Climbing can get so intense.  Not only does it always seem to tap into inner play, but it requires such exertion just to move a little.  The way your hands and feet, legs and arms, eyes and fingers, all have to work together–whether hiking a mountain, or grabbing a ledge to pull your weight upwards.  An inner rhythm gets flipped on and a synchronicity begins to develop.  Breathing.  Foot placement.  Eyes darting from side to side searching for opportunities, for mistakes.  Mistakes occurring, but immediately course corrected.  Pain, discomfort, fatigue…but you’re IN it.  

There’s always this threshold of separation, a point where you can still remember that it is you that is climbing the mountain or wall.  But then you go beyond it and it is no longer a situation of a variety of variables (you, mountain, pain, legs, etc), but one unified experience just happening.  It reads like verbal word play, but the occurrence is quite distinct.  You simply go and there almost starts to form a grin.

The magic of being alive is somewhere in moments like this.  

After a while, the grin is a full-on panting smile, and the mountain offers a conveniently placed crevice or ledge, or metaphorical hand, and you almost chuckle as you take a seat or rest.  You turn away from the mountain and look out into the perspective-changed void.  Involuntarily, you take a deep breath.  Magnificent doesn’t do it justice.  You realize no word can do any moment justice: a wordless experience…

The beauty isn’t wasted, and you gather back into form.  The magic continues and somehow you actually feel lighter.  You carry on, with a grin.