Mountain Tops and Healing
Battle Abby Photo: Nancy Geismar
When I look out across the landscape from a mountain top, eyes scanning, my awareness is met with a sense of accomplishment coupled with the notion that there are infinite peaks left to climb, and some of them feel impossible. One of the greatest values in climbing mountains is that the act is often a powerful metaphor for so many things I face. Lately I have been thinking about healing. Emotional healing and healing from trauma. Climbing mountains as a metaphor for healing.
The truth about healing is that at least seven things happen.
1) I feel a sense of accomplishment when an aspect of my being heals.
Like standing on a summit there is a sense of accomplishment when I heal something. I feel unburdened and with that a euphoria of lightness comes over me. And it is good to stand in that awareness and joy to savor it.
2) I can spend a lifetime healing and not be able to heal all aspects of myself, just like I can never climb everything.
I remember being on a summit with a group of students or clients and one them asked, “Ken how many of these peaks have you climbed?” In a flash of insecurity I quipped, “All of them” which was not true. But they believed me and looked at me in awe, but inside I felt hollow because I knew it was not true.
Every day I come up against things that I know I need to face, and address. The wounds I have names for. Impatience. Frustration. Self righteousness. I also know that there is a whole host of things I can not even name. Things in the landscape of my life I might discover if I took a trip out of the valley I typically inhabit. Perhaps in another lifetime.
3) It gets easier. Sometimes even fun or effortless.
I remember how much mountaineering used to hurt. It was awful. Ed Abby reminds me of this in his treaties on walking. “That iron tug of gravitation should be all the reminder we need that in walking uphill we are violating a basic law of nature.” This is what healing personality aspects feels like at the start. But as I grow, I learn that the gravity of my life is my OWN resistance. Not fighting is half the battle. What is most healing is gratitude. Gratitude cuts through resistance like a well sharpened blade. Even for the most painful things. This can make healing effortless.
4) I heal and need to heal some wounds over and over. Like climbing the same peak.
Over the course of a couple of summers, I climbed Mt Athabaska over a dozen times. I moved on from that kind of guiding work. The thing I keep healing and needing to heal, like Sisyphus rolling his rock uphill only to lose control of it near the summit and having it trundle back down, is wishing others would change. Hopefully, some day, I can move on from this work too. Some day.
5) I have failed attempts.
There are some aspects of my healing that I have failed at. Some issues in my life are so complex that progress is glacial or non existent. Layers of things to overcome all need time and energy to solve and the progress is slow. So I give up. Then I come back. And give up. And come back. Anger about things that are beyond my control comes to mind. Healing this would be a coup in my life.
6) Some things feel impossible but they are not.
Some days I wake up and feel a sense of dread like I do before a big climb. Knowing that the day will present a host of challenges I am not sure I can handle. I get up, make a coffee, and lift my arms up in the air and it all changes, then I take the first steps. As I make my way through my day I witness that nothing is ever as hard as I make out to be in my head. Walking through life I realize that what is needed emerges when I need it and when I am ready. “Most things I worry about never happen anyway.” Tom Petty
7) “What is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above.” Gaston Rebuffat”
Carolyn Myss references a tower in Manhattan. When we heal it is like we have a penthouse suite and we could never describe to people on the first floor how great things are high up in the tower. Perspective is everything about healing. As much as we would love for others to join us, people in the valley or at on other level, only see us as nuts. This is a truth of both mountaineering and healing. It always feels a bit lonely trying to describe our experiences. And for me both have always been a bit frustrating. But they are our experience to savor and share with those who are willing.
My partner Julie has a phrase she that I believe to be true. When faced with something or in support of me when I am staring down the barrel of something she says, “ It is a tough job being a human being, only the most courageous choose it.” I used the think that climbers were better than other people. Like they were the only people who knew courage. But this is not true. Climbers are no different or better than anyone else. Joe Campbell points out, “Just being born is an incredible adventure and a supreme act of courage.”
