[M]y favorite step is the first step. It’s fresh, eager, filled with anticipation. It’s courageous, curious and heart-led. It’s almost as if it jumps ahead of itself, leaving gear, backpacks, all that stuff behind as it wholeheartedly leaps forward towards that awesome feeling of summit.
It says good-bye to what’s behind, and invites in everything that’s ahead. Going beyond the visible horizon line, well over the initial pass and right to that lake at 10,000 feet just below the glacier.
But it’s not always an easy step to take.
There’s a lot of opposing pressure working to restrain that first step. And this pressure is more than just a 40-pound backpack; it’s everything. The to-do list, the gas bill and the work report that’s due early the next week, they are all dead set on keeping that first step at bay.
But I’ve learned that I just have to make time for it. I have to adjust my priorities. I have to get ahead of that laundry list of tasks. Ultimately, if I want to get out there, I just have to go for it.
And every time I do, I never regret it.
[/col_5] [col_5]So here I am, at the trailhead. The feeling of rocks and dirt mashing together, the intense hit of consciousness, the smell of pine, the sound of the trail, they all come together to produce this zealous sensation of opportunity, a sensation that rips up through my calf, to my stomach and into chest, urging me to go.
Standing here, I can hear the first step laughing at those excuses I was making earlier in the week; at the thought I had of just folding up this trip to the Sierras, putting it in my pocket for some other time and just sitting right back down into a normal Saturday. It’s saying, “What would you have done? Where would you have gone? Nowhere really. You would’ve just sat there hangin’ out, doin’ the same thing that you do almost every Saturday.”
Instead, I’m here, about to go, about to see what’s out there.
The stone grey mountain walls… The switchbacks… The elevation… The sweat, the blisters, the pain… The snow-cold stream, bruised-colored clouds, rain… The friends, smiles and stories…
They’re all in front of me now.
How I love the first step!
[/col_5] [/row]Words and photos by: Ian Elliott