Life is Messy, Hard, Scary, and Painful..Lessons Learned From a Mountain

The most rewarding thing I did this summer was climb my first 14ner with about 80 teenage girls.  For those of you not from Colorado a fourteener is a mountain that has a summit at or above 14,000 feet.  Colorado is home to over 50 fourteeners ranging in levels of difficulty and it is very popular to climb these mountain for recreation. The fourteener we climbed is Mt. Sherman which is ranked as one of the easier fourteeners in Colorado.  However, keep in mind that just because it may be an easier fourteener than others, any fourteener is challenging and comes with dangers.  My experience on that mountain this summer was epic and I want to share some of it with you Sparklers today!

Climbing a fourteener is not something that has ever been on my bucket list, in fact I have never had a desire to climb a fourteener, despite the wide popularity of it in Colorado.  However, this summer our annual Girl’s Camp was a high adventure year, so we planned all kinds of high adventure activities like rock climbing, mountain  biking, water sports, and yes, hiking a fourteener.  The point of  this year was to show the girls that they can do hard things, and I think we all learned that lesson loud and clear!  Here are some of the other lessons I learned along the way.

Lesson:  You get to your destination one step at a time.

The path up this mountain was steep and rocky almost the entire way.  The hike also started above tree line at around 12,000 feet. The air up there is much thinner and you tire faster.  As such the only way I could make it up at times was to take a few steps and then rest.  I would point to a pile of rocks about ten feet away and say, “Let’s just make it to that pile of rocks and then we’ll rest.” So we would walk the ten feet and stop to catch our breath.  We slowly inched our way up the mountain like that.  It felt like our progress was so slow we would never get to our final destination. But when we finally did make it to the top, it was astounding to look back at how far we’d come.  One step at a time can take you beyond anything you thought possible!

Lesson: Sometimes you have to stop and cry before you can go further.

There were so many times on our way up that mountain when we wanted to give up and turn back. When you push yourself past your limits you will feel it, and we definitely did.  When those moments came, we took a moment to stop and cry.  We had two or three ‘crying spots’ along our trail that day, where we just stopped, cried, and hugged each other.  It seemed that after a good cry we were revitalized and ready to push on.  So remember, if we allow ourselves these moments of weakness when needed, we can overcome just about anything.

Lesson: We need each other to make it!

These are the girls in my pace group.  Without them I know I wouldn’t have made it up that mountain. There were times when I wanted to quit and they were strong for me, and then there were times when they wanted to quit and I was strong for them.  Some of the moments when I wanted to give up, I would think about them, and I thought if I quit, they might quit. I didn’t want to let them down, so that thought pushed me onward.  These are the people I laughed with, cried with, got angry with, and at one point was even terrified with.  We went through all of this together and we did all of this together.  It was powerful!  In life we need this kind of support to help us get through.  Out of all 80 girls that climbed Mt. Sherman that day, none of them did it alone!  Remember to find those people in life that support and encourage you, with their help you can do anything.

I learned so much climbing that mountain this summer, and it’s an experience I would trade for anything.  Despite all the struggles we encountered getting up that mountain, one of the biggest takeaways I had was that it was worth it!  It was messy, hard, scary, and painful, but it was worth it! Life is the same way.  We can’t always see the benefits beyond our efforts, but the view from the top is something else!  Don’t ever give up Sparklers!

Love Alicia