After My First Mountain
There is nothing to do except brace myself.
It’s so cold.
I’m so sick of this wind.
It isn’t just blowing—it howls, whistles, whooshes, then slaps the side of the tent with a force that makes me flinch. The temperature can’t seem to make up its mind. One moment the sun warms the granite beneath me. The next, clouds roll over the ridge, and the wind steals every bit of that warmth away.
There is nothing to do except brace myself.
Face it.
Endure.
For hours the wind owns the mountain. It rushes through the valley so relentlessly that I begin to imagine I hear voices buried inside it. I wonder if the mountain is trying to tell me something, or if my mind is simply exhausted from listening.
Then, without warning, everything changes.
The wind stops.
Silence settles over the basin as if someone has quietly closed a door.
For the first time, I hear the mountain instead of the storm.
In the stream, water trickles over polished granite. Tiny waves ripple across the surface of the lake. Somewhere above me, a small cloud drifts lazily across the ridgeline, dissolving and reforming as if it has nowhere it needs to be.
The silence feels almost alive.
It is a gift I didn’t know I was waiting for.
My shoulders soften.
So does my mind.
Only then do I realize where I am.
Alone.
For the first time in twelve years, I am away from my husband and my children, sitting beside an alpine lake in the Sierra Nevada’s after one of the hardest hikes of my life.
The climb was brutal. The rocks of all shapes and sizes.
Look for the flat ones. Avoid the ones that move.
My backpack felt impossibly heavy. The granite was steep, loose, and unforgiving. My legs ached.
And yet…
I couldn’t stop smiling.
Months earlier this had been nothing more than an impossible dream. Now I am living it.
I was on my first mountaineering expedition.
Now I’m home.
In a few weeks, I’ll return to my classroom for my fifth year as a special education teacher.
For as long as I can remember, birthdays have carried quiet anxiety. Another year older. Another reminder is that time moves in only one direction.
This year feels different.
Turning fifty-five doesn’t feel like something to fear.
It feels like permission.
A few days after returning home, I walked back into Orangetheory Fitness for the first time. I expected to feel weak after nearly two weeks away.
Instead, I felt powerful.
Not because I had become stronger physically—although maybe I had—but because somewhere in those mountains, I had stopped doubting myself.
I discovered that I could stay calm when things feel uncertain.
I can make difficult decisions.
I can do hard things.
Most importantly, I learned that strength isn’t about reaching every summit.
Sometimes strength is knowing yourself well enough to pause, reassess, and trust your own judgment.
That lesson followed me home.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 