Crawling to Olympus

As kids I spent a large chunk of time climbing around the Wasatch Mountain like a goat; a fantastic, clean wholesome past time.  So those born after the year 2000 and living on the Wasatch front, put down your i-whatever devices, face East, and look up.  Those are called mountains and they are full of adventure.  Go play in them. Now 2000-ers, stop reading as you will probably never go in the mountains after hearing of my little excursion.

Having a Saturday to myself and having seen several people I know post pictures of themselves on hikes, I thought that I would get out of the house and movie theaters and pay ole Mother Nature a visit.  Near my childhood home there is a mountain named Mt. Olympus (sorry kids, no Percy Jackson there).  I saw that a female friend of mine had just hiked it and she looked pretty chipper at the top and I had never actually hiked Mt. Olympus (the summit is circles in the picture above).  So I says to my myself, I says (a little Hagrad there for you), “I used to hike all over these mountains.  Yes, I just turned 40 have not been on a serious hike in 25 years, but I have been doing P90X for a long time.  I can do this.”  Just to be safe, I look online to see the hike details.  Utah.com describes the trail as follows:  “The trail is wide and easy to follow. It gains some 4,100 feet over the course of 3.75 miles, making it a fairly steep climb. But this is a great hike and virtually anyone can do it if they just take it slow and steady.” Hours later as I found myself completely alone, clinging to the side of a cliff near the summit amidst strong winds and storm clouds thinking that Utah.com was full of crap!

I have heard a number of people recently taking about going into nature for some introspection and perspective.  I pictured this to be much more a meditative experience rather than a sadistic experience.  But I can say, I came down that mountain with several lessons learned - and hankering for a masseuse with ape strong hands.

The lesion of the day for me was pride - The good and bad kind.  As I packed for this hike, 3.7 miles sounded pretty short.  I thought I would take a few snacks a little water, but not much as I would be up and down in short order.  I was probably 300 yards on this trail when I realized I was in trouble.  I was tired and  my heart was pounding.  My pride objected, saying that I was in really good shape.  My body said “Sorry, not this kind of shape buddy.”  Still I kept moving as I did not want to be that old guy who was stopping for a break at the beginning of the trail.  Giving in to the urge to stop was made all the more difficult as I saw plenty seniors coming down already (I had a late start) along with a large number of men and women whom did not look all that fit to me.  None of them looked like they were ready to die after completing the hike, but I felt like was after just starting. 

Finally, I realized that despite always pushing myself in sport and vocation to not let anyone see me slow or quit, NO ONE BUT ME CARED ABOUT MY PACE!  If I had to stop every 100 yards – which I did – it did not matter to anyone, but me and I needed the rest.  I was not there to impress anyone, I was there to hike.  And if I was going to make it to the summit, I was going to need to take breaks – lots of them.  Swallowing my pride, I did.  It is funny how much against my nature this was, but it was the right thing for me to do.  [Now Brett goes all philosophical…]  I wonder in how many aspects of our lives do we push ourselves because we can’t let people think that we are weak and can’t keep up.  Truth is, in many areas we are weak.  There are many things we can do with ease, but there are many more we cannot.  Yes, this was news for the lawyer, engineer, who at one point in time could speak four languages.  Sometimes we need to take things at our pace to get there and don't have to do things as well as everyone elsee.

There is also aspect of pride where we think we have all of the answers (yah, yah, I know, I know – this one hits pretty close to home).  Well this little nugget of pride nearly cost me my life on this hike.  As was toiling up the mounting, I kept passing and then being passed by several other men who had realized our limitations and were taking lots of breaks (no women though – they passed by and I never saw them again).  At one stop, I starting talking to a guy a few years younger than me.  He asked if I had seen any snakes.  I told him only a pet snake on some woman’s arm heading down the mountain (I wonder if she was taking it for a walk?).  He said he had heard there were rattlesnakes on the trail.  I, of course, had the answer, “I spent my whole life hiking in the mountains near here and have ever only seen one rattle snake and that was when I was way off the trail.  I have also never heard of anyone being bitten by one around here.”  He seemed assured by my answers and I felt happy to have assured this misinformed guy.  He went on ahead as I rested - I guess he was more nervous than weak..

Thinking no further of this conversation, I am moved up the mountain steadily – for a change – listening to music on my ear buds.  Suddenly there was this cacophonous sound and movement right at my feet and this primal feel surging through my body.  I froze and it took me a second to process what all of the movement was when I noticed the rattle of a three foot snake slithering off the trail 18" from my feet.  Despite a warning, I was not even looking and nearly steps on the snake.  Well so much for having all of the answers.  I had just told some stranger he had nothing to worry about and then I nearly go get myself bitten.  There was my next lesson in pride.  Sometimes the things that you wrongly think you know are the things that can nearly kill you.  My arrogance also put this other guy in danger.  I finally caught up with this guy near the top – he had elected not to scale the last 100 yards of rock summit.  I apologized for giving him back advice and told him what happened.  I turned my music down and watched the trail more closely not wanting to pay any more for my own pride.

Finally, I did learn about the good kind of pride – the pride of accomplishing something for myself.  There were many many times that I wanted to curl up in the fetal position and suck my thumb.  I even told myself that I could just turn around at any point and head back, and I could have.  But I had wanted to see the top of this mountain myself, for myself.  So I would go a few hundred yards more and then stop and reassess, then a few hundred more and stop again.  Finally as I got near the top I was absolutely spent.  My legs were shaking uncontrollable.  I looked ahead and saw a jagged rock summit face that I did not want to climb.  But I told myself that I put forth all of the energy to get so close to the end of my goal, dig deep and find the rest of that energy.  Now I am not sure if I was rock climbing or rock crawling, but step by step I made it to the top (though I wish I had a Samwise Gamgee to carry me the last bit).  So my last bit of philosophy here is that we do not know what we can truly do until we push ourselves.  We may want to quit and that is our choice.  But if we do push ourselves for ourselves and just keep taking steps, even at our own lethargic pace, we can make it to the top of whatever we are climbing.

Just don’t be surprised when you are hobbling sore for a while afterwards - good lessons never come for free.  Now please pass the Icy -Hot.