breathe in and out slowly, feel mother earth below me.
Blog about the piece:
This canvas brings back memories for me -- it's my depiction of Rucu Pinchincha Volcano near Quito, Ecuador. This mountain was the first that took me beyond 15,000 feet of elevation, and for someone who's afraid of heights, that's a feat in itself. I have a deep respect for this mountain, as I do with all the peaks that have come after her, although this one taught me the most about myself. The mountain showed me: what fear can do to the body (in my case, quieting it); the importance of solitude; the wonder of breathing in lucid air; the awe-inspiring contemplation of pure stillness; and, that feeling you got as a child when being able to play outside after a rainy day of feeling cooped up indoors -- I felt that. For the first time I was in this awesome space, with no one else but my climbing partners, and I felt alive after a very long time of being cooped up and not knowing it. Pinchincha, in a very real way, made me realize how complex, boarded in, and superficial my life was back home. It wasn't the life I wanted to live. I summitted Pinchincha three years ago, and still I find myself struggling for that sort of rawness that the Beat Generation lived day in and day out. Is it possible to live the virtues that this mountain taught me, while stuck in this virtual, digital kind of era where kids don't even play outside anymore?
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