October 14, 2007. Day 4 already.
Just finished my morning hike. Cold today. I hiked through snow flurries at the top. Beautiful wonderland coming down. It even started to stick on the east side of the mountain. My rain coat soaked through and my arms were chilled. I only wore a t-shirt underneath. Next time I’ll wear a little something more. The weather changes so instantly from day to day up there. The first day I was boiling hot. The next few days I pared down each time. Today I was under-dressed. Just over four days. It’s wild that I’ve already climbed that mountain seven times for this project. My body is showing signs of changing so much. Emotionally, physically, even sexually. Not drinking is contributing to my clarity as well.
I’ve begun to have sensations deep within somewhere that I’m walking on a being everyday. That certain types of rocks, especially long striated slabs seem to almost behave as flesh to my feet as I walk over them, or some type of exposed organ just beneath the skin. When I’m walking on sharp rocks, it’s more like an exoskeleton of the mountain, and when I’m walking up the prepared stairs made by a trail crew, I feel little connection directly to the mountains character, but still she conveys a type of welcoming with these stairs. Every step I took today, on any of these surfaces, (gravel trail is like skin) I tried to imagine that each senstion on my feet was exactly the right sensation to perpetuate the type of healing my body needs. As if it were reflexology from the mountain. This produced a type of walking meditation which I accompanied with my arms relaxed and my hands interlocked behind my back. Like an old man walking to town with a goatee to his navel and long bags under his eyes.
As my arms warm back up, they’re attempting to chill my whole body instead. As if they were meat from a meat locker tossed onto my body making it cold and my arms slowly the same temp as the rest of me. I’m curious about how long hypothermia would take in a situation like this.
I’m also curious about who Mount Sanity might be, I’m sort of posing questions to her. The pronoun reflects my conviction that she’s a woman. But saying woman indicates a human which of course she’s not. She’s a spirit, I suppose, but not so much in the sense of ghost, more preternatural. She’s not unkind; she’s just. She requires constant respect. And I mean at every footstep I take, I’m offering my gratitude to her. Without this, I feel I’m risking injury. It is through this respect that injury will be avoided or accepted as a blessing from this creature. When I step on her flesh, or organ meat as it is beginning to feel like, I’m especially conscious of the way my feet land. Feeling more cautious about it and perhaps a bit hesitant. Today I found myself even avoiding some of those areas altogether and walking around it onto soil or sharper stone.
It doesn’t feel that far off to imagine physically the structure of stone being only inches away from the material I am made of. A cosmic hiccup could suddenly turn that mountain into the visible breathing spirit beast that it is and alternately turn me to stone. It is with this attitude that I walk on her. So suddenly it could be the reverse.
Not to indicate that she is unhappy with herself. She seems content, albeit a bit mischievous. The triatheletes that pummel her with Nikes day in and day out seem so precarious to me there. I only hope they have engendered themselves equal status with the rock, because, to me it’s striking how quickly it could turn on them. The dogs seem to know this. They embody the tone of the rock so thoroughly that she is visible in their animation. Perhaps the dogs aren’t just happy to be on a walk, but maybe they are the rock’s limbs. I suppose that would make the grass hair and the trees some kind of dreadlock. (birds and insects?) Let’s make a list: Rock, soil, clay, gravel, stones, boulders, grass, wildflowers, shrubs, trees, and I suppose water and wind make up Mount Sanity. At least from the outside. Inside she could even be molten. How she got to be where she is and even the harder question, where does she begin? At what point am I officially on Mount Sanity? It’s like asking the question where does my back turn into ass? For the sake of argument, I’ll say it’s from the driveway where I park my bike at the trailhead (the mountain, not my ass). Afterall, that’s where the sign is with her name on it.
Some details before I go today: Day two was dedicated to my mother. I thought about her as I hiked. I had this feeling we were similar in that we both have moved around a lot as we try to build our life journeys. We’ve both tried to make sense out of being able to jump from one vocation to another.
Day three I haven’t clearly decided. Nor today. There is so much more I could write about. The deer for instance. They’re beautiful. I’ve seen them three out of the four days including today. They’re lovely. So quiet. So alert. So powerful.
Oct 14, 2007 Day 4 7:41 pm
The climb was the most difficult tonight. The weather has continued to be quite chilly and wet. The trail turned to mud on the way up and I found it difficult to maintain forward momentum. The view was entirely obscured by low clouds. There was a pride in the mist, of course, but my legs wiggled with the tedium of the climb. On the descent I very clearly received a warning from Sanita when I rolled over on my right ankle pretty far causing fear to rise in my belly. I remembered to remain brave for a little bit longer, thanked Sanita for such a gentle slap and continued down in the heavy dusk.
