At least, I can’t.

I grunted up miles of switchbacks, tracking thunderheads as they flexed their fluffy might maybe a ridge or two over. Now above tree line, a judgment call grounded in so much alpine weather-watching leads me to the pass. I let out a small victory cry, then begin speed walking down the other side, a familiar rumble filling the very same air I struggle to inhale.

Puff, puff, puff. Hustle, hustle, hustle.

I drop down, then curve around several small lakes until I spot a clearing for my tent. Thunder booms directly overhead and then the rain starts, gently for a second, then it pours. Racing to set up my shelter, I use a rock to hastily pound in stakes until I strike my middle finger instead. Blood spurts out in a small geyser, splattering on my tent and the rocks around me. I have to laugh. Don’t I? A small offering for my presence here, same as any other sweat and tears I’ve sprinkled across these high places.

***

There are so many struggles we face in life; sometimes moving through the mountains is the one struggle I get to choose.

***

I spend several days in the familiar embrace of these mountains. Taking photos, writing – ostensibly doing fieldwork for my book, but also doing work on myself. I come, too, for that Sierran salve, spread thick around my soul like a layer of cosmic insulation.

When it finally comes time to leave, I’m up before dawn, drawing out the usual morning puttering. I wait for early light to strike the Painted Lady, sitting as striated prow above Upper Rae Lake, but it doesn’t happen, so I start walking. Fiery calves carry me up to Glen Pass, which I have all to myself. Perched on its knife-edge, I drink some water and smile, surveying the indescribable beauty all around, wishing I could share it with every person I’ve ever met. My heart soars, even as it thumps in double time.

On to my second pass of the day, I lurch along the ascent with waning energy. I know that only part of it is physical; the other part is the melancholy that comes with leaving. Still, I pop in a piece of hard candy and let the scenery distract until I round the corner on 11,709’ and look up as I hear my name – actually, both my given name and my trail name:

“Shawnté?”

“Rustic?”

The melancholy slips away as it’s replaced by surprise and a broad smile. My mountain tribe. People I barely know, really, but am bonded to by the interminable grip of granite and dirt. We laugh and I let loose a large, bellowing holler of pure joy. I barely reject an invitation to join them in climbing a nearby peak, not just because my body has already given its all for the day, but also because I’m already higher than the summit.

Before we part ways, we all survey the sky, where late morning clouds have started congregating maybe a ridge or two over. Judgment calls are made. One party heads up, another heads down.

Mother Nature will hold her fury for a few hours at least. But when she chooses to unleash once more, it will be as it always is. The struggle is always worth it.

Photo at the top of the page is a pot of mac and cheese garnished with crushed Fritos. I ate this refined delicacy while on a break along the Pacific Crest Trail, near Clover Meadow. I had my shoes off and smelled like your teenage son’s gym socks. It was divine.

It starts innocently at first, a glance out the car window or a set of concentric lines on a map leading like a hypnosis spiral to an X or small triangle or interesting name that draws you in. What’s up there? you wonder. How do I get there? How does it feel?

For some reason, this particular peak starts invading your thoughts and dictating your dreams. You begin to casually research routes and calendar dates, a process that can take days or weeks or months or years. You thumb through guidebooks and lose hours falling through a series of online black holes. You pepper the chosen one into conversations, now on a first-name basis with Whitney or Longs or Denali or Kili or Fitz, if you’re cheeky.

You obsess.

Your friends recognize and sigh with acceptance at the familiar distance in your eyes that signals a new alpine crush. Apologies are offered, but they – and you – know that once the process begins, you need to see it through. And so plans are made, gear is sorted, perhaps partners are selected, and then you’re traveling with baited breath to Where It Begins.

Whether you’re standing at the trailhead in trail runners or hiking boots or approach shoes, a kaleidoscope of butterflies flutter somewhere inside of you, tightening into a soft ball that settles in maybe your stomach or throat. It’s not unusual to let loose a giant smile, joyous howl, or small bit of vomit at this point.

Then, communion. Each step is part of the whole; the summit is never truly the endgame. Through whatever path appears – vibrant meadows, raging streams, sagebrushed deserts, shaded forests, suncupped snow – your senses burst alive, your muscles and motivation pushing you ever upward. There are no work deadlines, no lawns to mow, no bills to pay; your only obligation is the path ahead.

