October 29, 2007. Day 19.
Well I did it. I got up and climbed it again today. Sunrise and sunset. The project is beginning to know me too well. I’m seeing my reflection in this climb and I’m trying not to look too closely. The amount of awareness it’s requiring of me is blinding. I feel like all of the magic I’d felt at the beginning, the sense of Sanita as a spirit, the feeling of my spirit connecting with hers has diminished to the pure physicality of the place. I am atoms. The mountain is atoms. Although, according to string theory, we’re actually vibrating strings, nothing quite as small as we had thought, more of a collaboration of particles and waves. There is not a lot of heart in that. Trying to find that small voice of compassion to accompany the awareness is proving to be difficult, that sense of empathy for others, the same. I have a big midterm tomorrow, so when I’m not walking, I’m studying art theory. It makes Jack a dull boy.
I did have an interesting encounter this morning though. I almost forgot the conversation I had with this man I see every morning on the trail. He says his dog is the ambassador of the mountain and has to greet everybody he sees. It’s true, the dog runs up to me every time and I love it. He’s helped me get to the top quite often. His owner is always on the way down while I’m on the way up, even when I’m there at the crack of dawn climbing in the faintest moonlight, he’s on the way down. It’s like he lives in a cave at the top. Occasionally we comment on the sunrise and say hello, but today he asked me the strangest question, “Have you heard anything about the floods that have happened here?” I asked where he meant, “down at the bottom, they start in four mile canyon and wash right through here.” I said no. He said, “in the past sometimes when it rains here, huge walls of water come rolling through. Some people have been caught in it and washed away. When I walk here through the rain, I wait until it’s been raining a while in case there might be any flash floods.” I said thanks, I guess. He smiled and said, “Just wondering, I see you out here all the time, want you to be safe. Have a good one,” and he left.
(The ambassador of the mountain)
