Climb a Mountain. What Do You See

(Purple Cheetos and the Tears of Pane)

A week ago I was lucky enough to be sitting with two friends with the opportunity over dinner and three bottles of wine by a wood fire, to discuss “Life”. You know…the whys and feelings, search for meaning and purpose and all that. The kind of talk that you might rarely have and only with those you are comfortable with. But still, REAL discussion might feel “exposed” and “reveal too much” and thus the comfort of real friends and the loose lips of wine. But how do these deep thought conversations start? Well…I gave it a try.

“Why aren’t there purple cheetos?”

My attempt to delve into deep thoughts and conversation

Having grown up at the time of “Bill and Ted”, “Beavis and Butthead”, “Cheech and Chong”, “Bob and Doug McKenzie”, my first deep thought to get the conversation going was,” why arent there purple cheetos?” I could feel Nicole questioning “this is the deep topic you wanted to discuss?” Feeling I let her down I was ready to admit i may have placed the bar too low I was ready to move on with my tail between my legs. Benny however is quite knowledgeable in many useless but interesting facts and gave us a thorough history of the color purple. It turns out that purple is quite rare in nature and the cultivation and extraction historically was so expensive and time consuming (12,000 shellfish to produce 1.5 grams of dye) that only the wealth and power of Royalty could extract usable amounts. That is until synthetic compounds were discovered like aniline-based, mauveine, in 1856 and Murex dye 6,6′-dibromoindigo. M and M’s added a purple color to its mix way back in 2002. “Great!” I said, grateful for the history lesson but still left empty without purple cheetos in hand ( and purple dust on them…and a purple mouth from licking my fingers). I guess purple ketchup didnt catch on, but I still feel that a bag of rainbow colored cheetos puffs would be a BIG seller…at least to those watching Beavis and Butthead or Cheech and Chong.

Why Do you Climb A Mountain?…seriously.

I drew this incredible stick figure art and pushed it towards Nicole. With an impressive resume’ of a hundred accomplishments on Peakbagger.com and her youth and energy busting out eagerness I asked her, “what do you have to say of this drawing, and tell me WHY do YOU climb peaks?

First off, she said, is that she dissagreed with my image of the upside down mountain on the back of the person at work. ” I love what I do!” she exclaimed convincingly. She went on to describe Knife ridges and exposed cliff edges, scrambles and climbs of times that scared her, times she turned back, and times she found new routes to success of a summit.

“It’s all worth it. Nothing rewarding is ever easy”

Nicole describes some stories of tough summits

“Its the hardest thing I have ever done. It’s a high to see other things that are out there. Views you will never see from the couch. You conquer it at your own pace not others. one foot in front of the other. And it’s all worth it. Nothing rewarding is ever easy.” Nicole’s answers were ones of exploration, challenges, pushing herself, and victory with a reward of accomplishment.

I turn toward my grayer, wiser, and more worldly experienced friend, “Benny, Why do YOU climb peaks. What do you see?”

“I can see into tomorrow…”

Benny’s view was one of symbolic vision into the future

” Symbolically, ” he says, “Its the only place you can see 360 degrees. The realization that its not about ME; it’s about what’s OUT THERE. Below, there are things in the way. Things obstructing my view of tomorrow. Sometimes, like in India, (Benny recounts) I could literally see the sun rise in Tibet at 19,000ft. Literally, I can see into tomorrow. but also, I can see potential. It is this potential that I live for. What FUTURE is next. Is what you know know enough for you? Do you WANT to expand your vision…your understanding. Then one must put away the comfortable things, turn around and look how far you have come. If you do this walk (or climb) for yourself, you will have one experience. If you do it for someone else you will never feel that same way. “

My recollection of my friends’ “exact”words may be flawed, but clearly each of their answers was uniquely personal and different from mine. My drawing tells a thousand words of how at 52 having endured 3 marriages and survived three divorces, the wearing down of my life energy from 30 years of healthcare on nightshift, and the responsibility of being a good happy example and teacher to by children, …I was tired. The weight of a mountain was on my back . By climbing a peak I could feel that nothing was on top of me. I could breath.

Each has their own answer

Nicole is in her early 30’s and has been traveling solo for years. She is challenging herself, seeing new things, and racking up awesome memories and victories. She sees climbing a mountain through those eyes. Benny is 60 and new to his first hard divorce. He wants clarity and to see whats next. He sees the view from the mountain through those eyes. Me (Manchego) is a single debt free52 y.o. new empty nester looking to breathe and for fresh air. I see the mountain peak through those eyes.