And finally, the top. You celebrate with a whoop or a jump or maybe emotion catches your tongue for a hovering moment.

Actually – maybe you summit, maybe you don’t. Maybe you buy the maps and guidebooks, but never even reach the trailhead. And that’s okay. Maybe this place visits your dreams and dances through your thoughts because it is beautiful and it represents the triumph of nature, and possibly yourself. A symbol of what is and what could be.

To connect with a mountain, then, is not just about ascending a peak – and it’s definitely not about conquering it.

To love a mountain is to simply make a place for it to burn bright deep within your soul.

I waved at his receding form a bit longer than necessary, my hand mindlessly stirring up the atmospheric inferno that was already brewing well before lunchtime. I shouldered my pack and stepped onto the trail alone, the high desert silence wrapped around me in a way that was at once both comforting and smothering. The fears I’d ruminated on for days and weeks and months all tumbled forth into a roiling stew of uncertainty. What kind of stupidity was it to charge forward on my own, just me and a backpack, me and my two calloused feet, me and my hyper-imaginative mind?

I feared waist-deep post-holing, cold clumps of snow making a slow, frosty creep down my legs to lodge in the crescents of unclipped toenails, eventually guiding me towards the brink of hypothermia. I envisioned careening down a glistening slope of verglas, watching helplessly as my ice axe loosened from my grip and plummeted out of reach before I tumbled into a pile of rocks that would serve as my makeshift memorial. Here lies Shawnté, who died like an idiot, alone and cold.

I feared a cougar’s silent lunge from some hidden granite perch, fangs gnashing through the air with a roar to settle on my tender neckflesh, slicing south to devastate an assortment of internal organs until I capitulated in an expensive, but lifeless pile of Gore-Tex and wool.

I feared Evolution Creek or Bear Creek or really, any body of water mercilessly frothing against sharp and slippery rocks, raging towards a dizzying precipice, where one faulty step would lead me head over trail runners towards becoming an alpine Davy Jones.

I feared turning the corner on a mama bear and cubs, finding myself on the wrong end of fight or flight, cowering as the ladybeast summoned her rage, deploying her painfully sharp claws to tear me and my intrusion asunder.

I feared serving as human lightning rod during an electrical storm, feeling a hot pulse sear through my skin and rip out the other end, my startled body suddenly skewered by an invisible force of angry, fiery nature.

But perhaps I was most afraid of being alone. With my thoughts, but no one to speak them to. With my fears. With my realizations. With all of the outrageous beauty around me – overwhelming, awestruck kinds of things too big to contain within my own self.

In a matter of weeks in the Sierra, I came nose to teeth with all of these things and found myself ground to a halt, stopped in my tracks, laughing at the way the world can take that which you’re most afraid of and turn it into strength and growth and everything good.

I stood in wonder as the snow fell in fat, sticky flakes in July, coating the slopes and ridgelines with an otherworldly whiteness. Two days before my birthday, a cougar crossed my path not twenty, thirty feet ahead, a slow, slinking beige swagger that captivated and terrified me at once. I crossed many a drought-starved waterway, wetting my feet – and sometimes calves, knees, thighs – with purpose and glee on those hot days, staring spellbound into the mist cartwheeling off of moss-slicked rocks. I turned a corner and came within high-fiving distance of a cinnamon black bear, whose gaze I held for at least a full minute, a mutual sizing-up and eventually, a mutual understanding that we were, in fact, just two harmless wandering souls swimming in the same great big, rock-filled bowl, and on we went. I clambered up rain-slicked granite to the knife’s edge of Glen Pass and made one of the largest vertical leaps of my life upon the almost immediate BOOM! and CRACK! of a rapidly incoming electrical storm that ushered me down the switchbacks in record-setting time.

And I was alone. A lot.

And I loved it, truly.

I hiked with so many people, old friends and new – families, Boy Scout troops, rangers, trail angels, weekenders, and so many more. But sometimes the greatest privilege came when I was left completely alone to hear and accept my thoughts and feelings, to wrap my brain around the immensity of it all. To revel in everything unearthed, no matter how uncomfortable. To accept, acknowledge, and love every part of me, no matter how flawed. To smile and laugh and feel wonders of the highest order. To realize that there is nothing to fear in being alone.