I am one of the few who are looking forward to having the clocks fall back this weekend. The morning training has started out in the pitch black these days and now the sunset doesn’t happen until after I’m done.
This morning’s rain and clouds and mist made it darker and more dreary than usual though I had a good morning out. I saw the Signal Hill fox first on the wall and it then surprised me as it zipped by as I topped out of the stairs on my sixth go up.
Both times I couldn’t get the camera out fast enough to capture the fox so you’re stuck with dark, dreary, and grainy pictures for today. I did see this off-shore oil fields ship coming in just as the rain broke. Though tough to see, the hanging clouds were pretty cool. The good news is that I was able to do two extra sets of stairs this morning in the same time frame as my last go…always good to see evidence that this training stuff works. The real test, of course, will come in about two weeks when I first set out to carry a load to Camp One on Ama Dablam. Eight more sleeps at home…
You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
― Thomas Merton
I am less than two weeks to Ama Dablam. As usual, I’m not sure where the time went in the lead up to the climb, I just know I don’t quite feel ready. Though, if I am honest, I suspect I rarely feel “ready” and perhaps reminding myself of this will quell the rising anxiety that is common in the lead up to a climb.
The dialogue in my head goes something like this…(please read this as fast as you can) ,wow-this training today feels super hard, should have done more on the road last week, last week was rest week, I know but four days as a lump in the hotel wasn’t good, why didn’t I get it together to train more, you’re doing fine just finish this interval, everyone will be fitter and faster on the mountain, so what, climb slow…wow, this interval really sucks and I’m going to fall off the back of the treadmill, did I choose the right ice axe? 30 more seconds, whew this is tough, I wish I’d trained more, what if I get humbled like I did on Mount Cook last fall? You trained more, you’ll be OK, you got this…this climb has time, you can take your time, it’s all going to be OK, you always feel this way two weeks out, work with your mind, breathe…wow, this is tough today though I step ups are easier that they were two months ago, I wish Danny Williams would give St. Bon’s money so they can fix their chiller so we can play hockey, I could donate, I don’t know how to train for mountains without hockey, I miss hockey, shoot, this interval is hard, hockey is the best interval training of all, I wish I trained more, will my teammates like me? Gotta love this phase, the only way out is to breath and remember it’s impermanent, just like everything else, sweat in my eyes, one more interval, I can do this, I should have trained harder…
In the picture above, my leg is being held up by my best buddy, Karen Warren in a restaurant in Chattanooga, TN. We both loved the sign and the idea of me wearing heels. You can see my tattoo. It means courage. Karen have the Kurt Hahn address to the Association of Experiential Education last Friday and it that presentation, she said we need to exercise ordinary courage in pursuit of social justice. I agree and extend that idea that we need to practice ordinary courage in most everything we do especially in dealing with our own minds. My Buddhist teacher, Moh defines discipline as gentle bravery. While working with my mind yesterday, I thought of combining the two into gentle bravery/ordinary courage…meaning to me that in each moment, aiming to be both gentle and courageous, brave and ordinary…as well as courageously brave and ordinarily gentle…as well as bravely gentle and courageously ordinary…let those roll around in your head some, I am…and it’s helping.
