No Cover

The first thing I remember is waking up at four in the morning in a sleeping bag that wouldn't let me turn over, on an air mattress at eleven thousand feet, thinking: I don't want to do this.

I don't really like camping. I like hiking well enough, but camping is not my favorite thing. And there I was, in the cold, in thin air, on an air mattress that restricted my movement, an hour and change before we'd start up Yale. I said my morning prayers. I went to the bathroom. I got my gear ready and I tried not to wake anyone else. We put on our headlamps around 5:15, before false dawn, and started trudging up the mountain.

The whole day happened between two mountains in Scripture, and I didn't understand that until I was walking back down.

Two Mountains

In Matthew 4, the devil takes Jesus to a very high mountain and shows Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. Total visibility. A downward gaze. Dominion offered. See it all. Take it all.

In Exodus 19, the Lord comes down on Sinai in cloud and smoke. The mountain is fenced. The people are told to wash their garments and be ready by the third day, and not to break through to gaze, or they'll perish. No visibility. Only a command and a consecration.

I was on both.

The Protocol

The night before, I set the rules. Not too fast, not too slow. Stay ahead on water, because it's dry up there and your sweat evaporates before you notice you're sweating. Pack the bag before bed so you're not doing it half-asleep in the morning. Control the pace. Control the breathing.

The trick with a fourteener is that the air keeps getting thinner as you go. At base camp you're at 11,000. The summit is at 14,000. That's not a small delta. What happens is your body punishes you both ways: at the start you feel fresh and strong, so the temptation is to push. Toward the top, you can't catch your breath and you can't recover, so the temptation flips and you want to rest too long. You keep telling yourself, just another minute and I'll get my wind back. You won't. Not really. Not up there.

Five minutes on, one minute off. Steady. Boring. You get to the top that way.

The protocol was set in the dark, with no view to justify it. That's the whole thing. Exodus 19 doesn't say wash your garments because you'll need clean clothes. It says wash your garments because you're going to be present with something you can't take possession of. Preparation isn't safety equipment. It's being made fit.

The False Summit

Yale runs through forest, then above the tree line, then switchbacks up to a saddle. The last half mile stops being a hike and turns into a scramble. You put your poles away because you want your hands. You're going up and over boulders, and every so often you glance sideways and there's a thousand-foot drop where the ground used to be. My friend and I have a word for it. Spooky. High spookiness value.

You're spent. You're at 14,000 feet. Your muscles are begging for oxygen they cannot get. And you come up over a ridge and you see it: the summit. Right there. You're about to climb the last little pitch and one of the guys ahead of me scrambles up, looks over, comes back and says, "Kenn, that's not the summit. That's a false summit."

I said, "What? No, this is it. We're here."

He said, "We've got another quarter mile."

Half the group was done right there. And there's no condemnation on that. We were already over 14,000 feet. Another friend of ours, at a similar time, didn't do the scramble at all, and that's a completely respectable call. It's no joke up there.

But I stood on that false summit and I thought: I don't get off the mountain any faster by not going. Either way I'm waiting. So I'm going.

That's what discipline mostly is, in my experience. Not heroism. Just refusing the exit that wasn't actually an exit.

Eleven Minutes

The summit feeling lasted about eleven minutes. That's a made-up number, but it's honest.

There was a family up there with two kids who moved across the boulders like mountain goats while I hugged them. There were some high schoolers who told me they had to get down soon because they had their first football practice at 3:30. Climb a fourteener in the morning, football practice in the afternoon. Must be nice to be young.

When we got the group together for a picture, I asked, straight-faced, if I should fix my mustache. Everybody looked at me. Then I pulled the mustache comb out of my pocket. I keep one on me. Pocket knife, phone, mustache comb. It's a daily carry situation. Everybody started laughing, which was the point, and then we took the picture.

I didn't bring my phone up the mountain. When I'm doing these things I want to be there, not documenting it, and I know somebody else will hand me a photo later. Somebody always does.

And then, right on cue, the hype started draining. I was looking around and my eyes kept catching on the drop. Last year on Comanche I white-knuckled the whole way up because I don't love heights. This year, for whatever reason, the scramble hadn't gotten to me. But now that I was standing still on the summit, it did. My legs were spent. My lungs were spent. And we had to get all the way back down.

Matthew 4. All the kingdoms shown in a moment of time. Total visibility. A downward gaze. Dominion offered. Eleven minutes of it, borrowed, not false, but not mine either.

