More Than The Miles

Over the weekend, I drove out to Buena Vista, Colorado to hike Mount Belford and Missouri. Before the sun stirred awake, I was already up logging miles uphill Saturday morning. Missouri was 5.5 miles with over 4,000 feet of elevation gain. The weather was clear and crisp all the way to the top where I enjoyed a precious moment to myself until I being forced to shake off the altitude’s chillingly gusts and make my decent.

The following morning, just as the one before, I was up and moving by 4am with a friend who drove in to join in my second climb. I don’t know how far or how much I would have tolerated that hike without him. The crisp morning before was replaced with freezing rain and aggressive winds for all 8 miles up and down the mountain. We kept each others morale up, entertained one another and shared in the satisfaction of completing a very difficult and exhausting climb to the summit.

If you look at a lifetime, you look at the years and looking over a year, you look at the moments. From the moment you’re born to the day you die, there are peaks and valleys. There are wins and failures. When you are pursuing something productive that you love and it gives you a sense of purpose, there are so many people involved in that process. Your job and responsibility is to embrace the hurt, but you can’t do it on your own. The people you surround yourself with effect your perspective, emotions, understand, values and outcome. If everyone else holds themselves to the same level with their responsibilities embracing their own hurt, we can then all rise to a higher being together.

-Busy Brain