I placed my hands and feet along the crack and began working my way up the outside edge. Eventually I got to a place where I could turn my feet sideways and cram them into the crack, or shove my arm in up to my elbow to look for a handhold inside the big rocky wound. Even as I worked my way up into the hot sun the rock still felt cool. I was sweating buckets, and I'd never been so thirsty in my life, but the wall was still as cool as if it was being refrigerated from the inside. The further away I got from my friends, the more I felt the presence of my new mountain friend. I understood better the stories, legends, and myths where small people would go into the wilderness to hold council with mountains. Far below I could hear the little stream singing, "give away, oh, give away." I heard the wind in the trees, and was grateful for the moving air. My arms were exhausted, my legs began to shake. "It's only 100 feet!" I chided them. "Come on now, you've got this!" They did have it, and we finished the climb.After we'd all taken our turn, cleaned up the climb, and rappelled the rest of the way down to the trail head, I looked at my hands and thought, "Left hand, right hand, good job."
As we walked along the creek back to the car I stopped, turned back to the mountain, pressed my hands together, and said, "Namaste." My friend, who was walking beside me, looked up, smiled, turned right around and greeted the mountain, "Namaste." She had felt it, too.
Later that same week the same friend and I were hiking in Zion National Park. We'd just finished the scramble up to Angel's Landing, and decided we'd try running all the way back to the river. We ran most of the way, but I had to stop to breathe near the end. It was hot, really hot, and the air there is so thin compared to my sea-level home! As the river came in to view we picked up our run again, crossed the bridge, pulled off our shoes, socks, and shirts, and jumped into the cold Virgin River. The temperature change stole my breath and I stood up gasp-laughing. It was glorious! We floated in the river as people crossed back and forth on the bridge above. An elderly woman stopped and watched us for a few minutes. I called to her, "Come on in! The water's fine!" She looked wistfully over the edge, but declined. She came to the bank and sat on a log a while, "I'm too old for that now. But I wasn't once!" Here was a woman who had lived, really lived. I could see the picture show of her own adventures playing behind her eyes as we briefly spoke.
When we were too cold to play in the water anymore we walked to find a sunny spot to dry off. My friend found a patch of sand by a tree, I decided for a more covert location among some tall sedges because I needed to wring out my shorts. Shorts wrung, I laid them on a hot rock, and I sat myself down in the fine, peachy-colored sand. Long monocot leaves reached up all around my little refuge. Dragonflies crisscrossed overhead, a trail of centimeter-long black ants crossed in front of me. After a while I picked up my shorts, dusted off my sandy self, and walked back to where I'd left my friend. I turned to the river and the trail we'd just run, put my palms together and with gratitude told them both, "Namaste."
Namaste. The divine in me salutes the divine in you.
