I am sure I had already marched about 4 kilometers down the Galatea Creek Terrace trail when a quite question slipped into the back of my mind, “why am I doing this again”? To be honest, it has been so long since I regularly spent time in the mountains that it takes more motivation than necessary. Not only was the motivation lacking, but my watch was beginning to strongly disagree with the guidebooks estimate for the base of my intended ice climb.
Half hour later, on my return, I once again crossed the first steep gully leading up to Mt. Kidd Bowl. The Bowl was not my original choice but by now I was actually starting to relax and thinking maybe I would scramble up far enough to just get a look. Of course the creek bed in the gully started out easy enough, as it usually does.
Another 20 minutes and I am side hilling the talus rim about 100 meters above the creek. Every 10 steps I look up, first the bowl, and now crystal blue ice is leaning out from the steep arête’s walls as if to say, “Hey, we are really not that far”. It is far though and I am still thinking about turning around. I am a little hungry and wishing I had stopped for lunch an hour earlier.
Up until this point, my brain has been slowly pulling its gun, and I’m beginning to feel the barrel between my shoulder blades. That’s right, my brain. It wants to go home, wants to be warm and sit on the couch drinking a beer. You see, my brain is generally the lazy one. But it’s my spirit that brought us here and right now it has to talk my brain down.
Now the spirit knows something the brain had forgotten a long time ago. It knows that the only way to grow and live a little more completely is to work hard for something, to push through the wet paper bag that our daily lives crawl into. The spirit knows about the rushing river of life just below the ice, the brain only hears it as a far off echo of what is now just a memory. Such a shame that it is so easy to forget.
Eventually I reach the bowl, negotiations cease, and the spirit has won. It feels good to work through the motivation issue; I get some climbing in and make it back to the parking lot in one piece. Today was a good day, and the satisfaction of not jamming out too soon, will last forever. “I can’t wait to do this again”.
