As someone born and raised in Michigan, I’m quick to say that I live in one of the most beautiful states. But I wouldn’t describe the landscape of Michigan as dramatic. We have the stunningly beautiful Great Lakes surrounding us, the upper peninsula boasts wooded rolling hills, and “up north” is a forest retreat any time of year. Even a die-hard Michigander like me occasionally leaves the state for a little landscape variety.
Every year on our wedding anniversary, my husband and I travel somewhere new, usually focused on hiking and dramatic landscapes. This year was Jackson, Wyoming where we explored Grand Teton National Park for a few days. The second you step out of the plane at Jackson Hole Airport (the NICEST airport I have ever seen), you are visually bombarded with the imposing mountain range framing the horizon. Driving to our little hotel, I felt like I couldn’t open my eyes wide enough to take it all in. The flat plains with grazing animals, the towering mountains with white patches of snow, and the vast clear deep lakes all vied for attention. It’s so crazy to me how very different landscapes are across our country and I love being able to visit them.
I think I’m attracted to the drama. Aren’t we all?
When you get together with your close family and friends, what’s the first thing you talk about? What’s new in your life, what’s been happening, good or bad, basically: the drama. The highs and lows of your own life and the people around you. Because life doesn’t happen to us on a flat plane. I can guarantee if I plot out your career, relationships, or experiences in life, they aren’t going to fall into a neat little line graph on a straight upward trajectory. We all know this and we all accept that there are going to be lows with the highs. But instead of just accepting that there will be good with the bad, I challenge us all to start living for the drama.
During one of our hikes at Grand Teton, we took on WAY more than we were prepared for. I’d say we’re both moderately active, but this trail we decided to do was HARD, like, really hard. The hike started at the base of Jenny Lake. We knew the hike took us to another lake, Lake of the Crags, and we also knew the elevation of the hike was nearly 3,000 feet. Yet throughout the hike, I had a hard time conceptualizing how there would be a lake 3,000 feet above the lake we were starting at. In my mind, the lakes are at the base of the mountains, not up high in the range. (If at this point you’re wondering how I’ve gotten anywhere in life with such a poor understanding of geography, same.)
During this nine (yes, nine) hour hike, I had plenty of time to connect the current physical struggle in front of me with many other challenges I’ve had in my life. What was my Jenny Lake – my starting point? We hiked 2.5 miles around Jenny Lake before coming to the base of the Lake of the Crags trail. How many times in my career have I thought, “If I can just get to the other side of this…”? Once we’re at the base of the Lake of the Crags trail, we start out going through a densely wooded forest. We lose that ability to see very much of the trail ahead of us, where we started, or where we’re headed. There have been many times in my life when I’m in the thick of it, just trusting that the path I’ve chosen will lead me where I ultimately want to go. The rest of the 2.5 mile hike straight up a mountain was clear and breathtaking. Every time we stopped to take a break, we turned around and surveyed the trail behind us, how far we’ve come. We don’t do that enough in our lives. Stop and turn around. We kept repeating, over and over, “Wow. Look how far we’ve come.” I really want to start incorporating that language in my daily life. We were no where even close to the end goal of the trail but we could stop and appreciate where we were at that moment, and what it had taken to get there. Other times during our breaks, we’d crane our necks upward and stare back at each other in trepidation. We’re really going to go all the way up there? The audacity in thinking we could handle this trail. But we were in the middle of it, and neither of us are familiar with quitting. So because we believed we could do it, we continued forward.
There was a particular conversation we had during one of our many breaks going up the mountain. We agreed that either of us could decide we were done and didn’t want to continue and head back down the mountain, at any time. That no matter how far we had gotten, it was 100% worth the effort. Even if we only made it 1/3 of the way to the top, we were still so, so much higher than where we began. I love this. It challenges us to still set goals that may seem wildly unattainable. And to try and go after those goals. It brings to mind the phrase, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
Finally, we had almost made it to the very top. We hiked along Ramshead Lake which was fed by Lake of the Crags. I had told myself that once we made it to Ramshead Lake, I can start telling myself that we’re nearly there. It had dropped about twenty degrees and it was raining. The boulders we were scrambling over were slick with the rain and there were patches of snow on the banks of the lake. Somehow, impossibly, we still had another sheer incline of boulders to scramble over to reach Lake of the Crags. And man, I really almost gave up right there, so close to the goal. I didn’t think I had any more of myself to give. But I looked down at my legs and realized that they were strong enough to get me there, so they could get me a little farther. That was the only time I seriously considered giving up. How many times do we give up, that close to our goal, because we focus more on how hard it was to get there, instead of how we just need to push a little more to get to the finish line.
And then we made it. There were hikers there who had passed us on the trail hours before that cheered us as we made our way past them, resting on the grassy banks of the Lake of the Crags. It was breathtaking, for sure. But I realized, at first with some disappointment, that looking over this hard-earned view, there were other views on the hike that were better. The reward is the pursuit. We snapped our obligatory selfie, laced back up our hiking boots, and headed down what had to be a much quicker, easier journey back to Jenny Lake.
But our legs were tired. I had to mentally weigh out and chose every single footfall, had to put energy and strength in my legs each time I planted a foot so that I wouldn’t twist my ankle or fall down. We did fall, slip, and slide in many places, I still have the bruises. It took less time going down, but it was no less exhausting. How many times in my life have I assumed something should be easy for me because I earned it? I started praying for level ground. Wishing for footfalls that didn’t require so much thought and effort. Trying to mentally map out our trail upwards to figure out how much further I had to go down. There were no short cuts. No one to help or ease the challenge. All we had was one foot to place in front of the other. No where to go but down.
It was a dramatic day. Highs and lows, lakes and mountains, waterfalls and wildflowers. It was hard, sweaty, painful. At the end of the day the best part wasn’t Lake of the Crags or even the feeling of accomplishing the goal. It was all those little breaks we took up the side of a mountain, turning back and saying, “Wow, look how far we’ve come.”
