Following Men Up Mountains

You're not supposed to hike alone. You could fall off a cliff, sprain your ankle, or be attacked by a wild animal and there would be no one around to witness the tragedy. As a woman, I'm taught to proceed down even the well-lit and familiar streets of my childhood with a certain measure of caution. Then, it's only in my best interest to rule out dark forests, winding bends, and rocky trails. Even if you're competent and alert, capable and young, and if you've earned your Wilderness First Aid Certification and your bachelor's degree in English Literature and your right to enter Germany on a family exception, you're not supposed to hike alone.

I'm not a mountain climber--I'm a person who has climbed two mountains and documented those journeys extensively through highly filtered photos in which I posed as though I had not only accomplished an impressive feat but had actually conquered something.

Each time I've peaked a mountain, I've encountered a once-shiny, now-worn plaque, meant to last and marked with a date and a name to acknowledge a countryman or explorer who braved the unknown to claim the high point for his people.

Every time I've reached the top of a mountain, I've been following two men. Every time I've heaved my way up steep terrain, and every time I've lingered twenty paces behind, and every time I've needed to stop for a rest, and every time I've barreled down near-cliffs, and every time I've fallen hands or feet or ass first in slippery snow, and every time I felt the weight of my whole body crack down on unprotected ankles, I've felt like I was imposing a big, naïve, slow, and stupid burden on the two men in front of me.

As the second-youngest sibling of five, I am always behind. In age, achievement, and pretty much everything else, by virtue of the sibling hierarchy. It has come to shape my identity. Quick to agree and slow to assert, it isn't difficult to convince me to do something, but I've always had trouble with the fear of falling too far behind.

When I was nineteen years old, I followed two men up a mountain. I spent two nights in the wilderness of the wild, wild West, sleeping beneath the shade of trees older and taller than most I'd seen, listening to the trickling of a nearby stream, and huddling in my hand-me-down sleeping bag atop a lumpy blue tarp. Ill-equipped to protect myself from mosquitoes that appeared in droves, I was covered in red welts by the end of the week.

I had little to show for the accomplishment of peaking the near-10,000 foot mountain but dozens of these little red welts, a greenish bruise the size of a baseball on my right elbow from the incessant whack of the water bottle I had strapped to the side of my backpack with a borrowed-but-never-returned carabiner, and a sense of relief. By the week's end, I was no longer forced to fill role of clueless, hyper-agreeable, and level-headed girl to even out the conflicting tendencies of my travel companions: one hands-on, confident, and eager; the other intentional, trustworthy, and insightful.

The trek is but a collection of memories now, though I painstakingly recall tough uphill stretches that required me to retain composure and overcome the urge to burst into tears of frustration. I recall adopting the refrain "God is within her, she will not fail," with reluctancy at its cliché. I clung to its encouragement in the absence of other forms of self-assurance. It ran through my mind in a constant loop, the first half of the phrase marked with a shaky inhale, the second with a strident exhale to conceal my vulnerability.

I had never been as aware of how loudly I can breathe until I followed two men up a mountain. Mountain climbing, as one who has not maintained a particularly active lifestyle throughout life, had me gasping for air. For fear that the men would take my heavy breathing as a sign that I couldn't handle myself, I was hesitant to breathe as fully and satisfyingly as a less neurotic person might. There's nothing as stifling as holding your breath when you're out of breath.

At nineteen, as an utterly agreeable person, especially among men who were essentially strangers, my physical limitations proved detrimental to how I reflected on the journey in real time. Though my companions exuded patience and understanding in their willingness to stop, to wait, and to listen, I couldn't help but wonder how much further they might have pushed themselves--and how much quicker they might have arrived--in my absence.

What I remember most of finally reaching the top was that awe-inspiring chill amid sweltering heat. When your body and clothing are drenched in sweat and you've reached a mountaintop and an alpine breeze hits, the cooling sensation and the awareness of just how hot you've become are overwhelming. The shock traveled down my spine, and the chill paired nicely with an incredible view of the vast, expansive world around me, and I felt--in the best possible way-- insignificant. The word my brain reached for, having just taken a course in the critical methods of literature, was sublime.

This was my sublime. I achieved it, and I got to sit there and stew in it for twenty minutes until someone told me what was next on the agenda and I had to rise from my perch and bid my accomplishment adieu.

