The Path [Mt. Saint Helens] Canon EOS 20D w/16-35mm f2.8 L Zoom

We started off the hike with simple intentions, really; follow the trail until we came to a spot with a view and room to throw down a blanket, eat lunch, and enjoy the spring that had finally erupted around us. It had been a long, hard winter full of challenges, and I had found myself in sort of an existential crisis. For several weeks I'd been taking care of a 10-year-old boy in the ICU, the sickest patient I'd ever cared for, so sick I drove to work every day with a knot of dread in my stomach, wondering if he'd survived the night. All day at work, I'd live with my fear boiling under my outward calm, as I tried to appear confident and competent, but underneath it terrified, humbled completely by my inexperience as an ICU nurse and acutely aware of how much I didn't know. At night, I'd dream about him, and was haunted by the other kids I'd cared for, too, some of whom had died. I was enmeshed with my patients and their families, I couldn't think of anything else. My life was completely effected and I'd lost the sense of perspective and boundaries that had always been solid in my professional life until then. As I walked up the trail, my head was swimming, I was wresting with mortality, I was drowning.

Upward we hiked, the trail totally socked in by tall pine trees on one side, by the steep valley wall on the other. Just a little further, we thought, surely there will be a view any minute, a break in the trees, somewhere to stop and rest. We knew that Mt. Rainier stood to one side of us, Mt. Saint Helens to the other, and that eventually we'd find them. But the trail was steep and narrow, and the trees were endless. Onward we pushed. My mind wrested with death, life, and the thin veil between the two. I thought about that boy, who I knew was still back in his hospital bed, barely clinging to life, whose survival was so uncertain. I thought about my dear friend Kim, whose days were numbered as she gradually lost her battle with Cystic Fibrosis. The fragility of human existence played in my mind as I wondered what held some souls to the Earth, and what happened to the souls that departed. I contemplated life, purpose, meaning, religion, the spirit, mortality. Again and again I thought about the unfairness of death. I reeled in helplessness as I wrestled with my own limitations. I agonized about whether or not I could stay in this job, this job that was consuming me. But as I lifted my boot-clad feet further up the trail, I'd tell myself "I'm taking this step for that boy, because I can, because my legs work, because I am alive." My lungs would strain, and I'd think to myself "I'm taking this breath for Kim, because I can, because my lungs work, because I am alive." And I hiked on.

Six miles later, 3,500 feet higher, a ridge appeared just above us. We left the trail and scrambled straight up. Finally, we reached the ridge, pulled ourselves up to peer over it, and were dazzled by a majestic view of Mount Rainier, huge, and right there before us. Below us lay the valley we'd left, and behind us in the distance, Mt. St. Helens. There we laid out our blanket, and I sank onto it cried. I cried for an hour, maybe two, the tears a torrent once the dam had broken. I was broken. I grieved for that boy, I grieved for my friend Kim, I grieved for all the kids I'd cared for that had died, and the ones I knew I'd meet in the future who would die too. Between the sobs I'd catch my breath and breathe deeply, taking in the amazing scene before me, taking in the overwhelming landscape of life around me.

Eventually we put our packs on our backs and headed down the trail. My legs were tired, my head was tired, my heart was tired, my eyes were swollen. But I felt lighter. As we worked our way back down the path, I grew lighter with every step. I thought about different kids, all the living kids. I thought about the kids I'd taught to sail, the campers I'd trekked and paddled all over the northwest with, the kids who'd passed through the ICU and lived, the kids I'd counseled at schools. I named them in my mind, I imagined them in the settings where I knew them. I pictured their faces, full of life. I celebrated the living. I walked on, down the trail, leaving my burdens up on that hillside, lighter.

I've been fine ever since the hike. I don't know what happened there on the mountainside. But I went up the trail broken and came down whole. My job no longer consumes me, death no longer haunts me. When I'm challenged, I still tell myself to push on, because I can, because my legs work, because my lungs work, because I'm alive.

Today I observe and honor my lesson of 2005, the one that circled my life and permeated everything this year, the one that resonates in every cell of my body, every day: Live, live, live. And so I welcome 2006; there's a lot of living still to be done.