Sweaty Tears

Mountains have a way of quieting grief. On the laborious trek up the rocky trail, your breath comes fast and your pulse hammers a frenetic staccato as it tries to keep pace with your exertion and clear the lactic acid that pools with each step. Your muscles scream out with every boulder climbed. Your palms shred as they grasp the rough sandstone steps hewn into the mountain face. Your boots summon an army of blisters out of your previously tender, sheltered skin. And with an aching slowness, your grief begins to slide silently out of your soul. Your tears blend with the sweat pouring down your face as your body surrenders to the fact that, in this moment, physical survival is paramount. Your body knows to shed excess weight in times of physical duress. And grief is one of the heaviest packs to carry. As you struggle harder to draw in the next breath, contract your diaphragm, remain in motion, all thoughts of anger, jealousy, loss, fear, and helplessness are discarded by the sides of the trail. Entropy is the law of the land and it must be obeyed. To sustain the battle against gravity, grief must be relinquished in order to be allowed to worship at the summit's altar. You can't climb above the clouds with tear-stained stones in your pockets.

Resting beside the cairns that stand guard along the ridge line, you can feel the immensity of the earth beneath your feet. The tiny white flowers that push up through the coarse dirt somehow managing to look stronger and more resilient then the granite they flank. A misty wind from far-off peaks arrives steeped in a lesson on the inevitability of it all. A rock rolls inexorably down a hill. A river never stops rushing toward the sea. An eagle patiently circles, watching for its prey. The sun breaks through the clouds.

At its zenith, the mountain's magic and our own potential collide. The same soft breezes that managed over millennia to alchemize a glacier's retreat into delicate peaks, today lifts the veil between what is and what is possible. The veil between yesterday and tomorrow. The veil between those breathing in and those who have breathed their last. Looking down on a verdant carpet of green draping the valleys below, with mountains looming as far as the eye can see, perspective is forced and our grief appears smaller and more malleable. In that moment, we can harness the power of the sun, the wind, our mind, our heart, our thighs and use them to extinguish the angry flames of our grief, compress the darkness out of the memories. Continue applying pressure until it softens in your hands. Cup it gently and draw it up toward your face, imbuing it with the same radiant warmth cast by a gentle summer sun. Infuse it with the delicate perfume of jasmine. Then set it gingerly back inside your heart. Coat it in a shimmering layer of hope and light it ablaze with a new fire. A fire that will stoke your own furnace of desire. Flames that will add to your own strength, rather then singeing your soul. Flames that will light your way down the trail and out of the forest, leaving no trace, but the ashes of your grief scattered among the summit stones.