Then there was the claiming.

When traveling with two men, you observe subtle moments of dominance. The "I know the way," "no, I think it's this way," "my way will be better," "my way will be more considerate of her abilities," "I--alpha male-- will take this way since I can handle it, but you--beta male and female-- can take that way if you can't," "aren't I so successful?" "don't you trust me with your life?" moments. Of course, the men won't say these things in so many words, but their actions and passive aggressive commentary often account for such ideas.

Then, the less subtle moments of dominance.

If you spend more than twelve hours with two men in the wilderness, they will pee on things.

And pee they did. Off cliffs and into bushes and in the vicinity of camp, and once, in fact, off the mountaintop itself as a sort of ceremonious marking of territory.

As I barreled back down the mountainside, the weightlessness I made space for in my mind at the peak faded. In the final few hours of our journey, on the way back to civilization, I welcomed a wiser mindset than I had two days before, the knowledge of the remaining length of the journey, and the hope--however less alluring than the near-inconceivable view from the mountaintop-- of the inviting and steady jostle of the backseat of an SUV waiting for me at the end. Soon I would have the opportunity to drift in and out of consciousness and give thanks that it was all over and file the experience away as pleasant while casting the rugged moments of a less idealistic recollection from my memory.

Our coworker arrived to pick us up from the bottom of the mountain and drive us safely back to the Bible camp where we worked, and I was perfectly content to sit in the back and say little, while the two men--both with a firmer grasp on the gravity of where we had been, and a better sense of direction--could bring him up to speed.

"Tell me all about the trip," the driver said.

The men began recounting the past few days, starting with the beginning of our hike. Then came the fateful, humorous, and so unintentionally insightful remark from my hands-on, confident, and eager companion.

"When we got to the spot by the creek, we decided to set up camp. I went to hang the bear bag, he started cooking dinner, and she..." he paused, and I imagine the brief silence we all experienced was, for him, filled with a frantic search for a contribution of mine that seemed nearly as important as anything they had done to make our trip successful,

"...was there."

In the stretch of silence that followed, I figured I had three options: the first, to seem highly offended by this remark and take it personally; the second, to pretend I was asleep in the backseat; and the third, to begin laughing hysterically. I went with the most easy-going approach, fashioning myself into precisely what he had characterized. The laugh. Thus, I was forever happily branded as the person who "was there." As if by happenstance I found myself in these circumstances, upon none of my own merit and contributing little but my physical presence.

The sad and smart and funny part of just "being there" is that it fit. And I wore it so well.

Nearly three years later, at twenty-two, I followed two men up my second mountain. Having spent the previous year in a state of perpetual uncertainty about my future, my goals, and the very notion of success, I had adopted an emotional, financial, and physical reliance on the selflessness of my family and felt I fully embodied my self-characterization of "imposing" and "irrelevant." For what felt like forever but had, in reality, been just over a year was this great hurdle in my interactions. If someone asked me where I was, I could easily tell them. Yet, if they asked what I was doing there, I had great difficulty convincing even myself that the answer was true, valid, or meaningful.

Accustomed to my role as the tag-along, I was well prepared to follow my older brothers to the heights of the Austrian Alps. This time, with one mountain peak under my belt, I resolved not to complain but to maintain a cheery countenance.

These men--men I'd known my whole life and had known well--were less obliged to perform patience and consolation than my former companions. My frustrations were met with hasty "are you okays?" and with each slip of my foot and each utterance of their verbal encouragement which they intended to help me instill a sense of self-confidence, the chip of just "being there" I carried on my shoulder began to feel heavier than the borrowed backpack resting on my hips.

There's a certain harsh reckoning that accompanies climbing a snow-covered mountain in your foam-soled Adidas trainers, though I'm still convinced uphill hikes are a far greater test of mental endurance than physical capability. As we traversed up inclines and the snow soaked its way through the soles of my improper footwear, others made their way down the trail with what I took for ease and I began to resent myself. How did I end up here? It didn't feel like I chose this series of events, but I didn't not choose them either.

The hardest pass was the last hour, and my soggy shoes carried me halfway up the longest stretch of snowbank, tainted with the mud off the boots of those who went before us.

There, I hit a breaking point.

