The last time I hiked Lone Peak, back in 2012, I almost didn’t come home.
That’s not an exaggeration. My muscles quit on my, and my body stopped responding. It was the weirdest sensation—and terrifying—that my mind was sharp but my body wouldn’t move.
I collapsed on the trail and had to be airlifted out by helicopter — twelve minutes that cost $8,000 and still somehow managed to be uncomfortable.
I was dying of thirst, but they wouldn’t let me drink anything. I had IV fluids running in both arms. My hands and feet swelled. When I got to the hospital, my wife used lotion and soap to get my ring off because it had to be cut off. That or lose my finger. I looked like a swoll gym bro without the exercise.
My troubles started hours earlier in the boulder fields near the top of the mountain. My brother-in-law and I had lost the trail. Lone Peak isn’t generous with vegetation at the summit, so there aren’t many natural markers. People leave cairns to guide the way, but sometimes other hikers knock them down—leave no trace. And sometimes, less helpfully, people leave fake cairns as a joke.
We wandered for over an hour, circling piles of rock, looking for a path that felt right. The way forward wasn’t obvious. We weren’t in danger of disappearing into the wilderness forever — the mountain is popular, multiple routes lead down, and other hikers would undoubtedly come along. But some of the routes down end miles apart, and we had no idea which path we’d end up on if we guessed wrong.
That uncertainty cost us time. Time cost me water. And by the time we made our way back onto the right trail, my body had already tipped toward collapse.
The thing is, if we had been sure of the way, we would’ve made it back to the car before it became dangerous. Air conditioning would have cooled me down. A quick stop at the convenience store could have restored my electrolyte balance before it became life-threatening.
When I finally saw my primary care doctor a few days later, I was tired but mostly felt normal again. He told me how close I’d been to not making it home. If a few things had gone just a little differently… he said, letting the words trail off.
I didn’t need him to finish the sentence.
Now, I rarely do any kind of outdoor activity without an electrolyte drink in my pack. I still love hiking, but I don’t take my body’s resilience for granted.
I wish I could say that lesson translated perfectly into the rest of my life — that I stopped wandering in metaphorical boulder fields without a compass. But there are days it feels like I’m right back there, circling, uncertain, wasting energy because I can’t tell which way is forward.
Life is often confusing like that — too many signs pointing in too many directions. Some of them are well-meaning but misleading. Others are jokes that stopped being funny when the consequences got real. And just like on Lone Peak, you don’t always know how much danger you’re in until the margin for error has disappeared.
Sometimes, I think about that moment on the mountain when we realized we were lost. I remember scanning the horizon, hoping for something familiar — a cairn we’d passed earlier, a pattern in the rocks, even a worn boot print that might suggest other hikers had come this way. The absence of certainty was its own kind of weight.
I’ve felt that same weight standing at my kitchen counter or staring at a half-finished email I’m not sure I want to send. Or in a business meeting when two paths forward are equally unproven and my brain is quietly begging for someone to guarantee which one will work.
We like to think the way forward is about knowing the route. But I’m starting to wonder if it’s just about moving at all — even without certainty, even with the possibility that we’ll need to backtrack.
That’s where I am now. Somewhere in a life-sized boulder field, not fully lost but not fully sure either.
I want to trust that forward will make itself known — that enough small, careful steps will eventually link up into something recognizable as a trail. I want to believe that the confusion I feel now will someday be just a story I tell.
But if I’m honest, I’m not there yet.
I still catch myself scanning the horizon for something familiar, hoping for a sign that’s real this time. Wondering if the next step will get me closer or send me sideways.
And maybe that’s the part I haven’t figured out — whether the “way forward” is something I’ll recognize when I see it, or something I’ll only realize I’ve been walking all along.
For now, all I can do is keep moving, even without the full map in my hands.
And that is enough.
Thanks for reading, and before you go. . .
I’m Aaron Pace. I write from the middle of things — life, business, fatherhood, faith, and the slow work of becoming someone I can live with. Not as an expert, but as someone trying to pay attention.
If this piece resonated with you, I’d be honored if you followed along here on Medium. I write — not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m finally moving again.
If any of this resonates with you, I wrote a book you might appreciate.
It’s called You Don’t Have to Escape to Be Free — a collection of my reflections on identity, meaning, and building a life I don’t want to run away from.
You can check it out here:
No comments:
Post a Comment