comes with snow.

By the end of the day, I had seen marmots at the snow line and bears on the way back to the lodge. I was on my way to dinner at the end of a long day. Perhaps I had appeared as an entrée on the bears' menu for dinner that day. I will never know though. I am grateful not to have been recycled into the food chain that day by the bear. The day had started as an unknown. It had then evolved into an unfolding flower that was of unknown beauty until its bud unfolds to show its magnificence. I had walked in the snow at the base camp of this taunting mountain. True climbers, not hikers, like me, can launch the ascent to the summit from this point. I had risked and I had gained immensely an unspoken wisdom. Internal and external limits that were previously unknown and unseen, were discovered. Some of these challenged and confronted, while others were not. The fatigue of the narrowing trails, which caused pause to navigate, concluded in a successful day. The quest to conquer, both the inner world and the outer reality of nature, finally had become realized in that moment.

The clear morning sky contrasted the evening sky, upon my return. The mountain had become completely cloaked in clouds, masking the true face and altitude. Mount Rainier, one of geology's massive mountains was like a beautiful woman that leaves something for her admirers' imagination to ponder. The components of time, weather and resources were all in nature's arsenal, as always. Its unpredictability for the observer renders them defenseless, yet respectful. These comforts and challenges happened in the course of one day. There had been only spontaneous planning yielding a lot of living ‘in the moment’, going forward the way nature makes life unfold. In this moment-by-moment set of circumstances, changing at every turn produced a definite mountainous day in my life to reflect upon and guide my journey from there forward.