Mountains of Possibility

My dad would get a new topo map

From the musty basement of

Original REI store in downtown Seattle

And would point to a spot of water—

A Lake, pond, river bay, or waterfall

and announced “we will go there!”

No matter the terrain,

markings of trail or lack there of

With our topo map in hand

he believed we could get there,

or that it was always possible

Sometimes we made it,

Sometimes we didn’t;

pitching our tent in the dark

on a small step of earth

On the steep incline, perhaps

just out of site of that spot of water

we had hoped to see leaping off

the topo map into our reality

I had no idea as a child that

Back country hiking with him

Would teach me more

about moving through life

then any classroom ever would

about how the meaning of life

lives more in the sensations

of meeting each moment

Than ever in the arrival of destination

It didn’t matter that we sometimes

never reached our intended goal

We always met the deeper lesson

of living with intention

yet present to each moment

With more resilience, creativity and joy

And as we hung up our packs

Aired out our sleeping bags

and cleaned our dishes

dreaming of our next big hike together

We knew were already living

In the meaning of Life

WithIn the mountains of possibility