Above the Treeline: What Altitude Taught Me About Perspective

By Cosmos Sunseeker

There is a moment, somewhere around eleven thousand feet, where the trees stop. Not gradually. Not one by one. They just stop. As if the mountain finally told them a secret they could not bear and they all decided, together, to go no further. THE THINNING AIR I have climbed above the treeline more times than I can count. Each time, the same thing happens. The air gets thin. My lungs work harder. My thoughts get simpler. At sea level, my mind is a crowded marketplace. Worries. Plans. Conversations I have not had yet. Conversations I will never have. All jostling for space. But as the oxygen drops, the stalls close one by one. The merchants pack up and go home. And suddenly there is room. Just room. And the mountain. And me. This is the first gift of altitude. It takes away everything that is not essential. You cannot worry about your mortgage at fourteen thousand feet. Your body will not

let you. There is only the next step. The next breath. The next moment. WHAT THE MOUNTAIN KNOWS Mountains do not care about your summit. This is hard for ambitious people to hear. We climb to reach the top. To plant a flag. To take a picture. To prove something. But the mountain was here before your ambition and it will be here after. Your summit means nothing to it. The mountain is not a goal. It is a teacher. The lesson it teaches is this. The view from the top is beautiful. But it is not more beautiful than the view from the middle. It is just different. THE DESCENT Coming down is harder than going up. This is true of mountains and it is true of everything. The ascent is powered by wanting. The descent is powered by nothing but endurance. Your knees ache. Your quads shake. Every step is a negotiation with gravity. But the descent is where the real work happens. Because you have to

carry what you found at altitude back into the world where the air is thick enough for worry. Where the marketplace of your mind will reopen. The question the mountain asks you on the way down is this. Can you remember what it felt like to have room.