Cathartic Peaks

Two months have passed since my last post. I could go on about my creativity, or lack thereof, but that is the theme of every other post on here from the past two years.

Each summer is a cathartic purging for me. And since I had a moment of catharsis the night before I had a literal purging in the form of a wicked stomach virus, I am going to take this as a sign. Sometimes life gets too fast, and you just have to be reminded to slow down and start anew.

I was reminded of this on Monday night, as I climbed the steps at the Holtsville Ecology Site and Park, after running two laps around the track as the sun slowly set on the blustery, sultry, sticky Long Island surrounding me. As I reached my apex, the top of a reclaimed landfill that looks out a few miles towards Holbrook, Holtsville, Patchogue, and Farmingville, I thought of the other peaks I've reached and promontories I've stood on in my life.

In 2005 and 2006, in the midst of college, as a 20-21 year old mired in self-discovery, I would run to a promontory jutting out onto the gracefully flowing White Clay Creek, amid the White Clay Creek State Park in Delaware. There I would sit and surround myself with the mellifluous sounds of a trout stream cascading around lands empty but to other nature-seekers like myself and the park's own natural inhabitants. After a few seasons completing this run, my time on the promontory led to my acquiring Lyme's disease from a deer tick, so I decided to do away with running to the promontory, and instead ran to state borders (Delaware borders two within running distance to campus), which provided momentary excitement but not nearly the same cathartic effect.

2007 was a transition year for me; I moved back home from Delaware, started working at the snack shack at the Babylon village pool (where I would often have my cathartic moments watching the sun set on the ethereal Great South Bay, surrounded by fried oil and grease wafting in my face), and got a full-time job teaching at Sachem.

In 2008, I drove cross country , where I experienced two moments of catharsis: the first, during an early-morning half-hungover run to Lake Michigan in Chicago, one of America's beautiful skylines behind me and its most delicate of lakes reflecting that skyline in front of me.

The other moment was an earlier morning, more-westerly, less-hungover walk in the heart-stealing expanse of blue skies and mountains, the great city of Bozeman, Montana. Here, looking towards the mountains in the distance, I was overcome by the size and glory of this land, and I realized I would strive to continue conquering it.

Now many years later from these separate cathartic revelations, I am at a precipice yet again, ready to move on and climb upward in my mountainous life. Until I get to my next precipice, my next apex, promontory or peak, I am content to be where I am, watching the sunset surrounding me, reflecting on where I have been and where I am going.

Robert Pirsig put it best: “You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.”