What I Went Up There Asking

I went up the mountain with a question. The week before, I was having coffee with a friend, another single guy about my age, and I told him what I'd been asking the Lord. I said, when am I going to get mine.

Here's what I mean by that. I've come to understand over the last year or so that my interior life isn't like other people's on average. The best I can describe it: if the average person's baseline on an ordinary Tuesday is a four or five out of ten, mine is a two or three.

For a long time I thought I just wasn't grateful enough. People love to say that. If you're not happy, you must not be grateful. But I am grateful. I have three beautiful children. I have work I love. I have friends. I have more than my share. It wasn't gratitude.

My friend and I talked about how ruthless the single life is on your mental health, and how disillusioning it is when you were doing the best you could and it still came apart. He's a better man than me in a lot of ways and his marriage still ended. I asked him what he thought about my question. He said, if you figure that out, let me know.

So I carried it up the mountain. Can I overcome my past. Will I ever be happy. I was treating those as the same question.

The Descent

The correction landed on the way down.

I was thinking about the guys behind me on the way up. I'd been faithful about training, keeping the cardio up, and even though it was hard for me, it was manageable. For some of the other guys, it wasn't. On the switchbacks I'd get a little ahead and call back down that we were almost there, that it wasn't that far, that the devil's a liar. That last one is a phrase I picked up on Comanche last year and from a pastor of mine before that. It's just true. A lot of negative self-talk is spiritual in nature. Sometimes you have to say it out loud to somebody else and sometimes you have to say it to yourself.

Getting onto the scramble, one guy hit a wall. He said he couldn't go any further. I laid hands on him and prayed with him. I don't remember the exact words. Something about how he'd trained for this. He'd come all this way. He wasn't there for no reason. And then rebuking the spirit telling him there was nothing left. He got up and kept going.

Walking down, thinking about him, and about the whole day, it came together like this: maybe the point of going up the mountain is to encourage other people going up the mountain, even when you don't want to go yourself. Maybe the work the Lord has for me is to take what I've been through and use it to help somebody else keep moving. It's enough to let the Lord turn your shame into glory so you can be about the purpose He set for you.

And here's the part that clicked, the part I'd been getting wrong.

That doesn't mean my interior life is going to change. Those are two different questions.

Can I overcome my past? The answer is yes. I'm not letting what happened to me control what I'm doing. That's the overcoming. It's real, and it's already happening.

Will my baseline feel like everybody else's baseline? Probably not. That just is what it is. It's not a limb that grows back.

I'd been running those together my whole adult life. If I overcome, then I'll be happy. If I'm not happy, then I haven't overcome. Both wrong. The overcoming doesn't deliver the happiness, and the difficulty with happiness doesn't cancel the overcoming.

No Cover

Back to the two mountains.

On the tempter's mountain you look down and you see kingdoms to possess. It's all visible at once. You get the panorama, and for eleven minutes you get the feeling of dominion, and it's real enough as a feeling.

I stood on Yale and looked down and I did not see kingdoms. I saw myself. Same vantage. Same downward gaze. But the thing I was looking at was not something I could take possession of. You can't summit your own interior. You can't stand on top of it and plant a flag and say, mine. It's not a kingdom. It was never going to be.

You're above tree line for the whole back half of that mountain. No shade. No shelter. Nowhere to stand out of the weather. When I looked down and saw myself, there was nothing to hide behind either. No cover.

Sinai is the other posture. The cloud, the smoke, the mountain fenced off, the command to wash your garments and be ready by the third day. No panorama. No dominion. Just preparation, and presence, and the warning not to try to break through and gaze at what you were not made to possess.

The climb was Sinai. The predawn dark. The protocol set the night before and obeyed with no view to justify it. The false summit and the choice to keep going because leaving didn't actually get me off the mountain any faster. The prayer over a guy who thought he was done. Wash your garments. Be ready by the third day. Not because it's safe. Because you're going to be present with something.

The summit was the other mountain. Eleven minutes of borrowed dominion, and then the hype drained and my legs remembered the walk down.

I came off Yale with two things that used to be one thing, now clearly separate. I can refuse to let my past define what I'm doing. I can also carry a baseline that doesn't feel like other people's. Both true. Neither one cancels the other. And I go on anyway, because there are other guys on the switchbacks, and somebody has to call back down that it's not that far, that the devil's a liar, that we're almost there.

I still don't have an answer for my friend at the coffee shop. If I figure it out, I'll let him know.