Every Sunday morning, I pull up a podcast on my phone, lace up my running shoes, and begin my trek up Lone Mountain — a heap of dirt, gravel and rock sitting isolated amid a suburban wasteland. Reaching the top, I stare out at a lackluster view of Alabama’s silhouette, barely distinguishable through the dust and smog shifting with the desert breeze. I look down briefly at the 600-foot drop, turn around, and begin my trip back home — only to repeat the same journey next Sunday.
There is no breathtaking view or unique wildlife that draws me to my hike. Instead, it is the piercing cold air and aggressive terrain that excites my core. My Sunday morning hike is a series of struggles: my lungs clamoring for oxygen, my heart tirelessly pumping blood, and my muscles straining to keep up with my pace. I embrace the struggle. I find my own form of truth and contentment along the uphill journey.
It is my belief that just barely finding the will to take the next step, and then suddenly discovering yourself unable to resist taking another, is among the most unique and surreal experiences a person can have. While my body teeters on the edge of complete collapse, I feel the most alive. This feeling must be akin to what drove Amelia Earhart to new skies aboard the Friendship, or Philippe Petit to the top of the Twin Towers. It is the challenges — the pain, sweat, and long nights — that inspire those who push the envelope to never slow down. This love for challenge accompanied Earhart to her death, led Petit to bullfighting and carpentry in lieu of fading in his old age, and I to early morning hikes instead of sleeping in.
The meaning of life is simply living it. I live through my hikes, experiencing what life has to offer through getting up each morning and seeking out new challenges. It is where I am happiest, removed from the rest of the world while listening to Ira Glass tell me new stories of people I’ve never met and their quests for happiness while I venture out on my own. It’s a funny thing to carry memories of people, whether you still know them or not. My hikes remind me that the simple opportunity to take small steps — to look adversity in the eye and to conquer it little by little — is what I value. If I can get through this hike, I can shed off the layers of the parts of myself that I’ve outgrown. After all, in a hurricane, the eyewall creates the most forceful gusts of wind, capable of the most destruction, while it simultaneously also creates a space of stillness and tranquility that protects the storm’s integrity.
If life is a perpetual climb, that does not make me feel hopeless. I am content in knowing that I am like Sisyphus, constantly climbing. In which direction, I’ll never always know. In this intrinsically meaningless desert, I will create and learn and continue to push this boulder of existence called life. I do this not because I want to reach the top and be done, but because it is in living and understanding suffering in the hardest of times, in my daily struggle to comprehend just how absurd everything is, that I experience the most full and beautiful life that our human condition can offer. The absurdity of our condition inspires me to make my own meaning of it all — to study life, science, history and our place in it.
That is why I — sometimes begrudgingly — trudge on, learning, growing and creating, focusing on the next step and never the last.