The Joy of Limits

At 6:19 pm, the sun was setting over the canyon. I looked back to the southeast from my perch on the Hermit Trail and saw blaze orange glowing off the cliffs of the North Rim, the rocks on fire with the reflection of the setting sun. That was the last pleasant moment of my day, and I had a lot of day still in front of me. Only a few miles remained, but many vertical feet, and hours of cold, rainy trudging.

Climbing out of the Grand Canyon on the Hermit Trail requires a final push of 1,800 vertical feet spread over 2.5 miles. It is largely solid rock steps cut into the canyon wall. I have often marveled at the Promethean effort required to carve trails across our national parks. Never more than in that moment. Anything less than thunderbolts would feel insufficient to cut and move, set and place the massive stones I was heaving myself up, one by one.

Pain radiated from the base of my heels through every sinew of my legs and lower back. My quads were so shot I needed to plant both poles on each step, lean hard, remove every ounce of weight possible from my dead legs, muster whatever inner strength remained, and heave myself onto the next rock.

If Kilian Jornet, ultra-running legend, describes trail running as “making love to the mountains,” this was more like an awkward first kiss with braces. Painful. Clumsy. Exhausting effort. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

As I think back on those slow, painful final hours of my Grand Canyon day, here’s the thing that strikes me: I loved those hours. I don’t love the pain itself. I do love the setting. But there is something more there as well. I think it is about finding the edge.

South Kaibab at Sunrise

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I crested the final steps, arriving at the least marvelous view of the day: the Hermit Trailhead parking lot. It was 10:05 pm. Forty degrees. Drizzling steadily.

My friend Matt and I had left our hotel at five that morning for a fifty-mile, all-day Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim (alternate route) Grand Canyon adventure. I had not seen him in hours. He had pushed ahead at the bottom of our final climb to try to catch the last shuttle. He hoped to get dry clothes, more calories, and somehow make his way back to the trailhead (passenger vehicles were not allowed down this particular road, only park shuttle buses, and the last one was long gone) to retrieve his exhausted, slower friend.

If this were a competition, he had clearly won.

My headlamp reflected off a metal sign, part of the park’s “Hike Smart” campaign:

YOU are responsible for your own safety in the canyon.

Prepare yourself for a slow, strenuous hike out.

Matt and I had laughed about those warnings the night before over burgers and beer.

Confidence is easy at the rim.

Maybe that is the dissatisfaction that disappears when we find a limit. So much of our world is hyper-focused on making things easier. Efficiency, productivity, convenience, luxury. We are told everything is available and that comfort will meet our deepest needs.

But comfort does not meet our deepest needs. If anything, it often takes us farther from them. When I come to the end of what I have and wonder whether there is anything left, I know one thing for sure: I have encountered something undeniably real about myself.

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About an hour earlier, I had laid down on the bench in the small shelter at Santa Maria Spring. The spring is dry this time of year. I took my last drink of water — actually, it was triple-strength Gatorade. Water had run out an hour earlier.

My inner quitter said loudly:

“Maybe if I sleep here, Matt will bring search and rescue to get me in the morning. I have an emergency blanket. That should keep me alive.”

That would have been a terrible idea to follow. Things were bleak. I did not even know if Matt’s plan to catch the shuttle and make it back to pick me up had worked. Who knows what Odyssean twists had come his way. And I was still a long hike from the top.

I made it through the mental battle, pulled myself back onto my feet, and heaved myself over every one of the steps. I was standing just fifty feet from the parking lot. No clue what I would find.

Adventure is about limits.

Not recklessness. Not stupidity. Not skydiving with a broken parachute. Not certainty either. When you know the outcome, something essential is missing.

The sweet spot is preparation plus uncertainty. When you have trained, studied, and planned, and still are not totally sure if you will succeed.

Here is what I have realized about my life in professional ministry — and maybe you have seen this in some sector of your life as well. I spend so much time looking for more certainty, all the while destroying the vitality of it all.

Here is what I want to be as a pastor (and husband, father, writer, friend).

I want to be someone in love with the adventure.

I want to invite others into the same.

When we spend all our days looking for the safety of the trailhead, we can lose something far more important.