Lessons from Algonquin
View from Algonquin
I haven’t written a blog post for awhile, as I have been taking care of my mother who is in skilled nursing and under hospice care and also packing my house so I can sell it and move into a new house with my fiancé. Talk about every stressful thing you can be faced with simultaneously. I’m so behind in processing my photos and doing the creative work that gives me joy. Last night, I finally processed some photos from the Adirondacks. I’ll write another post soon with more of them. This is the one that really hit me though, so I’m going to write a post about this one image.
My children, fiancé and I all took a trip to the Adirondacks last month. It was spectacular and actually cool while the rest of the country was burning up. We decided to go on this very tough hike up to the summit of Algonquin. It wasn’t that bad for the first mile, but then it got steeper and steeper. The peak is at 5,114 feet and the elevation gain is 2,36 feet. It is the second highest mountain in the Adirondacks and the hike is over 8 miles. We went after a late lunch, and so we were under a bit of time pressure. It might not have been the best choice, but the view was incredible. The hike in was not bad for the first couple of miles, with most of the elevation being in the last mile or so. I used to run marathons, so I am pretty good at listening to my body and stopping when I need to. I also had Takoda with me and one of my children, who eventually left me because I was going to slowly. Takoda also knew when he had to stop. Takoda and I marshaled our energy and kept letting our heart rates come down before we proceeded. We drank lots of water too. It was a struggle, but on the other hand I know challenges are worth the effort if you are smart about how you approach them. We almost gave up when we got to the top of the really steep part shortly before the summit, but then I called my children who’d gone ahead and they said it wasn’t too much further. I could barely hear them though, because the wind was howling like crazy. They told me that Takoda wouldn’t make the last bit, because you had to scale some steep rocks. One of my children said I’d probably make it, after pausing think for awhile. I waited for then to get down and handed Takoda off. There was a section I had to grab some roots and a tree trunk to scale up to a higher rock and then some scrambling was involved, but I’d been told the vista was worth it. Fortunately my fear of heights has diminished since becoming a photographer, because it’s hard to resist whatever it takes to get to a better vantage point.
After a short while, I made it to the summit. The kids were right. The wind was howling. I’m not even sure how I held the camera straight to make this image. Right before the summit, I’d had to take my off my hat and ball it up and shove it in my backpack, because I knew it wouldn’t last one second on my head in the wind. It was literally hard to stand up. Yet now when I look at this photo, you can’t see any of that–the challenge or the wind or the effort, just the great bird’s eye view and all the receding planes of rocks and mountains with a lake interspersed. I loved the two smaller rocks perched on the larger boulder that looked like they were looking at each other. Such beauty unfolding before me made me incredibly grateful for nature and my own health. I was able to appreciate the gift being offered which I gladly received. It was challenging like life is, but worth it. It dawned on me that we are programmed to think that when we overcome our obstacles and reach the summit, all will be easy. But no one ever said life is easy and so it was fitting that the wind was blowing a gale and I had to struggle to stay upright.
Our timing was good though. We knew a storm was coming and so I hurried down after taking it all in for a few moments. The sky was growing darker all the way back and the leaves were flipping like they do before rain comes. We had just shut the car doors when it started pouring. I have never felt so alive or so grateful to be with my beloved family.