Share the Climb and the Summit

I stood at the top of Cerro Chirripó and felt nothing. I'd hiked since four in the morning. One of my friends had turned back at twelve thousand feet, tired of the thinner oxygen and worried we wouldn't make the view and get down before dark. I went on without him. I made the view. I did not make it down before dark. The summit was the kind people write home about. What I wanted, more than anything, was to turn to someone and say look. There was no one to turn to. I stood up there for quite some time. Long enough for the wind to pick up. Long enough to notice that the thing sitting in my chest wasn't triumph. It was closer to a question. I'd been shedding people for years. A fierce independence I'd come to mistake for character. It had taken me to a lot of summits. They were all quiet in the same way. I went to Central America alone. The Mountain West alone. The Southeast, here and there … all of it alone. I told myself I was untethered. I told myself I was finding myself. I told…