The Climb (but not the Mylie Cyrus song)

Going uphill, especially when you're over the hill, is best done with friends

Tonight, I watched my favorite NFL team fly all the way to Brazil to lose. It’s a real bummer to lose the first game of the season. Being a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs has been nothing short of magical for the last seven years or so. That's not related to anything I'm about to write about, but just in case what you're about to read gets too weird, I thought it might have been helpful to have a sense of my headspace right now. This picture kinda sums up the night for my favorite team:

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I distinctly remember growing up learning that people would go hiking... oftentimes on purpose. That seemed a little confusing to me. I had a hard time wrapping my head around why it would be fun to just walk. Perhaps people were trying to escape or maybe they were being chased, and it just sounded better to call it hiking. It was very clearly a reason to buy expensive boots, hard core water bottles (good name for a rock band – “I went to the Hard Core Water Bottles show last night and it ROCKED!), colorful backpacks and ski poles that you stick in dirt. In extreme cases it meant buying a Subaru Outback. But growing up in Kansas, there weren't too many mountains to climb, and I wasn't running from the law all that often. So, I didn't have a lot of experience hiking.

But in 2008 we moved to Seattle and discovered the wonderful world of hiking (WWH). In this new city, we quickly stumbled into, and I mean that literally, the hiking culture. People hike through the wilderness (AND RAIN) all the time there and our kids were just about the right age to get into it, so we jumped in with all our blistered feet. For years we would hike roughly once or twice a month. I can't imagine a more perfect place to live for hiking geeks. If you listen closely to early Seattle grunge, you can practically hear the soundtrack of angsty teenagers who’d just survived one too many family hikes. They were exhausted, sulking, and desperate for an outlet… or at least a chance to scream into a microphone instead of at their parents.

We moved to Rexburg, ID in 2020 and while I'm super aware that there's a lot of hiking here, we just haven't done a lot of it (YET) for some reason. Pickleball and adult children may have something to do with that...

On one of the few hikes that we've taken here, Traci and decided to take our dog, Bingo (R.I.P.). It was a pretty warm day, and in hindsight, probably not an ideal day for our aging dog with really short legs to walk up a big hill. But he was a great hiker in Seattle, so we figured that would translate at some point here.

It didn't.

We started the hike but after only about 20 yards, Bingo just laid down in the dirt and let us know he was done with the walking portion of the hike. We tried incentives to coax him into walking just a few more steps, but nothing worked. So, the rest way up the mountain, this happened:

Yes, he’s absolutely smiling, and likely audibly laughing at me. Also, yes, Traci framed this picture. Incidentally, this photo is displayed very prominently in our home. I think my family likes it because it’s a reminder that on this day, and many others, our dog was smarter than me.

I miss him a lot.

This week I had a chance to go on a hike with a couple friends. I was glad they invited me. There's something you need to understand about some of the geometry here. My friends are both quite tall. Like you would totally pick them first in a random pickup basketball game or if you needed to get something from the top shelf of a kitchen cabinet. I, on the other hand, am not tall. Don't get me wrong, my legs go all the way down and everything, but they don't start from very far off the ground. I don’t have great photos, but here’s a couple that’ll give you an idea:

So, as we began our hike, I was pretty cognizant that I'd be taking a few more steps than my friends. In an unspoken decision, I led the way up the mountain. I was moving a little quicker than I normally would, noting that my comrades behind me we're probably taking one step for every six or so of mine. Everything seemed to be going fine, until a couple miles in my hips and the surrounding muscles started burning, like a lot. I’m definitely not in hiking shape and this is probably too revealing, but I have an old-man condition in my hips that I will be vague about and just say it might sound like “darthritis”. That would also be a cool way for Luke Skywalker to disparagingly refer to his dad.

Vader: “Luke, I am your Father!”

Luke: (instead of processing that bit of trauma, just ignores the declaration) “Chill out there, Darthritis. I wouldn’t want you to throw out your back whipping that lightsaber around…”

Anyway, I have hip issues. And am not in hiking shape.

As we continued up the mountain I started slowing down. I stopped a few times to stretch out the muscles and rest for a minute. But in the back of my mind, constantly, was the realization that I was slowing down my friends, who I love and respect. I kept suggesting that they leave me behind and I would make it up a little slower just behind them. But they wouldn't have it. I gave them like 6 opportunities to take off without me.

But they didn't.

At one point a muscle in my left leg “Charlie-horsed” so badly that I went to the ground. But my friends helped me recover and get back on my feet. Eventually, we made our way to the top, and it was absolutely awesome to explore our destination which has a cool waterfall and an even cooler, and I mean that literally, cave. If my friends had listened to me and left me, I wouldn't have made it to the payoff.

Their patience and choice to stick around really mattered to me and the hike down was blissfully uneventful as hip-issues go.

I’m reminded of how impactful we each can be when we take others with us instead of leaving them behind when they're struggling. Also, I learned a lesson about accepting help/grace from others. I know that in life there are situations where we end up having to leave folks behind, but I know there are many situations where just a little bit of patience and helping others through life can profoundly change things for them for the better. Consider times people have brought you along on the journey and times where you've helped others through theirs.

Sometimes we have to carry them, like I did with Bingo, and other times just giving others some love and encouragement, like my tall friends did with me, will make all the difference.

And I’m convinced that getting to the top of the mountain alone is way less satisfying than doing it together.

Maybe share this post with someone who’s been with you on the journey…