East St. Mary's Peak, as seen from around 8000 ft; still another 1400 to go

With tears in her eyes she asked, “Will I ever be normal?”

As a psychiatrist, I hate the word ‘normal’ as much as I hate the word ‘crazy’. Lying in the stark seclusion room for her safety, my patient was struggling to find hope that her life would be better than this. For me, having just moved from Baltimore’s urban chaos, this was Wild West psychiatry I was looking for. A Native American girl in her early twenties pregnant for the fifth time who had all the scars and injuries born from the continued assault on this country’s native peoples – repeated sexual assaults (sometimes from family members) beginning at a young age, a lack of educational and career opportunities, caretakers unable to perform their roles due to addiction and poverty. She was someone who had never been given a fair shot to have anything that would have remotely looked like the Normal she was asking for. I looked at her and said “Do you mind if I use some profanity?” She nodded affirmatively but it was clear from her look that she thought I was going to curse her, I continued anyways “F**K Normal”.

Over the next two to three weeks, she and I worked together to help build some hope for her future – a future that would never be Normal but one that could still be good. She did not leave the hospital to enter a ‘normal’ world – which she saw as a place with white picket fences, a husband who worked a 9 to 5 job to help her raise 2.3 children, and carpools and soccer games. The world we built was a combination of crisis housing, medications, talk-therapy, 12-step groups and government welfare. This world was different than the Normal world she dreamed of but it was more attainable. At her departure from the hospital, she was hopeful that the child she carried might have a better opportunity for joy than life had afforded her. Throwing off the unattainable goal of Normal, she was able to find hope in her limits. In the end, it is this ability to accept our limits that allows us to be compassionate to ourselves.

Fast forward a few days, my younger brother had just arrived to share the adventure of our new Montana home. My wife and I decided to move to Montana hastily. Only two weeks elapsed from the moment that I even thought about Montana as a potential home to the moment of signing a job contract. What had sealed the deal was driving over Ravalli hill, and seeing the Mission Mountains on the Flathead reservation in their full snow-capped glory on a sunny spring day last March. Ever since then I have been dreaming of losing myself in those, of conquering one of their summits.

Southern End of the Mission Mtns

It was the end of an unseasonably warm October. Coming from lower latitudes I was already beginning to ponder my limits of cold and darkness tolerance. I had never put on snow shoes before and other than the bunny slope on some tot-lot of an east coast ski resort I had never really ventured into winter sports. My brother on the other hand is wild – I grew up never thinking of Montana, he grew up with a map of Montana proudly pinned to his bedroom wall where other guys would have had a swimsuit model. When it comes to the outdoors, my brother is someone who is always pushing his limits and exceeding them. I couldn’t have asked for a better companion.

We planned an ascent of East St. Mary’s one of the rugged peaks at the southern end of the Missions. Within a manner of weeks, the range had gone from being completely exposed rock to being blanketed at the top with several feet of snow.

I had tried to gather as much information ahead of time to know what to expect. I received inviting in-put from a friend at work. Being that the land was Indian land, I was told that going there was pretty difficult to arrange. In particular, someone had told me the reservation land was off limits in the summer and fall to allow the regions native grizzly bears free roam without human encounter. He also said “Well, my friend and I call the trail system there ‘Revenge on the White Man’”

Also I talked to Don who rented us some equipment at one of the local outdoors stores. Don was older but sinewy and tough looking. From talking to him, it seemed clear that he could play stunt double in the next re-make of “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams”. Don said, “Wow St. Mary’s this time of year…that could be pretty interesting.” I could tell from his inflection on the word ‘interesting’ that he wasn’t exactly using it as a synonym for ‘pleasurable’. He clarified “Well let me put it this way, you’ll remember it for the next 20 years”. He proceeded to confirm what I already had read – that the trail was unrelentingly steep – but also added that in the conditions half-way between Fall and Winter it could also be a slip-and-slide of slush and mud with a vortex like intention of sucking you back down to the bottom after every hard-earned step.

Well the next day, my brother and I set out despite the admonitions. Our mom is a huge worrier, she was here with Sean out to visit us and slept very little the night before, with nightmares of us being buried in an avalanche or eaten by grizzlies. We started the day in pitch black in a camp sight at the bottom of the mountain. We expected to hit the summit by 2 PM. The earliest part of the trail was something best travailed in darkness – better to not see just how high and far away the summit lies. It was grueling in darkness, it would have been frankly disheartening to watch it unfold. We ascended around 4000 feet in little more than two miles; not seeing it helped us get up quicker with a focus limited to just the step in front of this. I am writing this three days later on Sunday, and my thighs still hurt.

The route to the summit was such that it never really leveled off, but what made it well worth it was beginning to get past the thick forest to places where we could see the surrounding vistas. It was absolutely spectacular. At around six inches of snow we exchanged hiking in boots alone for hiking with snow shoes. As we passed the tree line, each step we took was into untouched mounds of snow, the evergreens were coated in clumps of snows and the peaks far off in the distance were also white shining cones in the sun.
Unfortunately, I am not in mountaineering shape and beautiful scenery was not inspiring enough to overcome my desk-job physique. After about the fourth or fifth fall on slippery rock ledges, my mettle was being tested, clouds were settling in on the peak, and I was no longer able to keep my temperature up. Sean having mountaineered before was maintaining a faster pace than I could keep up with. When we slowed down, the heat being generated by our muscles was quickly whisked away by the wind. The damp sweat on our bodies began to turn icy. At some point, every climber has to determine their turn around point and be willing to give up the goal of the summit to try again another day. Having climbed another major peak in the area this summer, I remember reaching a mental turn around point; I am glad I pushed through it. It was a real struggle to decide whether or not the limits this time were mental alone or substantial enough to warrant turning back. I didn’t want to disappoint my brother; I didn’t want to feel so limited. We agreed to get a little further and we did, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to hit the summit this climb. We talked it over. He said, “Look, all I really wanted was to spend some good time together and I feel like we’ve done that”.

Since coming down, I’ve had opportunity to reflect and question. I wonder now if I could have pushed my merit more, if it would have been worth the additional discomfiture. Would it have happened without major injury? And this is where I began to reflect on my patient again. Somewhere along the way, she set out with a goal in mind of being Normal. Her very unrealistic and specific expectation of Normal made her guiltier and more depressed, and took her farther from her goal. My problem with Normal isn’t that there is something wrong with someone wanting to feel stable, to feel accepted, and to feel a sense of belonging. What I do have a problem with is when this gets identified as a particular and specific thing – a single point, like the summit on a mountain. There is a certain madness demanded by the solitary vision of conquering a mountain. It is why so many men have died trying. It demands that all else be counted loss for the goal of attaining it. In my task of helping people find themselves in a more compassionate light, seldom is the vision that we develop anything solitary or clearly definable. It is less like a mountain summit and more like a mountain range – it is rich and textured with valleys and ridges, areas rough and scarred, shorn by glacial forces, and others alive and verdant with wildlife and trees. This vision of the outdoors may never compel me to be the first to summit a never climbed peak, but it always allows me a way to enjoy the mountains in a soul rejuvenating way. I may never summit any of the Missions, but I intend to enjoy my soul, my friends and my family as I try. In the meantime, I do plan on kicking myself into better shape to give myself a better chance next time.