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| Curtis Glacier, North Cascades, Washington |
On the way up the mountain one of the OB instructors told me about the "dragons, the dreams, and the swords". For anyone who has gone on an OB excursion the leaders are full and rife with metaphor, with lessons to be found in nature, and with ways to take personal obstacles and turn them into something reflective. I listened to the dragons/dreams/swords with a thoughtful smirk on my face. The dream was the thing you wanted. To put it metaphorically, climbing that mountain could have been a dream that day for several of us. On a larger scale, the dream is anything you dare to dream and aspire to attain. The dragon, or dragonS, is whatever is keeping you from attaining the dream. And, finally, the sword is what you use to kill, maim, destroy the dragon, so that you can have your dream! All a bit cheesy, but I put my legs and lungs into overdrive and didn't think much about this again.
After a solid 4 hour uphill battle we were within about a mile of the summit. During this time I dropped back a bit to hang with one of the slower ladies and also the one woman I hadn't really gotten to know very well during the previous 9 days. Lou was quiet and seemingly withdrawn. A few times, during some of our greatest physical challenges, she would break down, cry and leave the group. But that is what OB does - it finds our weaknesses, and breaks us down. Being extremely comfortable in the outdoors I found myself often volunteering to go first: rappelling down cliffs, swinging across a river on a rope, doing anything physically stimulating. By recognizing my own comfort, I aimed to find discomfort. For me, I found if I went last, and waited and encouraged everyone before me I could work on something I direly needed to, patience. For others, being out in the woods so exclusively was so terrorizing that just crossing a river was a success. Their challenge was different than mine, but these were our challenges nonetheless.
Lou began to tell me why she was on the trip in the first place and climbing up that mountain. She had just moved to Colorado from a Midwestern state. It was a hard move, she told me, after a nasty divorce. The divorce turned her kids against her and many in the town where she was living. Her husband had a way of bending the truth and so told lie after lie until her children, both in their late teens, wanted nothing to do with her. The pain was so great, she moved to Colorado, where she had extended family. She hadn't seen or talked to her two kids in a year. This, she said, was breaking her heart.
As we approached the summit several of us realized we wanted Lou to be the first to summit. So we slowed down, encouraged one another, and cheered when she stood up on the peak. At 13,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies we were still dwarfed by several nearby 14,000 foot mountains, but we still had an eyeful. One of the OB instructors told us to fan out, find a space of our own on the massive summit and reflect on the days prior and on that moment. She told us to pick up a rock that maybe symbolized our own journey and, when we were ready, toss it out into the great abyss of the Maroon Bells Wilderness.
I chuckled a bit. There they go again, I thought, giving us some metaphorical reflective moment to embrace. I began awkwardly picking through stones at my feet, the nearest ladies a good 15 feet away on either side of me, when I heard a high-pitched scream. A scream I have never heard in the mountains, or perhaps anywhere else. A scream that carried and ricocheted off the granite peaks. The scream was followed by belly laden sobs. We all stood up and looked. The hair on the back of my neck was at attention, because I knew. It was Lou.
"I love you Ben!" She yelled, through muffled tears. "I love you Jenny! I will never forget you!" With that she threw two stones into the abyss. She threw them so hard, she spun around, hunched over at the waist and collapsed in a series of cries and wails. Ben and Jenny must be her children, I thought.
My heart raced. I suddenly remembered the dragons, the dreams and the swords. I realized then that I had been thinking of something in particular as I made the climb that day. Just out of a recent long term relationship, I was having a hard time feeling lovable, feeling loving. My dream, I suddenly realized, was to be in love again. The good kind of love. The kind we all deserve. The dragon was none other than me. I was the only one who could prevent that from happening. And lastly, the sword in it all--that made me realize this, that opened up this unique door and even allowed me to see this conundrum--was Lou. Lou was my sword.
With that I launched to the ground and picked up a rock that had lichen across its back. This rock represented both life (lichen) and death (stone), I thought. I held this stone to my chest and willed every crappy unloving thought and hard memory I was carrying from that recent relationship into it. When I felt that I had purged myself of at least some negativity, I threw the small stone as far as I could into the crisp blue sky. Only after I threw my stone, and saw the other woman around me one by one throw theirs, did I realize that I, too, was crying.
**
Becoming a physician assistant was a new dream, only a few years old, but soon after starting my program at the University of Washington I realized how many dragons I would have to slay in order to succeed. I had dragons of self doubt, finances, time constraints of school, moving to a whole new state, loneliness, the discipline of exam after exam. My sword? Well, there were many. In hindsight, I realize they were mostly patients. And, there was still Lou. Now, I am no longer a student. Now I'm negotiating my way into full time studying for my board exam at the end of September. I'm navigating the best first job, wanting to sincerely serve those populations I deem in most need of medical care and kindness and also seek out an organization that will encourage and accept my creative nature and compassionate style.
And I think about Lou all the time. What her pain and suffering did for me. How her act of letting go was one of the best lessons I could have learned thus far.
I look forward to sharing this story, or a shortened version of it, with patients and colleagues in the years to come. Never have I felt so excited, thrilled, terrified, and confident that when I throw this weighted stone of studying, self doubt and student-dom from my chest, the past will fall in place behind me and there will be nothing but far exceeding blue sky, brilliant compadres all around, and one hell of a view.
