Places I Feel Small
Expansion & savoring for big experience
It was pitch black and cold when my alarm went off inside the pocket of my warm sleeping bag.
Outside I could hear the strength of the rushing stream and not much else. Even the birds were still asleep as I climbed out of my semi-warm tent to find my bathroom for the morning.
Even when I wake up super jazzed and ready to hit the trail, climbing back in my tent after peeing in the woods always tempts me to sleep just a little longer. Well, not sleep, but at least be warm inside my cozy tent until the sun gets above 8am.
But not today.
Today I was going to attempt La Plata for a second time and I was not going to debate laying around in my tent over eating fancy cake somewhere beautiful.
I was on existential business of the highest order (a.k.a creative experimentation), camped in the same spot I’d found the year before, retracing my steps with the intention of doing things differently this time.
You see the year before I’d attempted the same peak and failed.
Seven hundred vertical feet from summit I failed. All alone in a boulder field above 13,000 feet, unable to see anyone or find the trail, I broke. Everything in me broke. With my heart aching and tears flowing I chose decent over self-torture and shaming, vowing to try again ( . . . someday).
I was hoping for a lot as I pulled on my crusty, semi-muddy hiking boots. Bluebird skies with cool clouds. Low wind. Good trail friends. Epiphanies on several subjects. Maybe some inspiring project ideas. Cake that didn’t get squished in my pack. And . . . I hoped to summit–something that usually isn’t necessary but is always very welcome.
What’s it like to summit a rocky peak above treeline?
Or to emerge from endless dirt trail switchbacks into a sun-filled mountain basin dotted with yellow and purple wildflowers?
Or to hike along an alpine ridge looking out over the forever horizon and into the miniature mountain worlds below?
It’s like being infinitely tiny and perpetually expansive all at once.
Feeling small in big experiences
The first time I solo hiked above 10,000 feet I headed up to find Hope Pass near Twin Lakes, Colorado. The trip was my second Cake Project adventure and I’d packed one of those huge red velvet cupcakes filled with frosting into my tiny runner’s daypack alongside the 1 liter waterbag and random granola bar I’d never eat because eating granola at altitude is almost as bad as eating peanut butter at altitude.
After nearly 5 miles straight up the trail (and I’m talking straight up no switchbacks…maybe there were switchbacks but if there were I blacked them out) …after nearly 5 miles straight up the trail I broke treeline and everything got real still.
Everything.
The world around me felt like it took three deep breaths, expanding within itself all around me. I felt completely held as I wheezed in the high altitude, trying to catch my breath while feeling like I almost didn’t need to breathe.
It was probably some form of altitude sickness. Or existential epiphany unfolding. Both kind of take your breath away while dumbfounding the sh*t out of you.
In any case I felt small and so expansive all at once–a feeling I’d come to know well and have continued to cultivate in all my adventuring.
The ascent: getting from here to way up there
I always want to quit. And I always seriously consider my ability to make solid life choices.
Always, at least once when I’m ascending, I want to quit or drown in self-doubt. Strange to want to drown in self-doubt, but if I’m being honest that’s what happens–I spontaneously want to drown in self-doubt after pushing my body and mind to the limits.
Funny how that happens…
Ascent is always and forever a roller coaster experience for me. Sometimes it’s like those old wooden coasters that shake, rattle, and roll you just enough to make you want cotton candy while other ascents are like those “oh shit” new fangled coasters made by technology and stuff that’s figured out how to get all the G-forces without killing you (probably not anyway).
Inevitably there’s a period of adjustment as my body learns to work really hard with less and less oxygen. Somewhere in the first couple miles I breathlessly enter a wormhole in the universe whereby time moves at a snail’s pace while also going at warp speed, further stressing my system while I try to figure out why I’m going so slow when I’m actually going too fast.
So I eat some candy.
I drink water from my pack..
I rest by taking photos and video and chatting with other travelers on the trail.
And then I get back to the experiment, remembering with each breathless step I am the creator of my reality.