I can’t make the anxious thoughts stop coming but I can receive and process them with gentleness. I can be bravely ask for support with them. I can let them move out and through into the ordinary rather than elevating and attaching to them. I can, not believe them. And I can start packing…
I like to start packing early. It helps work with the anxious thoughts and feelings that arise before a big climb. The first step is pulling the gear which Marian and I started doing last night. The nest step will be checking it all against the gear list and doing all the little tasks like attaching zipper pulls, changing batteries, and making needed repairs. Working with gear gives something concrete to do with all the anxious energy that’s moving in and through…and I’ve long since known that I’ll soon be dealing with my classic pre-trip decisions influenced by the erroneous belief that if I only make the perfect choices that I’ll never be uncomfortable on the mountain. Fortunately, experience has taught me that a) life at high altitude is most always uncomfy in some form or another, b) there is no one right choice, c) that I can make it work no matter what choice I make, and d) everything is gonna be alright. (watch this great video by Amelia Curran and Roger Maunder…the sound track is perfectly soothing for times like this and the message absolutely critical)
I looked at where the alphabet soup for blog entries was at prior to writing this post-turns out that I’ve completed one full acronym for Ama Dablam. Ama Dablam means “Mother’s Jewel Box”…Ama means mother and Dablam refers to the necklace that Sherpa women wear to keep precious items close to their hearts. For me, it means…
Awesome
Morning Mind
Anxiety
Discipline, D.O.M.S., Double Double
All Directions
Back at It, Berries, Boxes, and Buckets
Life
Altitude
Morne
And on that note, time to stop writing and get on with the to do list…much to do in the next 11 days!
A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
― Graham Greene
Having a vested interest in other souls unconditionally creates a ripple effect that produces miracles in the lives of those around us.
― Molly Friedenfeld
When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.
― Paulo Coelho
Fall has always been my favourite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.
― Lauren DeStefano
The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity; moving beyond it necessitates intuition, which in turn configures new perspectives and conquers fears.
-Dan Stevens
A lake is a landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.
― Henry David Thoreau
Mountaineering is more of a quest for self-fulfilment than a victory over others or over nature. The true mountaineer knows that he has not conquered a mountain by standing on its summit for a few fleeting moments. Only when the right people are in the right places at the right time are the big mountains climbed; never are they conquered.
– Charles Houston
It was a double double day on Signal Hill today because I saw both the sunrise and the sunset from the top of the hill. I was on my own this morning do some stair climbing with pack weight. This afternoon, I was joined by Gemma for an Up Down, Up Down workout. My legs are pleasantly spent and I enjoyed seeing both the eastern and western skies lit up with colour. I was also thinking that double double means inviting a friend, having a buddy, sharing the hill…I’ve been appreciating having folks out on the hill to climb and chat with-it makes the time and toughness go a bit faster and a bit easier. So, if you’re having a hard time getting off the couch, go for a different kind of double double: invite a friend and head out for a walk (and these days with the shortening daylight-you’ll likely catch a sunset or two.
Marian and I travelled back across the island to Gros Morne National Park again this weekend to teach at the Becoming an Outdoors Workshop. We stayed an extra day to do our second climb of Gros Morne together. To increase the training effect, we elected to backpack into the Ferry Gulch campsite, stay the night, and then the last hour to the top in the morning. It was a brisk walk in trying to beat the rain. Our speedy ascent paid off and we were able to have dinner and tuck in before the rain that fell all night began. The next morning we awoke to the sound of wind-driven snow hitting the tent. At first, we thought out climb might be off but I volunteered to get up up and make coffee (using my rule of never making a weather beaded decision from inside the comfort of my sleeping bag) and I saw a small, blue “sucker hole”. As I cooked breakfast, the wind dropped and it looked like it would be OK to head up.
We packed the smaller backpack with additional layers, snack, water, and tarp and off we went.
This set of stairs was awesome leg training!
The first time Marian and I climbed Gros Morne, it was during a driving rain storm so we missed this view of Ten Mile Pond. It was hard to pull off my classic pose in the strong wind the pummelled the summit top.
A peck on the cheek to celebrate our second time sharing this spot…and we figured something like our ten or twelfth mountain/volcano summit together. I want to go find all of our summit pictures to check the actual number.
Did I mention it was a tad bit chilly up top? This is Marian rocking the blue layer gig…with just the right splash of orange on the hoody.
The views on the descent were breath-taking…love the alpine plants in their autumn colours.
Back to Ferry Gulch, the campsite is at the end of this pond. If you look carefully, you can see a blue tent (not ours-it was tucked into the trees) at the end of the pond.
