El Capitan and the Fear

This morning I woke up staring at thousands of feet of rock, towering above my head. Above me is the Salathe, a route that my Uncle had made the first free ascent on, almost exactly 25 years prior. I fell asleep underneath it last night, after a frustrating jug haul up the fixed lines, handing over my pride and halfway jugging in the dark due to my slowness, to reach the bottom of the Heart on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley.

I watched the sunrise turn the cliffs pink and the shadow of El Cap project onto the trees below, the big giant, waking up from sleep. The shadow worked clockwise as we stretched our tired muscles and I thought a lot about fear that has prevented me from being up on a wall sooner. In fact, I had dreams of falling for weeks before I got here.

Fear is a funny thing, and it can decide how you live your life. I feel like mine has been holding me tightly to it's hip and I've let it sit, thinking that there's nothing I could do about it.

Before we started hiking to the base, I was so full of nervous energy, I could have run for miles. And though that energy was mostly spent in my desperate attempt to get my rhythm set jugging, most of the fear had converted into amazement that I was actually on my way up, that the fear wasn't quite as paralyzing as I had thought.

And though it's no big stride, it's progress and it was a life changing experience for me.

The moon, in it's crescent, was light enough to see and it cast moon flares through my lens. I can't tell you how very, very alive I felt up there, looking down on the 200 ft trees, and drinking coffee high above the Valley floor. I can tell you that today I have lived life to the fullest and I'm not the same person I was yesterday.

I wish you could see the beauty that I've been witnessing and the exponential growth that I've felt. I try my best to capture it all, but there are certain things that shouldn't be bridled, just experienced. And the sum of all my experiences here, are that exactly. 

I hope I never stop feeling life so fully as I do right now and I'm incredibly grateful for the people I had with me on this step.