In 1998, I was experiencing my first year of teaching. It was the proverbial uphill battle, an excruciatingly tiring time that seemed to last a lifetime. And, as most of those really tough experiences are, it was character-building. Once I’d made it through, I was a better person for having done it.
During that year (and several years previous and following), I was a member of a small poetry group made up of Averett family: students, alumni, and faculty. We met about once a month in one of our homes to read and critique each other’s poetry. It was a great honor to be involved (my creative writing professor was a member!), and I learned so much from it.
On poetry nights, we were always supposed to bring in many copies of two poems we’d been working on. I, as a last-minute person, was always pulling something together minutes before I had to be there, and often, it really worked magic. I have always written in pieces: images, sounds, cool wordings, ideas I’d like to work on.
So there I’d be, flipping through my many journals, grabbing at the words that stuck out at me. Sometimes, my poems would essentially be tapestries of ideas that hadn’t seemed to relate until that last-minute session. Other times, they would stem from one image or idea and grow and bloom into something right then and there, before my eyes, through me.
This poem was one of the latter. I’d come home from school, late again and completely exhausted, having spent the 30-minute ride home spinning my ideas for something to take to my meeting. I kissed the family and took off to the basement and my word processor. (For you young people: That’s sort of like a computer, but not…)
I started turning pages of my journals, and an exercise I’d done a year or so before from one of my creative writing books caught my eye. I’d listed nouns (one of them was mountain) and listed verbs (one of them was laugh), and then I’d mixed them up into unusual combinations. One of those was “mountain laughs.”
I pictured a mountain laughing and started thinking about why a mountain would laugh. It reminded me of the times I’d been hiking. I love nature and I love to hike. But I always end up getting out of breath and aching and having doubts about whether or not I can make it — even though underneath all of my insecurities, I KNOW I can do whatever I put my mind to. Regardless, the doubts crop up, and I have to squash each one.
So, in my mind, the mountain became that self-doubt (with an evil-sounding Schwarzenegger-ish accent, maybe): Hahaha! You think you can climb me! You are so weak and out-of-shape! You stink of fear! I will crush you! You might as well turn back now! And, in my mind, that hike wasn’t just about the literal hike up the literal mountain, but the humongous mountains I was climbing professionally and personally.
Once I had that image, it’s like the rest just flowed right out of me.
The Hike
When the mountain laughs,
maybe it’s time to trek down a bit,
blisters and aches.It’s easier going
where you’ve already been.The snow’s no more shallow,
no less in your face;
the sun’s glare, no less blinding.But the holes you trampled
on your first go up
remain to guide you.So get yourself to a lower altitude,
where you can breathe a little easier.But don’t sit down.
Don’t loosen your boots.
Don’t turn your back
even for a second.Wait for the mountain
Originally published in The Ninety-Eight Poets, edited by W. Scott. © 2007 Jo R. Hawke
to nod off again.
And get back at it.
I think now, ten years later, that those “holes you trampled on your first go up” don’t always “remain to guide you.” How could they, when the snow’s so heavy it’s “in your face”? Those holes get covered up, probably, filled in by the snow as footprints will.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After you rest a little and squash those doubts about making it up (when the mountain has gone back to sleep), you’ll make a new way, a better way up that mountain because of having gone before.
And this time, once you get up as far as you got the last time, you’ll be in a better place to go on for having gone that different way.
© 2008 – 2010, mrshawke-dot-com.
Most of my teaching resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License, which means you can feel free to use them with attribution as long as you don’t use them commercially. If you’re not sure, don’t hesitate to ask me. Unfortunately, I am currently unable to send out my tests and quizzes, but I am hoping to establish a less time-consuming alternative for this in the near future. Sorry!!
