Sorry Petrarch, My Mountain Was Twice as Tall!

Our merry little band of hikers set out at 11:30pm on a Friday night. Myself, two mission companions, and one childhood friend each scrambled, unceremoniously, out of my cramped Toyota Camry at the entrance of the Timpooneke trail. Our packs were prepped, our minds were readied, our eyes were thirsty for that view only obtained from the peak of a mountain—that sight which lifts the soul and gives it a place in the vast world which can drown a person at eye-level. We were going to hike Mt. Timpanogos. We would walk with bright lights strapped to our foreheads—a slow seven miles to its peak, almost 12,000ft in elevation—and arrive in time to watch the sun rise, illuminating Utah Valley.

           

I had decided to organize this trip because, well, I needed it. Two years ago, when we undertook this special hike, I was working full-time (between a real-estate company and the MTC, both demanding jobs), going to school full-time (taking pre-dental science courses), serving as an Elder Quorum President, and giving 10+ hours a week to an Exercise Science Department research program to find correlations between over-developed muscle groups surrounding cervical vertebrae and an increased risk to develop symptoms of Temporomandibular Joint Disorder. Sound awful? It was. I was drowning slowly—watching myself do a mediocre job at each one of my social roles—and it was only a matter of time before I broke.

It was a long climb to the peak; I had plenty of time for soul-searching. I thought about how each of my steps up the mountain, and in life, seemed inconsequential, each one, in the big picture, seemed so small, but that by those hundreds, even thousands, of small steps I would be lead to a higher vision—an encompassing understanding, a wise perspective—of the world’s beautiful operations. It is an understatement to say that the sunrise from that peak did not disappoint.