Tears of Pane – a personal story

“I looked out the window, (my face inches from the pane of glass), and all I saw was the raindrops as teardrops, my body floating upside down and distorted in this world view in each droplet. The world was painful and crying. and so was I.”

my memory of a painful day in class told to describe what we saw out the window but I could only see a reflection of internal struggle off the pane of glass.

“What do you see?” The individual responses of my friends as to climbing mountains brings to me deeper understanding of this topic of: ” what we see comes from inside us and not simply what is “out there”.”

I was kicked out of high school with only two classes to finish, which the powers that wanted me gone allowed me to take at the community college. One was a writing class for English credit. The other was a Logic class counting as a Math credit. I thereby actually graduated H.S. early, but it was a torturous time as is many 16/17 year olds. I was given this assignment to look out the window of this night class window in downtown Milwaukee at the community college MATC and write a descriptive essay. There was, in reality, a lighted and active work zone with construction workers and machines going and whether they were “building” or “demolishing”, whether there was “new change” , taking out of the old, a marvel of human ingenuity or mechanical dominance…who knows…this was part of the supposed plan of the teacher to get some grand descriptive literary brilliance out of these high school dropouts and immigrants with English as a second language.

“What do you see?” the instructor demanded we write. Well, I worked during the day at a manufacturing plant of chemicals and fiberglass. Then came to this lame ass class reluctantly while dealing with my teen emotions and disasterous future of life as far as I could see. ( which wasn’t very far). In fact, so, that I literally could not see past the sad reflection of my own mind in the room light illumination off the pane of glass before me. As the raindrops coursed down the glass, i felt the drops down my cheeks. “The Pain in the Pane” I believe was the title of the descriptive essay I turned into the teacher. I was the last to leave. I felt it was a brilliant essay of the world before me as seen through my eyes. To my surprise, and building on the pile of crap i felt the world was giving me, I received an “F” on the paper. She wrote on it that there were many grammatical and spelling errors and written on top was, “Not what I was looking for”. I fixed the grammer and spelling and turned in the same paper. I received a “D-“. Perfect! That’s passing.

“That’s not what I was looking for”

Told to me by both my English and Logic instructors

My instructor in my logic course was like the math instructor in the Matt Damon movie, “Good Will Hunting”. As he, on the first day, wrote an assignment for a logic proof on the board , I too felt like Matt Damon. In fact, I didnt do ANY other assignments in the class but worked on this “proof for extra credit” that only one other person in his teaching career had solved. He made it sound pretty much impossible. A “proof” is an argument from a premise to a conclusion using rules of inference. It is a long and intricate verbal math equation. After over a month of working on it , I succeeded. A logic equation is either correct or not and sometimes( usually) there are several ways to get to the correct answer, but the work must be sound. My proof took apart the premise to its basic components, made no assumptions, and rebuilt it using rules of inference “if-then”, “or”, and “not” statements to the final conclusion. Like a web in nature, an extensive proof is intricate and Beautiful! It was beautiful. It took several weeks for my instructor to get back to me his analysis after several promptings. The course was complete and I went to ask about my grade and the proof. He said the proof was technically (logically) correct, howerver, “It was not what he was looking for”. My grade for the whole course was an “F” because I didnt turn in any other assignments, however, the extra credit of a “D” pulled my grade to a “D-“. Perfect! That’s passing.

“A descriptive essay on an outdoor scene, the brilliant intricate dance of a logic proof, or the vision one sees on the peak of a mountain all incorporate our internal minds eye onto the physical world. It is not just what’s physically there; Not just what is transcendently there either. “What do you see” and the reasons for climbing a mountain are individual to the place and time we are in our lives, our previous experiences, and our goals, how we see our place in the World, and visions for our own future.”

-Manchego Phylosophizing on the top of a mountain

The peak is a point in our personal journey

The peak of anything, geometrically, is a point. it is a transition between an “up” and a “down”. In our lives yes, spoiler alert, there will be ups and downs. No one stays long on the summit of a mountain. We do our own internal ceremony, have a snack, a doobie, write in a log or journal, then we stand up and say, (sometimes aloud), “OK”. Stick our hiking pole into the ground. We travel down the mountain. We felt the accomplishment, we temporarily lifted the weight of burdens off our shoulders, and/or we see a clearer vision forward. Like the book states in, “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry” by Jack Kornfield, “Enlightenment is not an end goal; it is just another moment in time.”

And so, we travel onward…climbing our personal mountains…and seeing our own visions with our own eyes.