Slalok

"We spend so much of our lives in control, and there's something terrifying and exhilarating in losing it."

I read this the other day in a book about surfing. I thought that it does a pretty good job of describing my love affair with the ocean. And my other love affair with feeling so very small, to the point of insignificant, in the mountains.

Ryan and I had been chatting about this on the 5 or so hour approach. And his point, I thought well spoken, was that there really is no control. We spend our whole lives living in this illusion that we wrap ourselves in.. of control. And it is those moments, in the teeth of the most powerful ocean or the peak of the most uninterested mountain, that we can connect with the infinite. Living in the purest sense, in that moment.

"Because I don't really believe that it is outside of us... it is in us. It is in each and every one of us, and it is in everything."

I had left Ryan with my dogs about 4/5ths of the way up the climb. He had told me that that he wanted to go on a mission, but not a huge mission - he was just getting over being sick. I guess I had underestimated the size of our undertaking. I had wanted him to join me in the last leg but understood his circumstance. Needless to say, I was walking accross an enormous icefield and towards the summit of one of the bigger peaks on the duffy by myself and feeling very small amoungst it all.
But that's just it. Walking across that glacier, and feeling so very small. Alone, but not at all. The mountains don't care if I summit or not. They don't care if I'm even there or not. Here today and gone tomorrow, my friends past were all there with me. And they always will be. And as I realized, so too will I.

If you look in the picture from the summit you can see the first Joffre lake way off in the distance. Trying to negotiate my entrance was interesting to say the least. I was happy to finally get my first glimpse of the 3rd lake, below me, and my entrance.
What a place to stand and take it all in..