one foot in front of the other and other such ramblings.

"It's amazing what you can do when you put one foot in front of the other."

Leading the last bit to the top of Desolation Peak.

So while heading up to Desolation Peak I was thinking of the last couple of trips. Three thousand feet up. Another thousand and a half to go. Darryl huffs those words in between steps up and and up. The last couple of climbs have been well I dunno. Uneventful. Which is just a different way of saying boring I suppose. So reading back through the reports they seem well I dunno. Uneventful. I'll just say it: boring. Comparing the two Buckner reports one to me at least seems impassioned and purposeful. The other mundane maybe even forced. The difference? Well, we were stopped on Sahale both attempts. We had just about the exact same weather although it was a little better on the second go. Clouds raked over Cascade Pass below us both times. We basked in the sun above. Oh yeah. On the first time out we saw a helicopter circling around the Taboo glacier on Torment. And two days later I found out an experienced climber had died in a freak accident. A chunk of ice on the bergschrund broke off underneath him and he fell in to the void.

That's the closest I've ever been to a climbing accident. I've read about plenty. I know plenty of people who have been much much closer. Involved in some cases. Or brought into them just by being there. I've even known of a couple people from a climbing class I took years ago who have since died climbing. So I know that cloudy evening after hearing the news a couple days later I felt like I had been punched I guess. That guy had twenty-five years experience. Twice my own. A wife. A daughter. Nobody's safe.

But that's all just playing it up really. Unless we stay inside our drywall boxes all our lives we're not safe so to speak. But that's too obvious. Duh. Regardless the news impassioned my writing and I felt a sense of purpose to that one. I look back on Constance and Buckner [remixed] and nothing. Of course it was cool being there. Of climbing. Of mountains. Well more so Buckner than Constance. By a factor of at least a hundred. But that was it. Nothing else exciting to report. So why did I bother?

When it's a boring read to me I can only imagine how boring it is for someone else. So what? So I look back on some other at least to me impassioned posts. That first Buckner report. A solo trip into a fantasy world. A trip with my brother to the Winds. Rambling on about blisters. A night alone next to the Grand Canyon. Those are interesting to me. I can look back and remember why I wrote them. Most of them were started with pen and paper. A small notebook I carry with me on climbs and backpacking trips and stuff to jot things down so I don't have to rely on a faulty memory after I've returned. All of them are tagged 'journal' cos they were written from that.

So is it as simple as that? That I shouldn't feel obligated to write up every trip I take? So we try to climb a mountain. Big flippin' deal. So what. If nothing exciting happens I should not force myself to write ten thousand words on the ordeal. And not only if nothing exciting happens. If I am not inspired to write I shouldn't. There. Done.

So what the heck is this post about? To write ten thousand words about how I should not write ten thousand words? About nothing? Hopefully not. That's not the plan at least. The plan well I got hiking up those four and a half thousand feet to a lookout tower atop a little-known peak called Desolation deep in the North Cascades wilderness. I was thinking it before Darryl opened his mouth and said what was on my mind. I've thought it before. The whole concept that seems rather quite amazing of how after only a couple of hours (on our own power - that is essential) we can find our surroundings totally and incredibly changed. From power-boating along a lake staring up at mountains surrounding the place in every direction to two or three hours later looking down on that very same landscape. How? Duh.

By putting one foot in front of the other.

It's not hard. Well, for some maybe more so than for others. But really it's not. Every half an hour we climbed a thousand feet. And that seemed pokey under the circumstances (those being the facts I was carrying less than ten pounds and wearing trail runners on a great trail - much different than thirty pounds in mountaineering boots over snow). So a couple hours after being dumped at the boat landing on Desolation we were looking way down at Ross Lake and across to a pretty fantastic scene spread out around us as we made the last steps to the lookout and the summit. Two hours. Maybe two-and-a-half.

What else could I have done in that time? Watched a movie. Worked of course. I dunno lots of things. Some productive. Others not so much. Not the point. With a little effort and a couple of hours I changed my perspective. I would have loved the chance to sit down against my pack leaned up on the lookout. Look around. Pull out my journal and write something for real. Whatever was on my mind. Not anything forced cos I felt I had to say something about some trip or other. But something real. Unplanned. Just rambling. Cos rambling sometimes is the best.