The Hill

I just wanted to be teleported to the top. That's what was running through my head recently as I sat at the bottom of the ravine, knowing I had to get back to the top. 

It was a "what the hell have I gotten myself into" sort of moment. It was fun walking down, but only five weeks out from a pneumonia diagnosis, and my lungs not yet filling to capacity, I was spent, with still a half mile to go. 

The Itty-Bitty Shitty Committee showed up right on schedule. Maybe you went out too soon. Maybe your lungs weren't ready. Maybe you should have waited another week. What is the matter with you? 

I eventually decided that no one was coming to rescue me, and no matter how hard I tried, I just could not teleport. So, I started moving. Slower than before. Breathing harder than I'd like. But up the hill, one step at a time. 

I've walked this looped trail hundreds of times. The hill is always my return. First it's flat, then a climb down into the ravine, which is covered in sand. Most days there are new tracks from the animals passing through. Going down to check out what's new is one of my favorite parts of the day. I never know what I'll find down there, in nature or in myself. Just walking, observing, and reflecting. 

The hill is how I come back out, emerging with new insight. Back to the house. Back to my work. Nature does its part down there, and I come out renewed. Coming up the hill is part of the embodiment of new wisdom. 

But that day it had lost that meaning entirely. It was just a thing in the way between me and being done with the walk. 

The months before had been heavy. Grief in my personal life on several levels and grief in the world too. Things surfacing that many of us had long suspected and then, as always, the news cycle moved on to the next crisis/distraction. And then pneumonia arrived and stopped everything. I slept a lot. Things got put on hold, like my blog. I did not write one for February. 

When I was feeling better, I got curious about any deeper meaning related to pneumonia. The Greek root pneuma means breath and spirit. The lungs in many traditions are linked to grief, to the processing of sadness, to what happens when we carry more than we have allowed ourselves to release. My body apparently had a lot to process. 

When I was sick, the idea of the trail felt like a chore. It wasn't until I was well enough to go back that I remembered what I had been without. 

Which is how I found myself back at the bottom of the ravine. Looking up at the hill. 

When I finally got to the top, I found my favorite rock and sat down. Two ravens flew by close enough where I could hear their wings. The view opened up in every direction, the city in the distance, the mountains, and the amazing cloud covered sky. I let the rock hold me for a while and I just breathed. 

The Itty Bitty Shitty Committee had nothing to say.

The hill was the return again. 

You have a hill too. Maybe it's the idea you keep circling but haven't started. The conversation you know you need to have. The thing you've been recovering from, a loss, a diagnosis, a life that stopped fitting, a world that keeps shifting faster than you can process, that you're trying to push through faster than your capacity allows. Maybe you're annoyed with yourself for not being further along. Maybe you're wondering if you went out too soon. 

Your hill doesn't care about any of that. It's just waiting. 

There is no teleportation. Not on trails. Not in healing. Not in any of the things we are most desperate to be on the other side of. The only way is through. 

The capacity builds in the walking. 

I'm still learning this. Apparently I need the hill to keep reminding me. 

What's your hill right now? 

Barbara Ann Jacques, Ph.D. is the founder of Disrupting Gracefully. She lives and walks in Fremont County, Colorado.