This scree slope reminds me of many that we crossed last spring in Nepal and makes me excited to be going back there in 5 weeks.
Back below, hiking out along the shoulder of Gros Morne, appreciative of a grand adventure that doubled as excellent training for Ama Dablam!
Judge yourself by the intentions of your actions and by the strength with which you faced the challenges which stood in your way. The universe is vast and we are so small.
― Oma de Sala
It was a gorgeous morning out on the East Coast Trail for an “Up-Down” training hike above Quidi Vidi. My training pack has grown to 45 pounds and my legs are regaining strength and stamina as they lift me up and down hills all about town. On this second day of fall, the temperature dropped a bit leaving a chilly wind blowing us up the hill this morning in the gathering light of day.
As the light rose from the sea, I revelled in the clear mind of morning. My mind, for a change was quiet, filled with the optimism, and the heaviness of mind I’ve felt of late was gone like the night. I attended a meditation retreat this past weekend and I credit that, and a meditation interview with my teacher, Moh, with the return of quiet morning mind.
A quietness, like the morning sun, rose up almost unperceived, until it startled me with clarity and light. In other words, I hadn’t noticed how quiet it was until I noticed how noisy it had been. With an instruction of “not too tight, not too loose,” I’ve found some relaxation in living with a moment by moment awareness of my/our mortality that has been dawning in me for the past while. Some Buddhists call it, “Living like your hair’s on fire” and indeed, that’s how it felt some of late. But just as the morning light changes from deep and fiery orange to the gentle glow of a yellow orb, so has the urgency to figure it all out right now.
Thanks to Moh, Marian, Sarah, Diane, and Wanda for helping me to and/or joining me in seeing the light of day (and the light of me) this week, it’s a fine view and makes training for big mountains (and life) much more fun!
When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.
― Vera Nazarian
I seem to have decided that all Ama Dablam entries will have a letter from Ama Dablam. It’s fun to watch my mind work with seeking out options for which letters/words could summarize my recent experiences in preparation for Ama Dablam. If I’d gotten it together to write a blog entry last Friday before heading out (sans internet) for the long weekend, it would have be “M is for Motivation,” because I felt so lifted and inspired by the Tickle Swim for Mental Health that I helped with. This moment below, so beautifully captured at the end of Jody’s swim kept me training hard for a few days.
if I’d written my entry yesterday, it would shave been entitled, “D is for Ditches.” This would be a reference to the Buddhist teaching of the Middle Way using an analogy of wanting to be travelling down the middle of the road, rather than falling into the ditches on either side. I described to a friend that recent life had been either all on or all off, up or down, here or there. “Very dichotomous,” I realized and I typed those words to her and told myself that I could back off that kind of thinking which wasn’t being particularly helpful.
Today, after getting back on the horse by completing a hard work capacity training session, I went with “L is for Life.” Life is truly like a river. It has current. It has rocky obstacles. Sometimes it flows steady and deep, other times it is boiling whitewater that threatens to swallow you whole. Very much like paddling a whitewater canoe and driving a motorcycle, the life lesson is to “Look to where you want to go.”
If you stare at an obstacle (rock, pothole, log) for very long, you are sure to hit it, be caught by it, be hurt by it. If, however, you can look ahead a bit, see a path, and steer to an opening, you might get through. So, even if though I want training to be easy (it isn’t-especially when the work is hard enough to make your ear channels sweat) and even if I want getting myself to train to be easy, it might not be-there are obstacles. There are things that compete for my attention. My energy is finite. That’s life. I am reminding myself that I can get stuck in a monster whitewater recirculating hole, get maytaged, swim down to get out, and then catch my breath. Then, and only then, get back in my boat and flow on down the river, both going with and across (and occasionally against) the current. My L is for Life lesson for today is learning to steer through all of the obstacles with ultimate compassion for myself and those around me.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
― Albert Einstein
TA Loeffler's Adventures that Move 