Mountain Commandments
On a recent run, the beating spring sun soaked my back as I followed the path through the sage brush field. Ponderosa pines reached into the sky. A hundred years they have stood here. I will pass through in a few minutes and claim I’m familiar with the area.
Gradually, the trees pack close together, then suddenly a forest surrounds me. A pine cone becomes a temporary soccer ball; crunching against my foot, tinging along the path. The gradient increases and the cone is discarded as my focus is consumed by my struggle. My heart pounds, my legs drag, and doubt is casts into each step.
Movement in the mountains reveals truth quickly: the mind is loud, but the body is honest.
It becomes a balancing act: at what point does the burn shift from joy to ego? From presence to performance? I consider myself a lazy athlete. It is more important for me to preserve the joy than let my pride turn the path into a competition.
If I do something for the love of it, I come back again and again. If I let my pride run for me, I become burnt out and defeated. The preservation of joy led to the development of my first mountain commandment - Slow the fuck down.
The rest of the commandments have been developed over the years to become:
Slow the fuck down.
Plan A gets you out there; Plan Z gets you home.
Be prepared, be humble.
Find the glory in it all.
Peaks are for presence.
These aren’t just foundations for movement within the mountains, but have become a philosophy of life. My tendencies to rush, to commit a heavy burden, to grit my teeth and plow forward are qualities of my everyday life that are amplified in the mountains.
As every adventure unfolds, it never follows the details from the original plan. Gear malfunctions. Weather shifts. Trails disappear. None of these are failures - they are life.The mountains don’t care about your goals, your timelines, or your sense of control. The wilderness will continue being wild. The best you can do is meet it prepared, and humble.
And then there is the unexpected gift of it all.
After days of being trapped in a rainstorm, rivers too flooded to pass, sometimes the frustration and tests of patience give way to awe. . What a privilege it is to witness a storm in full force. The wonder is reserved in sunset views from the summit. It’s in the mud gripping your shoes, the soaked socks, the endless uphill, the wind flattening your tent. Some of my favorite memories live in discomfort: skiing through a freezing cloud, visibility cut to a few feet, laughing with a friend at how ridiculous it all was. We laugh, we rest, we endure, and we are lucky to do it at all. In that, we create something. A story. A feeling. A way of seeing that lingers longer than the effort itself.
With the car in sight, the run comes to an end. While I am reluctant to leave, yearing to stretch the moment thin, I know the sagebrush fields exist because I am only a passerby. To stay would be to change it—to carve into it, claim it, diminish it.
So I remain a visitor.
I have lunch with the mountaintops and tea with the trees. I bathe in babbling brooks and echo birdsongs. Briefly, lightly, I move through.
Peaks are for presence.
The ignition turns. The spell loosens. I drive back toward a world of schedules and structures, already knowing I’ll return.
Not to conquer anything.
But to move, to notice, and to shape those fleeting moments into something that lasts a little longer than footsteps.
