The Grand

It ended the same way it began, with ten switchbacks snaking up the face of the Grant Teton—ten switchbacks through the woods and over loose rocks, ten switchbacks at dawn. For ten switchbacks and five hours I hauled my thirty-pound pack and watched my feet as they churned along the path. At some point over the course of the 48-hour trek I had become a machine. My mind was submerged in a murky pool; the only thoughts that breached the surface were the simple cues issued to my legs—left foot, right foot, left foot, watch out for the rock….

Utterly depleted, my body struggling to obey the most rudimentary instructions, my mind was anywhere but in the moment. I salivated at the prospect of dipping my feet in the glacier-fed creek at the base of the mountain and finally quieting my screaming toes. Each step gets you closer to home was the mantra my brother and I chanted. However, with each blister-tearing step, my consciousness slowly resurfaced. As we climbed further down the mountain, I tasted the fresh air, and my eyes noticed the world around me. A smile snuck its way through my pursed lips as I reflected on my two-day odyssey.  I was not the same person who reluctantly trudged up these switchbacks a few days ago, and inwardly I searched for when, exactly, the “New Betsy” emerged, leaving the old one somewhere on the 13,770 foot mountain.

I thought of slipping on a handhold on a sheer rock face, only to be saved by my father’s diligent spotting.  We were each responsible for belaying each other—holding  my mother’s, father’s, brother’s, uncle’s, and cousin’s life in my hands had invigorated me. Connected by a thin rope, we relied on each other to get through our physical and mental trials. The two coils of rope that crisscrossed my chest like bandoliers had held us together in the literal sense but had further strengthened our relationships; they symbolized our emotional bonds, which had been tested and hardened on our grueling adventure.

I reflected on how revitalizing it felt to attack the face of the mountain. Perhaps my transformation started when my feet first trudged through the deep snow. I could feel every muscle in my body churning as I planted my ice ax into the powder and lifted my body step-by-step up the mountain. Each time I raised my foot my boots felt heavier, my breath became thinner. Or maybe it was when I reached the Upper Saddle, and finally stood on the ridge, straddling Wyoming and Idaho with the monstrous Teton Range extending to my left and a series of long, flat-topped mountains streaked with snow on my right.

I think the real moment, though, was that night under the stars. I walked out of the tent at 4 AM, looked up, turned my headlamp off, and just stared—just stared at the diamonds which blanketed the sky, so close I swear I could’ve touched them. I felt that rush course through me, that “Christmas morning Santa Claus” kind of rush. It woke up my senses, my head, my heart. I felt it in my core. I felt it to the tips of my limbs.  Under those stars, I knew what my soul felt like when it was truly awake. While I savored and internalized my very own Starry Night, a fiery burst splashed across the canvas and vanished in an instant. I stood awe-struck, and in that moment there was nothing more I could ever want.

The shooting star re-introduced me to hope; it reminded me how to dream and why I ever used to; it made me feel magic—a magic that impending adulthood was slowly sucking out of me. This star shot life directly into my soul and dissolved anything that had ever attempted to bring me down.

And now, back on the same switchbacks that I had traversed days (or was it years?) ago, my vision expanded, I swallowed whole the world around me as I made my way down the last stretch of mountain. I drank the sweet mountain air, and bathed in the cool winds—I was reborn.