This is the one of a series of posts from my climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro, and some transformative perspective that came in those days above the cloudline. The lessons absolutely translate to an elevated life down here. These posts will be a bit more sharing and a bit less instructional than my typical posts, yet hopefully just as useful.
The morning of June 11th was a pivotal few hours I'll never forget.
Physically, I was up 17,500 feet on Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, on the last morning of an already-transformative 5-day + months-of-preparation climb up that mountain, and less than 2 hours away from the summit. While an all-in, energy leader of my team, I had been getting a strange-feeling kind of altitude sickness, which just felt like dizzy spells (didn’t faze me) and needing to push myself harder (again, ALL-in), yet meant that the level of oxygen in my blood wan't saturating (pulse ox level) as it should. Our wise and experienced leaders were monitoring us all, and while they had warned us of the potential dangers of the mountain and altitude sickness (which can hit anyone), someone just the week before died on the mountain with similar symptoms to mine… so the gravity of it felt very real. At 4:00 that morning, before we set out on the trail for the summit, I was excited, feeling strong, and fired up to go, yet my pulse-ox numbers were pushing the envelope. Our guides placed me at the front of the line, right behind one of them as we set out in the dark that morning, with the stern directive to tap her on the shoulder if I got any dizziness, and the warning that if my numbers dropped further, they’d turn me around. I was feeling good, powered by adrenaline, will, and focus on my state, yet... 3.5 hours into that summit day’s climb at 17,500 feet up, I got another dizzy burst, and tapped her on the shoulder. Our leaders stopped the whole team for a break, checked my pulse-ox, and while I knew it before they said it, all three of my leaders stood there with me, love and commitment to me and my safety in their faces… “Sarah. Your lips are purple, nose is turning purple, and your pulse ox is too low. Going on is not safe… We have to turn you around.” There were the words, piercing the flurry of thoughts and emotions coursing through me with those exact words every climber on any mountain fears hearing from their guides.
The mix of emotions in that instant was disorienting and vivid. I felt all of these at once:
Disappointment: I can’t believe I’ve come this far and can’t finish this with my team. I have to leave them right here, right now?
Fear: Holy #@%. I could actually die.
Gratitude: I’m so glad they know what they’re doing, can see what I can’t about what’s happening to me, and are able to make the right decision for what will save my life.
Pride: I climbed, conquered and got the lessons of this mountain, higher than 7.5billion of the world who will never even attempt it.
Surprisingly at peace: Weird that don’t really care about the summit in this moment. I’ve been so fully blown away every single time I turned around along the way to see how far we’d come/ascended, that this last 1500 feet doesn’t matter nearly as much as I thought it would.
At that point, I’d already gotten a myriad of a-ha life insight moments from that mountain, which the next few posts will illuminate. We’ll start with the most dramatic, last lesson, which is what’s taken this whole year to unpack for me…
In that moment of truth, realizing that my turnaround could interrupt the team’s momentum and intense focus in their home stretch, I quickly focused on them. I assured them I was fine, declared that spot my summit, cheered, hugged and high 5-ed them before they continued up the trail the last 1500 feet, then turned away, to head back down the trail toward our last camp. Taking the photo above in that moment was heartbreaking. With a kind, helpful porter carrying my pack and keeping me moving as quickly as possible (the cure to altitude sickness is to get to lower elevation as fast as possible), tears streamed down my face all the way back to our last high camp.
I was struck with how completely different that same path we had just ascented seemed now, moments later, descending it alone. During the 5am-8am hours of climbing 2,000 vertical feet that morning, we completed it inch by inch, from pitch black with headlamps, to the sun rising with us above the clouds, that trail was narrow, filled with our team intensely focused on every step, breathing together, encouraging one another, letting out the occasional howl of adrenaline and “Rest steps and pressure breaths!” We were tightly packed inches from one another in the line, intentional, connected… THIS was Summit Day… IT… what we’d trained and prepared for over weeks and months. There was a rhythm of energy we could all feel, as we focused our headlamps on our teammates feet in front of us, placing each step in the spot their boots had just left, breathing in unison, connected. Throughout the whole ascent over 5 days, there were moments when we’d feel the energy of the person in front of you and behind you, their energy pulling or pushing our steps through rough parts where we’d otherwise stop if left to our own determination. That morning we all felt it, even more intense than the 5 days prior.
Yet, as I began descent back down that same trail (almost running down), the silence was deafening, the aloneness unsettling, although I couldn’t quite focus my thoughts to make sense of the contrast I was experiencing. I stopped, took a few breaths, and got my head together enough to take this photo (below), knowing it could bring me mentally back to that exact moment later to try to figure it out.
I stopped, took a few breaths, and focused to take this photo, knowing it could bring me mentally back to that exact moment later to try to figure it out.
A strange sensation continued all the way back to camp and the rest of the day, part fear of was could be happening inside my body, part shift in my psyche, which I’d spend months afterward, processing all the way through.
