Looking Out

When I was younger, my dad used to take my siblings and me on afternoon hikes each Sunday. Matching neon fanny-packs in tow, we’d climb for hours until we reached the summit of a small mountain on Salt Lake’s east bench, where we could see over the entire valley. There was always something thrilling about that view. People became rather miniscule, my elementary school seemed so insignificant I could crush it between my thumb and index finger. The world I inhabited from day to day disappeared, or shrunk, and was replaced instead by this bird’s eye view of a much larger sphere, which seemed to extend into an oblivion.

During the past year, I stood on the tops of mountains in Rwanda and South Africa. I climbed to the tops of peaks in the Virgin Islands. I stood on top of a mountain in the middle of Los Angeles. I scaled one of the highest points of a small island in the Pacific Northwest. What is it about this position, this perspective, that keeps me seeking out the next hill to climb?

Feeling my strength coming back, I convinced Erin to come hiking with me yesterday. The day before, I had discovered a trail close to Tom and Laurie’s house (I’d been trekking up and down the cul-de-sac previously). Once again, I found myself on a summit, looking out over the beautiful valley below, trying to take in the immensity and scale, and find my place in it all.

I’m well for now. I’m here, you can see, advancing up the mountain. I couldn’t sleep last night. I’m blessed and cursed with a better knowledge of what’s to come. Even as I enjoy the exhilarating perspective from atop the mountain, looking down I can already sense that in just a few days I’ll be descending back into the valley. That is, as others have put it, the nature of the beast. For clarification (I noticed slight confusion in cards and emails) the word ‘recovery’ takes on a completely new meaning in chemotherapy. Rather than refer to the svelt display of agility one might suppose I possess in order to be climbing hills, the doctors consider ‘recovery’ a short period of time, usually a week, in which they have successfully brought my body back from the brink of death to something closer to ‘normal.’ This has to occur before they can move on to the next round, but the tricky part is that, for better or worse, they can’t let me hang out in this ‘recovery mode’ for too long. The cancer cells are too notorious for hiding out or coming back. So the hope is that as soon as I ascend, they bring me back down. Don’t hate them. It’s their job. For the next year.

I stand on top of the mountain. I marvel in the perspective it gives me, the connection, and the strength I feel with every breath (they’re deeper up there, you know?) I hesitate only momentarily and then I begin the descent, knowing that afterwards, there will be yet another mountain to climb to the top of.