Bold tracks and Bagpacks

  The Mountains, The Stillness, and the Life-Death-Life Cycle It’s been a while since I last wrote. I can’t quite explain what’s been happening, that strange vacuum where everything happens, yet nothing feels magnificent enough to record. No high-altitude mountains, no extreme gym routines, no extreme runs or walks. Just life, flowing quietly, steadily, and unhurried. Since August, that’s been me, just letting life happen. Maybe it’s Mount Kilimanjaro’s fault. A few months before, I would have blamed Mount Kenya’s altitude, but you know what they say, you come down from the mountain, and everything feels different. Only hikers might understand this feeling , a kind of serene emptiness that follows great heights. Runners call it the runner’s high ; for us, it’s altitude high sickness,  that beautiful post-mountain stillness where the body is grounded, yet the spirit still floats somewhere among the clouds. When the Mountains Go Quiet Coming down from the ...

  Just the other night, I lay awake staring at the ceiling, silently wishing it was Friday. Not because I had big weekend plans - no, because I wanted to cancel them and just sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come. And when it doesn’t, at least for me, it usually means one of two things: either I’m anxious about something, or I’m paying the painful price of skipping the gym for too long. This time, it was the latter. My arms, legs, back, and even the small muscles I didn’t know existed were staging a full-blown protest after this week’s workouts. Lesson learned: comfort has consequences. Still, I had a hike planned with my team, and there was no way I was going to bail. So I made a deal with my body - pain and I would have to coexist. We’d negotiate our way to the summit, spend the day in the wilderness, and hopefully come down not just alive, but renewed. That’s the paradox of movement. It hurts sometimes. It demands sacrifice. But in the same breath, it heals. Movement is medicine. ...