Physically, I didn’t realize that I was in the beginning stages of cerebral edema- a kind of altitude sickness. During that quick descent back to our last camp a splitting headache, disorientation and fever kicked in. I convinced myself and my porter that I’d be okay after he got me to my tent and left me alone to rest it off, and that I’d just find a place for a pitstop, then lay down in my tent to let my body reset, since they’d all be back down in a few hours. Yet I soon realized (sort of– I was foggy) that I was losing my balance, wasn't walking straight, was taking a long, long time to do simple motor tasks, and was absolutely burning up, despite the 35-40 degree air temp and wind. I was scared. I stripped down to almost nothing, sweating, laid down outside my tent in the wind, iced my body down (water bottle still frozen from the night outside) to try to cool my feverish heat, kept repeating meditations and visualizations to calm myself, and let myself pass out. When I woke up, freezing and able to think more clearly, I knew my body was resetting, crisis averted.
By the time the team returned from the summit, I was functioning somewhat normally, and able to focus on them, so asked lots of questions about the rest of the experience, genuinely happy for them. Yet tears kept leaking from my eyes as I talked, although I wasn’t fully processing why.
In my moment of truth at 17,600 feet, something did shift, much bigger than my expectation to summit. I had separated, and for the first time during the whole journey, I was in a completely different experience than the rest of my team. I went from being connected so completely that we were breathing in unison, to being out of sync and alone. That separation was a giant rip in my reality of the experience thus far, and it felt bigger to me than the summit. While we celebrated that last night on the mountain, descended the rest of Kili together, then celebrated more, I was different than I’d been. Every night of the trip we’d come together in our team tent after the day’s climb, sharing the lessons and connections of the mountain that day, each of us having our own insights, collectively having many. While I was normally eager to share, after summit morning I withdrew, a little quieter, fixated inward trying to sort it all out. I turned my outward focus to all the other amazing parts of the Kili journey, yet that rip was definitely still working in the background of my my mind.
Since then (a year ago at this writing), I’ve reflected, processed, and dug into the layers of what happened for me on that mountain- physically, mentally and emotionally. I brought so many epiphanies and insights back from Kili which inspire me daily, distinct from those few hours on summit morning, that loss of sync with my team, was a lesson all its own.
Poignant right now, yet always…
Kili Lesson #1: Trust your team's expertise, and surround yourself with people who can call it when you can’t.
We all think we have more self-awareness than we do. When I’m pushing myself, I’m unstoppable, convinced that I can do whatever I set out to do. That usually proves true, yet in this moment, it didn’t help me at all. I was powering through, doggedly strong, yet I had no idea of what was happening in my body, its stakes, or what was best for me. My guides did. They had perspective on me which I didn’t, expertise I counted on them for, clarity from day 1 that safety drives every decision, and I trusted them implicitly. Because of that combination, their decision which possibly saved my life, and the immediate next steps were quick and efficient, not a debate. My gratitude for them far outweighed my disappointment, underscored by the shock that something so drastic could be happening inside my own body while I had no idea, and wouldn’t have ever known without them until it was a full-on emergency.
Down here: The more committed to a cause or direction we become, the bigger our blindspots can be, and we can miss something critical or off (especially about ourselves), which could make or break the whole thing as we power on with determination. Who do you surround yourself with who you can absolutely trust to keep perspective on you when you can’t, who’s got critical expertise you need and can count on, and who will be completely honest with you to "call it" even when it's hard? Find them, empower them, and listen to them, especially in those key moments.
Kili Lesson #2: Moments of truth have layers, worth peeling back.
While the moment of being turned around on that mountain was hard, it was also somewhat obvious in many ways (because of lesson #1). What wasn’t so clear was the most formative part of the whole Kili experience for me, which didn’t consciously surface until much later; that the connection to that team was far bigger for me than summiting Kili. The truth underneath my turnaround that morning: I tend to fly solo in much of what I do, and being part of that team completed me in ways I didn’t even know I needed until it was gone in an instant. I know I’ll climb that mountain again, conquer its summit and other peaks too, but I won’t ever complete that physical experience with my team. While the layers of that moment had been working their way up through my consciousness over the last year, somehow, a simple 4 words in an email this morning (“Wish you were here,” from some of my team, back on Kili right now), both exposed and completed it all for me in an instant. Those relationships, and that connection to that team were clear, rare, and irreplaceably permanent.
Down here: What might be beneath your moments of truth? It's always possible to find the most obvious, outer layers of “what is" or "what I’ll do differently next time." Yet what truths are layered under that? Beneath, often is a somewhat-conscious truth… maybe a pattern you can spot of something like this happening elsewhere (or repeatedly) in your life? Beneath that, may be more layers of unconscious truth- the ones you don’t see, but work in the background of your mind to cause those patterns. Example: a recent client had trouble confronting others, and layers beneath we discovered a time in childhood she'd stepped out to confront, and was unjustifiably retaliated against and hurt in the process. Once we revealed the base of those layers, the pattern released, and changed. For her, for me, and for most, while the reflection and processing can seem long, the release happens in unlocking it can actually occur in a single interaction, realization, or instant.
Reflect, process, and do the work of self-actualization to get to that clarity. Even when it takes a year, it’s liberating, energizing, ultimately instant... and completely worth it.
©SarahSinger&Co. 2017