I wanted to cry.<\/p>\n
My friend Sasha and I were standing at the base of a rock fall, staring up at the most menacing peak we had encountered in our six-day trek.\u00a0 Another hiker had just told us that we had gone off our trail.\u00a0 Now we either had to backtrack and then<\/em> follow the trail for god knows how long, or go over this pass, which was next to the highest peak in this part of Spain.<\/p>\n Still incredulous, I said to the other hiker in Spanish, \u201cBut the yellow markers said to go this way.\u00a0 A lady yesterday told us to follow the yellow markers to the next refuge.\u201d<\/p>\n She responded, \u201cNo, no, the yellow markers mark the way to the highest peaks in the Pyrennes.\u00a0 Your refuge yesterday was on the way to this peak.\u00a0 That\u2019s why she told you to follow the yellow markers.\u201d<\/p>\n I thanked her for her help, and the woman trekked on.\u00a0 Sasha asked me what it was going to be.\u00a0 Were we going to turn back and waste another two hours getting back to the right trail?\u00a0 Or were we going to climb up this sumbitch?\u00a0 I told her that as painful as this climb might be, I couldn\u2019t face the idea of going backwards\u2014it just went against my adventurous nature.<\/p>\n I took a deep breath and started upward.\u00a0 The rocks at the bottom of the fall were the size of pick-up trucks.\u00a0 I leapt from one to the next.\u00a0 My breathing deepened.\u00a0 The higher I climbed, the smaller the rocks became.\u00a0 They began to shift under my weight.\u00a0 By the time I was halfway up, I was trudging through baseball-sized rocks and dirt that slipped out from under my feet.\u00a0 Pretty soon I was on all-fours, grasping at whatever was within reach.\u00a0 I huffed and puffed and wiped my forehead on my sleeve.\u00a0 I dug my feet in and squeezed the earth in my hands.<\/p>\n Sasha and I didn\u2019t speak to each other on the way up.\u00a0 We couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 I was heaving air in and out of my lungs, and I heard her doing the same behind me.\u00a0 My feet sank deep into the earth, and I yelled, \u201cHeads up!\u201d to warn her of the rockslide heading her way.\u00a0 I glanced back.\u00a0 She threw herself to one side, and the rocks continued their race down the mountain.\u00a0 \u201cSorry\u2026about that,\u201d I said.\u00a0 I had to pause in the middle of my sentence to breathe.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t\u2026worry about it,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n I looked up to see how far I was from the peak.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t seem any closer than it had when we were at the bottom!\u00a0 I forced myself to keep my eyes on the ground in front of me and continued my climb.\u00a0 I waited what felt like an eternity and then checked the summit again.\u00a0 How could it still be so far up?!\u00a0 I repeated the process probably ten times.\u00a0 Look down, wait, wait, wait, look up.\u00a0 No closer.\u00a0 The blood pounded in my ears, and I felt like I was breathing through a coffee stirrer.<\/p>\n At last, I got to about ten yards from the top.\u00a0 I stared at the ground.\u00a0 It was now gravel and sand.\u00a0 \u201cKeep going\u2026.\u201d I mumbled to myself.\u00a0 I pushed with my feet, pulled with my hands, now raw from clawing at the mountain.\u00a0 \u201cKeep going,\u201d I said again, and pushed and pulled again.\u00a0 Over and over, I pushed and pulled, until finally there was nothing left to push off and nowhere else to pull to.\u00a0 I was on level ground.\u00a0 I turned myself around on my hands and knees to look for Sasha.\u00a0 She was a few yards away.\u00a0 When she reached the summit, we sat up and collapsed into a hug.<\/p>\n I threw my fists in the air and sang the opening measures of the Rocky<\/em> theme song.\u00a0 Sasha laughed.<\/p>\n We looked down the mountain we had just summitted.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m proud of us,\u201d Sasha said.<\/p>\n I wanted to say that I was proud of us too, but I was too emotional to speak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wanted to cry. My friend Sasha and I were standing at the base of a rock fall, staring up at the most menacing peak we had encountered in our six-day trek.\u00a0 Another hiker had just told us that we had gone off our trail.\u00a0 Now we either had to backtrack and then follow the … Continue reading (insert “Rocky” theme song)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}