Life is a Mountain Path: 2015-09-20

Sunday, September 20, 2015

It’s Been Five Years since I set Foot in Colorado

It has been five years since I set foot in Colorado. This new place has provided both freedom and forgiveness, and I’m loving every minute of it. Here comes a meditation of images and feelings about Colorado:

Mountains, blue skies, sunrises, sunsets, travel the road out to sweet old Colorado my friend. Can’t wait, can’t wait, here it comes. Good old Colorado. What a place it is! I can’t really believe what an impact that it has made on me, and it will forever be imprinted upon me, and I will never forget to leave my imprint upon this great state.

Blue skies, mountains, rolling thunderous clouds coming across the plains, only to be halted by great majestic peaks. Storms of thunder, storms with rain, they come hither only to leave their marks in the form of green, green, green foliage and purple and red flowers dancing through the fields. Oh Colorado, what a place. Oh Colorado, what a fantastic place!

Here I come roaring down the straightaway. Here I come with new ideas, new knowledge, “a new me”! It’s been five years since I first set foot in Colorado, but oh it only seems like yesterday. It all seems to mold into a few fleeting moments, but oh what a few moments those really were.

I can’t wait to make it back to good old Colorado. It is perhaps the greatest state in the nation! On the road again Jack, to good old Colorado. Sunsets and sunrises but mostly just bright sunlight filling up every day and every minute and every second of that brand new life of mine. What a place! I tell you what a place..

Good old Colorado!

Nick Whittemore

20^th of September, 2015

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Mountain Paths

"We all have our experiences in the desert, at some point in our lives." - Me

"All good things are wild and free." - Henry David Thoreau

"I'd made it this far and refused to give up because all my life I had always finished the race." - Louis Zamperini

"The frigid wind whipping through my shirt, the methodic pounding of my feet against the well worn path, the faint rapid beating of my heart that keeps time ticking.. Neither the hills before me nor the sharp pain in my side discourage me. They make me feel as if I am whole again. The beast within longs to escape, running along side me, coursing through my vains. The scenery blurring as I fly by. Everything is flowing, breathing deeply never short of breath.. Warm feelings fill my soul, snow falling, crunching lightly beneath my feet, that last burst of energy expended just in time.." - Excerpt from, Winter Jogging by Nick Whittemore (2007)

"A mountain must always be respected, and will never be conquered." - Me

"I am a rebel, one who has not listened. We all are rebels. In this way we are all the same." - Me

"Well I walk upon the river like it's easier than land." - The Tallest Man on Earth

"When I was a boy the old chiefs used to say, as soon as you climb a high mountain, the highest you can find, do not stop halfway and look back. Climb till you reach the top. There you can breathe deep and look into all the valleys. Then you can say, 'I have seen.'" - From an old Nez Perce chief

"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." - Confucius

"In wildness is the preservation of the world" - Henry David Thoreau

"Each one of us, in our own way, has got to do something to save their soul, you know.. whatever that is.." - Yvon Chouinard

“How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.” ― Yvon Chouinard

"What is the meaning of the few brief instants in human history when people have stood atop Everest? The answer depends on the motivation of the person standing there. Those prepared to truly see and listen will find something different, and greater than what they were seeking. They will find that the spirit and blessings of the mountains can be found, ultimately, within all of us. And for those who have faith, Miyolangsangma, the omniscient and bountiful goddess of Everest, has another message: you will be protected." - Jamling Tenzing Norgay in the book, Touching my Father's Soul.

"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems." - Gandhi

"When men climb mountains together, the rope between them is more than a physical aid to the ascent, it is a symbol of the spirit of enterprise. It is a symbol of men banded together in a common effort of will and strength against their own true enemies: inertia, cowardice, greed, ignorance, and all weaknesses of spirit." - Charles Houston

"I left my heart to the wild hunt a-comin', I live until the call, And I plan to be forgotten when I'm gone, ..." - The Tallest Man on Earth

"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves." - Mahattma Ghandi

"We leave as we came and, god willing, as we shall return, with peace, and hope for all mankind." Eugene Cernan

"It is not the mountain that we conquer but ourselves." - Edmund Hillary

"If you want to do something you have to imagine it. If you don't imagine it, it will never happen" - Professor Muhammad Yunus's closing remarks @ Social Business Day 2013

"....If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for." - George Mallory, Climbing Everest: The Complete Writings of George Mallory

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." Albert Einstein

"My mind is in a state of constant rebellion. I believe that will always be so." - George Mallory

"To lead people walk behind them." - Lao Tzu

"There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle, or you can live as if everything is a miracle." Albert Einstein

"At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want." Lao Tzu

"Oh but rumor has it that I wasn't born, I just walked in one frosty morn. Into the vision of some vacant mind." - The Tallest Man on Earth

"There are many pathways to the top of a mountain" - Me

"For the stone from the top for the geologists, the knowledge of the limits of endurance for the doctors, but above all for the spirit of adventure to keep alive the soul of man." - George Mallory

"Aw but hell I'm just a blind man on the plains, I drink my water when it rains, and live by chance among the lightning strikes." - The Tallest Man on Earth

"Seven Principles of Social Business

1. Business objective will be to overcome poverty, or one of more problems (such as education, health, technology access, and environment) which threaten people and society; not profit maximization

2. Financial and economic sustainability

3. Investors get back their investment amount only. No dividend is given beyond investment money

4. When investment amount is paid back, company profit stays with the company for expansion and improvement

5. Environmentally conscious

6. Workforce gets market wage with better working conditions

7. ...do it with joy" - Muhammad Yunus"

"You get these guys who build a sailboat from scratch. They spend five years doing it. They get it built, and then they don't want to sail it anymore. But what they really wanted was to build a sailboat. That was it." - Yvon Chouinard

Inspiring Books

Returning to Earth

"Returning to earth after being in the mountains - stepping back out of the wardrobe - can be a disorienting experience. Like Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy returning from Narnia, you expect everything to have changed. You half-expect the first people you see to grip you by the elbow and ask if you are all right, to say "You've been away for years''. But usually no one notices you've been gone at all. And the experiences you have had are largely incommunicable to those who were not there. Returning to daily life after a trip in the mountains, I have often felt as though I were a stranger re-entering my country after years abroad, not yet adjusted to my return, and bearing experiences beyond speech." - Robert Macfarlane in the book, Mountains of the Mind.