Summer of Awe

For the first time in 32 years, I did not write to Cheyenne on July 27, the anniversary of her birth and death. For the first time in 32 years, I couldn't find the words.

Instead, this summer, over the course of 14 days, I hiked 210 miles. Twenty-five thousand five hundred feet of elevation gain. Ten different mountain ranges: the Timpanogos, the Blue Mountains, the Cascades and the Bitterroots, the Rockies, the Oregon Coast Range, the Klamaths, the California Coast Ranges, the Santa Lucias, and the Sierras.

One of the most unexpected things about this pilgrimage is that it didn't anesthetize me. Just the opposite. My hours in the backwoods, in these wild places, stripped away all the distractions and left me so present that even words were elusive. So I didn't write. And that's ok.

Instead of thinking, I felt. My soul felt, and my heart felt, and everything felt embodied. Every breathtaking view, every bird's chirp, every alpine lake, every dusty step into the unknown was a reminder of love, loss, and the fragile beauty of being alive. I was inside it. There weren't words, only feelings. And sometimes the truest writing has to wait until those feelings can become language.

My pilgrimage began with intention. I knew I couldn't walk into whatever came next by remaining where I was. I climbed and climbed and climbed because there are places where beauty and wisdom meet me only after I've endured the grueling climb.

The mountain herself, for me, was my teacher.

• One step led to another, but looking too far ahead feels impossible.

• Finding shade and resting is sometimes necessary.

• Get rid of unnecessary weight in the pack and carry only what matters.

• I am so small by comparison. Humility is not weakness.

• Fear is there to keep us wise and safe, not necessarily to stop us.

• Beauty takes so many forms if I pay attention.

• I can't always see the trail from a distance. I trust that it will be there.

• The summit isn't all there is. I am actually changed by the journey.

Deep sorrow had a way of finding me on the trails, and more than once I cried. Yet it is never just grief. There is also laughter of a kind I've learned to expect, full and unguarded. A wonder that choked me up. Beauty so vast that all I could do was be. I did not return the same person.

These photographs were taken over those 210 miles and more than 25,000 feet of climbing through some of the most breathtaking landscapes in the American West. Long days in the wilderness stripped away distraction and left me here and now.

At the end of each long day, I chose a single word that captured how I felt and paired it with a photograph from that day's landscape, in the order I walked them. The final photograph, "Home," was taken by Annalee's dad, Phil, while I was away. He captured Selah Carefarm from above. That image, too, brought me something ineffable.

I could not recommend this type of experience more. And yes, even at my old age, I fully intend to make this a practice.

My summer of awe offered me something quiet and enduring: a place where grief could simply exist alongside wonder.