Musings on the Kili Summit Trail

So, after our time in Mwanza, I took a side trip to trek Mt. Kilimanjaro. I started training for the trip in January to get myself ready. It was an amazing six days on the mountain leading up to summit day. On summit day, we got into camp about noon and took the afternoon to rest and relax. Then, early dinner and a few hours of rest before hitting the trail at midnight.

With our headlamps on, we started out in a single file line (our guide, me, Joe (a Canadian who joined my trip) and an assistant guide. It was a grueling, seven hour trek straight up through scree fields, then snow and scree and then just snow, climbing from 15,000 ft elevation to 19,340. I was glad I couldn't see the trail, only the lights of climbers above and below. At times I wasn't sure if I could continue. We went polepole (sloooowly), our footsteps only about six inches long at a time. At one point, another climber was having difficulty, so through the darkness I could hear the sweet melody of a swahili prayer song or the whistling of an old Christian hymn as her guide encouraged her up the trail. Poignant and beautiful.

So needless to say, with seven hours I had a lot of time to think (muse...perhaps hallucinate). Of course, one of the first lyrics which came to mind was "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path..." The thing is, with a lamp (or in my case, a headlamp) you can really only see about three steps ahead of you. It got me thinking about the summits God asks us to climb, the vision He might lay out before us.

I think we usually just get a glimpse of that vision, that mountain He wants us to climb, but it may only be a glimpse. If we choose to follow the course He sets before us, we may only see a few steps ahead. Sometimes that is a good thing. Perhaps if we saw the entire road we would turn back, discouraged or afraid. Sometimes along the way we may run into difficulty, feel like we can't continue, and in those instances, we need people to pray for us and encourage us, and in turn, we need to do the same for others. At the same time, we need to be sure we have prepared, using the disciplines of prayer, scripture reading and meditation.

At sunrise we reached the summit, and it was overwhelming in its beauty, its vastness, just the magic of the place. I will never forget it. It is a part of me. At the same time, for me a little of the high altitude sickness started to set in, headache and nausea. Perhaps all mountaintop experiences are the same. We aren't meant to stay there. We will be changed by journeying to and being in that place, but then it's time to get down off the mountain, recover, and start the next journey.

So the question I leave Kili with is, what summit is God calling me to go after? After attending the Doing Justice conference, I know it has something to do with justice for children. I am excited to see what glimpse of the trail He might show me over the course of the next few months, what mountain He might ask me to climb. I guess I better start training now.

Blessings to you on whatever journey you find yourself on.