False Summits

Back in my pre-running days I had a tough encounter with Mt. Marathon in Seward, Alaska. Though it’s only 1.5 miles to the top, the incline is steep; a 54% grade (by comparison, the famous hills in San Francisco are a mere 20% and a typical flight of stairs is 30%). It’s an exercise in crawling the entire way up. Of this whole miserable experience, what I most remember are the false summits. As you near the top of the mountain the surface changes to loose shale. It’s like trying to get footing on a bed of gravel. It’s more sliding down than climbing up. I remember looking up many times in that part of the climb and thinking I could see the top just above me. My arms and legs burning, I would bear-crawl my way up, quickly before I slid down again, to what I thought was the point, only to discover another one right above me. This happened half a dozen times before I reached the actual summit of the mountain.

Finding out that what I thought was the end was actually trick of the landscape is one of the most demoralizing experiences I’ve had. It actually isn’t over. The suffering you just went through to get here? Yep, you have to do it again. This time more fatigued than the last.

I thought about that climb in Seward as I was running up hills this week. As I climbed hills I have since chosen to climb many times, it occurred to me that life is full of false summits. How many times do we look ahead on our path and think just getting to the next point will mean our suffering is over, only to find out we have more work to do? Or we find out this point isn’t what we thought it was?

The false summits of life often reduce me to tears or shouts of profanity. I don’t handle them with the grace and strength I would like to. But these are the turning points that define our character. In my best moments, I look at the top of a false summit as a testament to what I am capable of. If I could make that climb, then I can surely make the next one. I am still going the right direction.

I wonder if I would have made it to the top of Mt. Marathon if I had seen the climb laid out in front of me without those false summits in the way. Perhaps we need those illusions to break the climb into manageable parts for us. So much of who we are is not made up of the real summit moments, but how we handle the disappointment of not getting the mountain top experience we hoped for. Do we keep believing the top exists? Do we keep going despite our disappointment? Or do we turn around and go back down the mountain, never knowing its real peak?

Real summit moments are rare and beautiful and often surprising. We don’t get there when we expect to. We are called to these moments, but getting there means more than saying yes to the glamorous idea of a mountain climb. It means saying yes to hope when we have been let down by false summits over and over again. It means digging deep into our resolve, and our faith, and believing that our unseen mountain top is up there, somewhere, and that our agony in this moment will only magnify the joy in that one. Real summits wait for those who have the courage to keep saying “maybe this will be the one…”

view from the top of Mt. Marathon to Seward and Resurrection Bay below. From wildnatureimages.com