Two months ago I said, "Goodbye" to
Southern California. I arrived on the beach early in the morning and
slowly traversed the shoreline. The waves gently lapped at my bare toes
and played with the sand beneath my feet. A final day in the pure blue
perfection of another San Diego Wednesday, the kind that draws so many people
to this part of America. So many
people like me.
You know that feeling you get when you've been in a
place too long. Maybe you haven't experienced it yourself but it's in
every horror movie when you're pleading with the actors and actresses to stop
being so naive and run away from the haunted house. The feeling pursued
me for over a year. It was a shadow of a hand that I knew was following
me and waiting to grab me and pull me away. Life was as easy as it could
get; wake up, work, sleep, repeat. Every time I whipped around the hand
vanished but I felt its presence in the way it disturbed the air.
Throughout the year I learned that catching this phantom would be a
gradual process facilitated by my experiences and connections.
There is no one particular catalyst that can be
attributed to the cascade of actions that led to my departure. Many
occurrences had to do with my ego's perception of success and failure.
Augmented personal priorities leading to an uneven life balance provided
further subunits in this reaction. If you wanted to name the enzyme
responsible for lowering the activation energy in my conversion I would name
it, "Climber's protease."
A protease is an enzyme that breaks down complex
proteins into its building blocks or amino acids. Climber's protease
takes a life full of convoluted needs, wants, and desires and breaks it down
into the basic needs for food, shelter, water, and climbing. In this
transition one learns most about the necessity of friendship and family in providing
these basic needs. A half full box of oatmeal, some Mountain Chow, and a
couple of bottles of beer, imparted to you from a climber ending their stay at
Indian Creek, holds a greater value than any materialistic needs of a chic
society. Joy in life comes most simply from a friend giving you a couch
during a cold night, the warmth of being home with family for a few days, or a
morning sunrise after a night spent under the stars.
Climber's protease allowed me to catch the spirit
and helped to encourage me to seek more from life by giving up a desire for
excess. I rose from my seat on the beach and walked over the dune back
towards the idyllic traffic coasting down highway 101. In my final view
of the ocean I looked past the unoccupied lifeguard tower watching the endless
blue, took my last gulp of the briny ocean air, closed my eyes and listened to
a final wave quiver and clap against the hard sand. The clarity of this
moment revealed a grand journey ahead.