Tips and tricks for hiking ascents
Fuel your body. Seriously. Eating 1000+ calories enroute is a game-changer during ascent and for overall recovery for more difficult or long hikes.
Get those electrolytes. Not only do they help your muscles get you to the very best views, electrolyte depletion seriously impacts mood and cognitive functioning. Want to reduce self-doubt? Eat some salt and stuff.
Remember other hikers have your back and almost always lots and lots of unsolicited encouragement. Haven’t heard “You can do it” from another human in a while? Go on a hike. At least six people will tell you how awesome you are without having to ask or even perform a cartwheel.
Ask for help when you need it. Need a hand at a water crossing? Want someone to spot you coming off a cliff? Can’t figure out the route through the boulder field? Ask for help from someone who looks like they know what they’re doing and who doesn’t seem like an asshole.
The summit experience: Having your cake and eating it too
Do you ever find yourself accomplishing something, celebrate for like 3 seconds, and then move onto the next big goal?
Yeah, me neither.
Whether we’re talking about success at work or success on top a mountain, the space of sitting with it, opening to the happening of it, connecting with my energetic investment in it, and owning my own power is still more uncomfortable than I want that experience to be. It’s okay for a circumscribed amount of time–maybe 5 minutes, maybe a day. The dependencies attached to recognition of success tangle on themselves like an overburdened powerstrip. And somehow I’m the person who’s going to untangle the mess and restrategize life itself.
Here’s where fancy cake rescues me from fear and delivers me safely to the gods of deep savoring.
Stepping into the summit the whole of the journey comes together in the center of my being and body. I’m no longer sheathed in skin or made up of organs and bones. I am instantly and completely connected to everything seen and unseen, without resistance or substance beyond simply being.
It feels amazing.
It’s also kinda scary to feel like you don’t have skin or bones while you’re exposed to the all of your experience. This is why we shut down. This is why I shut down.
Fancy cake gives me something tangibly delicious and delightful to focus on while my whole system tries to understand WTF I just accomplished. It makes me find a comfortable seat amongst the boulders and away from gusts of wind if I can mange that too. Really, you’d be surprised by how many giant rocks are shaped just right for some solid cake-eating.
I love opening my pack on summit, pulling out clothes I’d discarded and feeling around the empty Ensure bottles and other essentials to find my cake container. You may assume terrible things would befall fancy cake stuffed in a pack and bounced up the side of a mountain for hours. The frosting would probably melt. The cake would fall apart. You’d probably open the container to just find dust after such a harrowing ascent (if we’re really going to get dramatic about it).
I love opening my pack on summit because the fancy cake always survives the journey beautifully, never breaking, never melting, never turning to dust. It’s a sort of living reminder to prioritize savoring, to plan for it, to pack it in your pack and know the savoring will be right there when I want to quit or drown in self-doubt, and it will be right there when I realize the summit.
Inspiration & feeling small
My absorbed social default assumption about what it’s like to feel and act from inspiration is the standard joyful genius who remains impervious to all that challenges success and knows with certainty what must be done and when.
Funny, that kind of sounds like a robot not an inspired human . . .
What I know to be true about inspiration is this: it requires some element of beginner’s mindset and experience. There is a relinquishing of what has been, and steps forward towards something new whether you actually act on inspiration or simply allow it space within awareness.
To stand on summit, surrounded by 360* views of light and shadow and color, I feel completely inspired.
And I feel small.
In that moment I am fully aware of my own power to create, am dwarfed by it, held by it, and am responsible for its care and tending.
Cupcakes on La Plata
The day I summited La Plata, I pulled a bunch of orange creamsicle and margarita lime cupcakes out of my sweaty pack and popped the cover.
I flagged down the random group of vacationing South Dakota firefighters I’d run into on the trail and synced with through the boulder field. It was time to share cake and inhabit the expansiveness of the day.
Want to see a grown human light up like a kid in a candy store?
Hand them a cupcake they weren’t expecting after they summit a mountain. The joy is so real you can savor it.
