Staking Out the Area
On Denali in 1986 we learned how to make sure any potential campsite was safe before we made camp. All climbers in the party would stab at the snow with ice axes and ski poles and make sure we weren’t standing on top of a snow bridge that might collapse into a crevasse. We’d poke holes all around it and when we felt sure an area was secure we would stake out the perimeter with wands. Then we would go ahead and set up our tents and sometimes an igloo for the toilet and the space for our little al fresco kitchen and that’s where we spent the night.
To emphasize the importance of not going outside the wanded area, we were told a story about a climber who had gotten up in the middle of the night a few years before to relieve himself. He stepped outside the wands and fell five thousand feet to his death. It would have taken a lot to get any of us to go outside anywhere near the edge of safety during the night, I can tell you that, especially since we had our pee bottles right in our sleeping bags with us and the wind came out with the onset of darkness as unfriendly and menacing as a feral and carnivorous animal. That story added a little caution and a sense of urgency and awareness of our surroundings to our time on the mountain.
I don’t know where that memory came from this morning, but it was like opening the fridge when you think you’re hungry and you don’t really know what you want and can’t remember exactly what’s in there. Then you see the leftover pasta you’d forgotten about down on the second shelf pushed to the back in a plastic container.
It occurred to me that sometimes “staking out the area” is just how I feel in the morning when I’m doing my gratitude work. It’s a new vista and a new day and I don’t know what to expect and I poke around a little and soon the wands are placed and I’m inside a safe space when I sit down to write. But it’s edgy, too, there’s the possibility of something happening for which feeling gratitude would be a stretch and a test.
I’m simply taking time to focus on what I have and shine a light on it. Simply put, at 4AM on Monday morning, that is my work here–to focus on what I already have, which is everywhere on display. I’m not always going to feel the way Br. David Steindl-Rast put it–“Grateful eyes look at each thing as if they had never seen it before and caress it as if they would never see it again.”
Yet, sometimes I really am present to the joys, the deep joys of how much I have. The big stuff as well as the grout between the tiles, so to speak, maybe stained a new color from the footprints over the years. It’s endless really, when you start to look. Richness upon richness, blessing on blessing, the creaturely experiences that we all share.
I will step out of my metaphorical tent into this new day and breathe deeply and let my tea warm me and feel the edgy safety inside this perimeter and watch the light sedulously seek out every corner of the dark world and banish the night ghosts and I will rejoice.
