For the last 9 months, I have been planning to climb the tall one on the right, the South Sister. It’s a grueling 8-10 hour hike over nearly 12 miles gaining 5,000 feet. After losing breath, water, and scrambling on your hands and knees over the last mile of gravelly lava beds, I’m told you can see most of the Oregon and Washington peaks from the top, leaving everything else appear very small and unimportant.
When asked to embark on such a grand adventure, I tend to get enticed immediately. Train harder than I ever have, puke from exhaustion, and maybe die trying (as some have in the past), in order to climb this enormous mound of earth so I may prove something equally as enormous to myself? Don’t mind if I do. In fact, I tend to get obsessed with ridiculously difficult feats of this type.
To keep a probably unnecessarily long story to at least medium length, I did not climb this fucking mountain. A series of unfortunate events ranging from injuries to illness to work obligations kept my boyfriend, my sister, and I from joining my father in the climb three weeks over, and now, we have lost our weather window of opportunity.
Months and months of hope and sweat and obsession, never to amount to the catharsis of standing atop that peak and knowing I had done it; I had climbed the damn beast--I am still at least a portion of the athlete, adventurer, and relentless dreamer I remember being before I lost most of myself to adulthood, working 50 hours a week for a business I have neither passion nor respect for in exchange for hopeful admittance to a top-tier law school.
All along, I should have known that Krakauer was right in saying that “mountains make poor receptacles for dreams”. I shouldn’t have needed to huff and puff up a huge piece of earth to know my life was not what I wanted it to be, and that even hitting the magical 2 year mark at my job was not actually going to yield the fruits of my labors as I had hoped. I shouldn’t have needed this massive disappointment to see the metaphor. I have shed blood and sweat and tears for both the mountain and my job, looking forward to a moment when it would all be worth it, but now I’m left waiting for another year to climb the Sister, and who knows how much longer before I finally reach the top of the professional ladder I believed was only 6 feet tall. Unfortunately, it’s sky high, and my strength is dwindling.
But now I know. I know for sure. If I have to lose myself next year for another draining quest for self fulfillment, it’s going to be for the peak of that mountain, not for a high salary and a shot at Georgetown. This life is too precious to waste as a cog in the private sector’s machine any longer, no matter what I believe I might attain as a reward.
Oh, I’m getting into law school. Without my job and boss’s letter of recommendation it may not be Georgetown, but it will sure as hell be somewhere that recognizes my sweat and drive and downright obsession with accomplishment.
Instead, next year looks different from my life today. Right now, it looks very, very different, and that is so exciting. I can’t wait to see what becomes of tonight’s dreams.
