The open roads of light and storm

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it. 

--Mary Oliver

Fact: At higher elevations, the Earth's atmosphere becomes thinner. Compared to the air at sea level, the air at altitude is less dense, which means that all of the atmospheric gases--like oxygen--are more spread out. The body's tissues need oxygen to aid with performance. This is what makes hiking at altitude a breath practice.

Truth: "We breathe, and wildness comes in. We don't control it." Jack Turner, Exum Mountain Guide and author

Early in the planning stages of my hike up Mount Whitney, one of the women I had invited along asked me if I wanted to attend a Mount Whitney training workshop she had discovered on Facebook. Politely, I declined, explaining to my friend that I wanted to retain some of the mystery of the late summer adventure we were planning. In other words, I was not interested in having all of the answers. At best, they would merely approximate some answers the presenters may have stumbled upon from their own summit experience. Why would I wish to borrow from this private cache? And while I was not going to go into the mountains--and to high elevation--unprepared, I was likewise uncomfortable with the idea of carrying another person's expectations with me on the trail.

Without mystery, how are we to discover our way? By which I mean, a way of our own.

When I was still an adjunct professor, making the rounds as all adjuncts must to teach at a variety of community colleges, I often began the semester by sharing with my students these words of the 11th century Zen Master Dogen: The way is here; the path leads everywhere. I figured his words were just puzzling enough to be inviting. But what I really heard in the philosopher's words, and the reason I insisted on sharing them every term, was the invitation to consult mystery and to consider where our everywhere was meant to lead us.


Many years ago, as a high school freshman, I vowed that I would spend one of my college years studying in France. The decision was immediate, perhaps a reaction to the language's silent letters and swallowed sounds. They pulled me in on the first day; I was ready to follow their lead. This was mystery announcing itself. There were the same visceral and instant tugs for diving into rock climbing and my ashtanga yoga practice. With each one, something I could not explain had called, and I was fully prepared to answer. I was ready to give myself permission to find my way in the dark, so that my own experience could find its voice and speak.  

Two of us eventually made the trip up to the summit of Mount Whitney and back down again. And on either end of this adventure, our pretenses were replaced with our experience, which became more immediate, more raw, more wild. We shared our secrets, our weaknesses, the inventive ways we have managed to persevere in our lives despite its trials, the back roads and detours not in our plans. To undertake adventure is to get personal. We breathe, and, yes, the wildness rushes in. We do not control it.


To undertake adventure is to embrace again and again the present moment and to watch how our minds will simultaneously work to get away from it. Particularly the fatigue, which we feel more acutely, the pain in our knee, the overwhelming desire to be finished before the trail's end, indulging ourselves by forgetting that reaching any summit is only half of the journey. And, really, the easier half. Eventually, the body will force our surrender. We return to the length of the breath: Inhaling the wild. Exhaling the control.

We crossed stream after rushing stream in the dark; each crossing left us bolder. We watched the dawn put color back into the sky and the sun take over for the moon. We added layers and shed them and added them back again. We walked atop talus slick with frost from the rain and sleet of the day before, and marveled at the icicles hanging from the low walls of all those switchbacks. We watched ravens soar and land without effort high atop peaks that would never be reached by people. And all day long, we were part of a fellowship seeking the summit and our own way into the accompanying wildness.

Why did you do it, a friend would later ask me? How was I meant to respond? I wanted to tell her that the answer could not be easily parsed. Even though it had something to do with finding my way--further into the mystery--it was not on any map. Instead, I offered up something about my age and time passing and how I have always wanted to hike Mount Whitney. The truth is, I have no definitive means to explain my decision to begin this adventure last April. "He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch," says the French filmmaker Jean-Luc Goddard. That comes close enough to touching the mystery. I will leave it at that.

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?

         Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.

More often
those moments
      when roads of light and storm
      open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
                                 God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

              from "Annunciation" by Denise Levertov