I've fallen short of my goal to climb a dozen 14ers this summer, however, it wasn't from a lack of trying. I won't bore you with the details of every climb although each mountain had its own story and experience. If I started my blog sooner it would have been amazing to describe each one in detail because each climb was a blog worth writing about. But without further ado here are 3 lessons I've learned.
Lesson 1) Doing what you love by yourself will open opportunities to do what you love with others.
Lo and behold it's true. When you start taking action without any expectation and for the sole reason that you love doing it, you will start meeting and experiencing like minded people. Then a community is created and you start surrounding yourself with great friends.
Lesson 2) Cliche alert*** You don't have to climb the whole staircase you just need need to take the first step.
It's not until you look back do you realize how far you've come. A dozen 14ers was a lofty goal and each mountain seemed to take forever but after just taking steps forward 8 were done and that is more than I thought would get done this Summer.
Lesson 3) It's okay for your goals to change as you pursue the original one, they actually might be better than you ever thought possible.
After the 6th 14er I realized that it was no longer fun to hike just any 14er, rather to hike specific more difficult ones. The goal of summiting 12 became obsolete and the new goal became to hike only class 3 and class 4 mountains, which are the two harder class mountains in Colorado. It became more fun and rewarding to accomplish a more difficult mountain than to stack up a number of easy ones.
Overall Lesson: Just Start. Take a step forward toward getting closer to what you want to be doing everyday. Easier said than done but I promise the opportunities are worth it. Happy Decision Making!
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