This summer I lived in the mountains. My lungs acclimated to the thin air, the mountains became a part of my blood. We showed children, teens and adults the meaning of beauty just as we had been shown. We looked across the valleys, peaks and waterfalls only to lose sight of the wilderness on the horizon. We sat down at 14,048 feet in the pitch black and realized that death was but a few steps away. The closer we were to death the more alive we felt.
I watched the buck come up over the ridge, he looked at me, and just like that he was gone.
“Everything is going to be ok”
I learned the meaning of respect, from that respect great love was born. The peaks, the snow, the deer, the alpine lakes, the trees, the rocks, the grass and even the violent storms captured my heart. I felt safe in a place where safety can slip through your finger tips in an instant. I felt passion as if it was a part of my DNA.
We lost our way in a foreign place, a place we had never seen before. It was the realization that we were lost, the feeling of being utterly helpless that taught me more about myself than I had learned in a lifetime.
In the mountains I talked to God. It was the mountains that showed me what my soul had been longing for.
-TJ