The Hidden Burden of 12,352'

This past week I had the opportunity of spending my time on a backpacking trip over Greenhorn Mountain getting trained in numerous facets for my outdoor rec job. (Yes…that is my actual job.) During our time we learned various trail ethics, medical scenarios, map reading, and a series of other odds and ends with regards to leading backpacking trips.

I had done my fair share of hiking and have even bagged a couple 14er’s in my past, so I was pretty confident in my ability before the trip. I ran cross country competitively in high school, and am training for a 10K race right now, I’m naturally an active dude, and have pretty decent cardio, so I knew I was capable of accomplishing my goal, and summiting.

Day two came, and I was able to summit as I knew innately that I could, and even surprised myself being the third person on staff to hit the 12,000+ foot peak.

We took our share of photos at the top, and then began our descent for a few miles to our next night’s campsite. We pitched our tents, rested for a while, did a few other relative exercises, and then began to debrief our day—one of our prominent topics being our personal challenges.

For most people it was the physical strain, and the mental toughness to keep going, but I was the oddball, and didn’t really feel the weight of physical burden and exertion from the journey.

Apparently that was weird. When it came to my turn to share, I immediately said that my biggest challenge was holding onto outside burdens. Burdens back home that I had brought onto the mountain.

Backpacking so perfectly represented my condition because even though I was hauling a 40 pound pack around for several miles, that really wasn’t the weight on my shoulders that was challenging me.

On my mind was the fact that I start a new semester of classes Monday, that I have new responsibilities, that my extracurricular are staring back up, and that there’s so many expectations people have of me, that I have to struggle to maintain. Those thoughts fogged up my brain and clouded my judgment, and prevented me from seeking joy in the fact that I was conquering a mountain with the support and encouragement of phenomenal co-workers.

I was so caught up in outside variables, that I couldn’t immediately see the progress I was making and accomplishing on the pack trip.

I feel that many of us get caught up in the same pattern, and thought process. We have our goals, and anticipations that we want to surmount, but we spend too much time focusing on technicalities that are out of our control. We hold onto things that we can’t change, and these elements weigh us down from truly seeing our situations as they were meant to be seen.

We become stagnant because we can’t learn to embrace the moments and experiences as they are without being infiltrated by exterior factors. We lose sight that we have people in our lives that can help carrier our burdens, struggles, and concerns, so we don’t have to walk the path alone. ­­ I can’t reiterate that enough—we don’t have to walk the path alone.

There’s truth in that statement because our intrinsic design was never meant to face our battles alone. We were made for camaraderie, and to share all experiences of both the highs and the lows in life. Which if you ask me is pretty damn cool when you really think about it.

So as a new school semester starts, a new season of work begins, or new challenges arise, don’t forget that adventures are always better when you share them with other people, and that the summit is always worth the struggle.

Climb On.

-Nick