The slick red clay and the sound of my boots slurping through it contained a hint of the erotic. The deer were out before dark this time so I managed to photograph them in real light. My camera is limited and it’s difficult to capture things in this kind of light. No drama in these shadows, just murk. It’s too bad since the otherwise crisp dead limbs on the ground had soaked themselves to a slick black and the turning yellow leaves vibrated against them as did the wild grass and neon lichen. The climbing wall with the patterns of chalk speckled over it like confectioners sugar made for a lovely image, but it’s too massive and too subtle to be understood by my little snapshot camera. For the first time I felt and regretted the limits of my equipment, not to mention the limits of my knowhow as to what equipment I’d even need. These limits can be helpful, I suppose if I see them in the right light. I can only lean so much on image, I will have to look elsewhere to portray this weather.
I am quite exhausted. Though the day felt hopeful, I could barely shake the chill I received from being under-dressed this morning. I’ve managed to avoid that chill tonight. Showering right away and covering my body in anything made of fleece. I’m even wearing fleece tights. I’m curious whether I should check the weather or remain in the unknown. Is it useful to have a forecast when I’m trying to experience this mountain in the moment? It’s a blend of worlds anyway. I’m functioning all day in the regular intern¬et savvy reality. Even on the mountain I’m not particularly unique. Everybody in Boulder seems to hike a mountain, if not daily at least often. What’s different for me is my intention. I’m going into this with the perspective of a seeker. Anything that occurs on that mountain, or anywhere during this ritual is relevant to it. It’s amazing how true that feels to me. I suppose it’s like real faith. I’m managing to feel connected to something I know is true because it feels real in my body. The faith is that I’m choosing to believe that feeling will be there if I set my intention in the right way. Many times, I’ve simply taken hikes and it’s made little difference to me that I was on one—however strenuous or beautiful. If I never set the intention, I felt none of this heightened reality I’m describing now. This is corny to the reader, but it can hardly be said another way.
Today I also observed myself descending the mountain both times in a ridiculous hurry, as if I’d left the stove on. But more than that, tonight I passed the sole person I saw on the trail as he descended ahead of me and to break the tension of catching up to him, I said man, aren’t you cold? He dressed himself only in nylon basketball shorts and a polypropelene top under his tshirt. No hat even! He said not too bad, I got warm on the way up, but now I’m getting a littly chilly. And suddenly without thinking, I said to him, I hiked this mountain this morning and I froze, so I wasn’t going to let that happen again! He sort of chortled a little and let me have my ridiculous boast which had wiggled its way into an insult toward him as well for dressing poorly. So unnecessary of me. Not long after I passed him, hearing him constantly close to me, maybe out of his own machismo responding to my insult, I twisted my ankle. If Don Juan were to advise me in this (via Castaneda’s clever account of him) He would say I could have died. I’d let my guard down, My intention had wavered, and sorcerers know how to get inside of you at moments like that. I’m lucky to be alive. I was not being impeccable. It also occurred to me that my heart is trying to seal off the others on the mountain. I’m trying to charm Sanita for myself. I’m a jealous lover. I’m also curious if Sanita is not doing this to me. If her mischief might lie in her power to posess the hiker and turn them into a voracious triathele. A curse for life if I could imagine.
Which reminds me, at the Chicago marathon last week, it reached 85 degrees before 9am. Choosing to hold the marathon anyway, 400 runners collapsed due to the rapid depletion of water at the refreshment stations. Of that number hospitalized, one even died. What possessed that place that day? It seems like some of the same power Sanita is trying to weild over me and the others on her face as we try to run up and down her faster and faster. The dogs trotting with us and past us are instead possessed by her humor. Which reminds me, those jagged rocks are less spiky armor and more like teeth, broken teeth, many parallel rows. Tonight they seemed more menacing and shadowy.
A man on Ripleys Believe it or not back in the 80s achieved a kind of stardom, if you can call it that, for eating entire cars and other horrible manufactured industrial items. The secret? He made the items very small first of all, bite sized, but then he peeled back his lip as the camera zoomed in and sure enough, he had two parralel rows of teeth. This image comes back to me now, as it haunted me then, what does two rows of teeth have to do with the ridiculous task he’d set himself to? What prompts the abnormal human to pursue freakdom? The answer is too obvious. Maybe the better question is, what prompts the normal human to continue a pursuit of normalcy? Even in my eccentricities, I color myself normal. I mean, I justify my odd behaviors, like moving across country with no money, purchasing equipment to make art without money, staying in poverty to exemplify downward nobility—all as efforts to be normal sometime later, after everybody sees I was doing it just to become famous and then make it rich. Of course, that’s just the negative version of the myth.
A few other literary thoughts have crossed my mind. One is Tom Spanbauer’s Killdeer game, where his coming of age character, Shed, in The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, pretends to be doing something while pretending to be doing something else. Neither activity can be done directly. The Killdeer is a bird that attracts the stranger by pretending to be wounded, only for the stranger to find, when attempting to help (or eat) it, they’ve been led far away from the nest and the bird flies away.
I just checked the weather. Tomorrows forecast proves to be much warmer than today. I’m so relieved I almost feel like crying. It doesn’t look like rain and it might even reach the 60s tomorrow. Today was in the forties and very wet. Partly cloudy tomorrow is excellent news.
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