I was behind and livid at myself for falling, livid at the men for charging on. They stood on a ridge high above me, exercising their kindest form of patience: remaining stationary. I couldn't bear to face them with blatant awareness of the burden I felt myself becoming. I turned my face away from the men, took in the view, and placed my hands on my hips, attempting to talk myself out of emotional collapse with heavy breaths. I was too far removed from Bible camp, too weathered and jaded to repeat the consoling phrase that "I would not fail." I was too cynical to employ a kind or accepting inner monologue. Rather, a debate.

Worse Sensibility: "You aren't meant to be here. You're taking up space you haven't earned. You can't do it anymore. You will fail. Worse yet, you are failing."

Better Sensibility: "This is an anxiety attack. You've had this before. In your childhood bedroom and in the library at school and in the car after work."

Worse Sensibility: "This is not an anxiety attack. You don't have those. You're not allowed to."

Inquisitive Middle Ground with Ironic Undertones: "Do you have those? And who is allowed to? Is crying on the snowbank and entirely losing your breath and feeling not only the weight of your own emotions as a burden, but also being unable to properly express your feelings of inadequacy to the people who care about you and consequently employing a cascade of arguments to convince yourself that everyone who says they care about you and acts like they care about you is just pretending a diagnosable characteristic of anything? Or are you just being a bit dramatic?"

Better Sensibility: "These are questions for Google--What are the characteristics of an anxiety attack?--or therapy, should you choose return--Am I making all of this up?-- not questions to be asking yourself on a treacherous mountain slope where if you lost your balance, you could fall and hurdle to your untimely demise."

And so I pressed on! Perhaps not even of my own accord or on account of my better sensibility, but to satisfy a primal desire to avoid falling to my demise and the unbearable weight that would accompany not only the idea of being a burden but being a burden incapable of simply "being there." I wiped hot tears from my cheeks and thanked the Lord in heaven that I wore my sunglasses that day. Even if I couldn't muster the strength to peak the mountain solely by my own motivation, I could always convince everyone I had by boasting about it on social media in the following days. And that I happily did.

Upon reaching the intended destination--the halfway point of the journey, the peak, the summit--I spent my treasured ten minutes of self-reflection and acknowledgement of sublimity before our descent observing my companions and validating my own quasi-success with photographic evidence.

And I wonder.

Is a mountain a man? Jagged peaks a chiseled jaw, tough switchbacks an intimidating disposition, towering cliffs and far-reaching limbs the arms and legs to hold him. And stubbornness his trait, for mountains cannot be moved, pulled, swayed, or manipulated. And mountains are not easy-going, for mountains do not go.

Yet, what does a mountain do but sit and revel, exist in the inhales and exhales of a windswept world, branded and named and simplified. Peaks conquered and rough terrain corralled by man into something more manageable, appreciated, or easily trodden. Caressed, even, by his gentle footprints.

I couldn't help but notice the colorful little wildflowers that sprouted up in the green patches between rocks, presiding over hikers, birds, and bugs from the highest perches.

At twenty-two, I encountered a crux in life. I surrendered many former individualistic, goal-oriented tendencies that carried me through my years in academics and landed on a brutal understanding. My understanding--the one that job prospects and aspirations to notable achievements and the social media profiles of my peers have forged--is that the successful people are the people hiking up mountains alone.

The successful people are the people hiking up mountains alone, and I am not one of those people.

If I stood to face my own discarded job applications, and my ideas of achievement, and certainly my own online presence, where my countenance sits isolated in a vibrantly manipulated feed curated solely to serve my own self-interest, the image is not a touching and artistic commemoration of an imperfect life, but a mirror distorting what I'm meant to see.

At first glance into the pseudo-reflection, one would assume--I have convinced myself to assume this of others--that I have hitched my weighty wagon of aspirations behind my own two feet, conquered each destination with a contented grin and will simply and assuredly nail down a shiny commemorative plaque with my name, the date, and the location of each of my many accomplishments for all to remember.

But, in the end, what will they remember? What will I have done to help them remember? Will they care to read the plaque at all? Is it enough to have simply been there?

Without hands to reach for to steady myself, without obligatory cries of encouragement, without someone, some feeling, some notion of meaning that need not resemble a self-serving idea of success waiting kindly at the next ridge, I wouldn't be there. I will not. I cannot. I must not hike up this mountain alone.