Where the earth meets the sky

"Meantime let us count our blessings - I mean those thousands of peaks, climbed and unclimbed, of every size, shape and order of difficulty, where each of us may find our own Mt. Everest" - HW Tilman

Written March 9, 2009:

I used to look up the hillside on summer trail rides, aspen tree leaves sparkling in the sunlight all around me, and I'd imagine riding to that place where the top of the hill meets the sky...I used to dream that at that place the ground turned to air and you could gracefully stride into the expansive nothingness of the atmosphere.

Every hillside, mountain top, beckoning peak, still holds the mystery of that illusion. To reach the top, where the earth meets the sky - and where you can soar beyond the ground you've always known... is that the allure of climbing mountains? To go beyond? 

The snowy, glacial peaks of the Himalayas are dramatic and stand laughing at the strength of human capacity. At the same time they beckon us forward and up - to approach, climb, and go beyond. To reach for that place where the earth meets the sky and where you are then somehow between what you once knew and what you can't even imagine. Where, in my young imagination you can step forward into the air that holds you and brings you somewhere new. 

Though these mountains are undeniably grand and, in many ways, incomprehensible, they are no different than the smaller hillsides of my youth. Riding up towards the Broadwaters through the aspen trees on well-worn and well-loved trails up, up and beyond. I can see more clearly that place where the gentle, sage-covered slope meets the sky than I can see the peaks outside the window of this tea house. Here as there. There as here... the earth meets the sky and that final step...sends you over and into the expanse of everything.