Note: This piece was originally written almost ten years ago.  Though my voice, my style, and my realization were still fairly immature, this piece is a celebration of one of the most sacred experiences of my life, and wanted to share with you all.

This is the fourth installment. If you haven’t already, please begin with The Climb: Part I.

Here we are, still as the petrified Sioux we are perched upon, waiting to see what will become of us. I look down to my companions. Sean is directly behind me, Nena (a squat Russian hippie girl who was accompanying our cross-country journey) a few yards behind him. We exchange exhilarated grins. None of us can believe we are where we are. I think of the absurdity of it all, sharing such an intimately pivotal and defining experience with people I hadn’t known before a few days ago.

It was another string of oddly threaded circumstance that brought us together to share this experience, commencing with Kate’s decision not to move to Oregon with me. In so many ways she had been the hinge of my decision—I would not have been able to make such a drastic decision alone. I was too accustomed to fear to do something so bold. But she had come to the conclusion that it would be in her (and my) best interest not to come with me. She broke my heart. I was hoping that, after nearly two years of unilateral desire, this would finally bring us together, forcing our two souls to merge in the crucible of a single big experience.

So when she withdrew, I felt a tremendous rug being pulled from beneath my feet. But this decision had already snowballed, having reached such a momentum that I really felt that if I allowed this to fall through, no one—including myself—would ever be able to take me seriously again. So I was going to do it alone, picking up my roots and transplanting them to the other side of the continent. I would wait to see what happens. This was going to be a challenge, to both my personal integrity as well as to my faith.

Kate moved to Amherst to go to the University of Massachusetts, and it was up to me to figure out how to get myself and my possessions to Oregon. Two weeks later she called me, having found a bulletin posted at her school by a girl moving to Oregon and looking for someone to split the costs. I called the girl, and we played phone tag for several weeks before we finally talked. Her name was Nena, a graduate from U-mass, and she spoke with a thick Russian accent. We decided upon a departure date, about a month in the future. Somehow I had found a ride across the country. It seemed so poetic that it was through Kate that I found my way to Oregon, despite the pain she had caused by not coming with me.

I am suddenly snapped back to my senses. The grinding slither of rubber on dirt echoes through the stillness. It is a car.

Oh fuck, it’s a car! Someone’s coming to get us! Oh God, what do we do?!

Slowly raising my head to peek over the ridge, I expect to see the white headlights of a car filled with security to chase us off the monument, and fine us a ridiculous amount of money for trespassing. But as I focus my eyes on the vehicle, I realize I am not seeing white lights.

I see red.

Taillights, not headlights.

“Oh my God,” I say with a whisper, “I think we’re alone!”

We sit there for another five minutes, listening with focused intensity to see if there is anyone else around. There’s nothing. So we stand up, stretch our legs, and proceed to haul ass to the other side of the monument. It is a good run, probably two hundred yards or so farther than we had guessed. I reflect for a moment about the timing of all this–if we had proceeded as planned, there is no way we could have made it in time while the worker was still there. He would have turned his bulldozer around while we sprinted, and would certainly have spotted us.

We make our way around the tremendous base of the monument to the other side, where we have to shuffle up a series of little grassy cliffs to get to the top. Finally we make it. We are behind the mountain, walking up a dirt path toward Crazy Horse’s massive shoulders.

The Climb: Part V