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It's All There

By Jan Nesset

I slipped my hands into my pogies, took a grip on my paddle and used it to push off from the sandy Animas River shore. It was the last day of October, the only day I had left in the month to stay true to my mission of paddling at least once in every month of the year.

November was easy. Three days on the San Juan River with 13 men, my second trip on a wild and storied annual event.

December's now up and, energized by river time on the "Juan," I'm looking forward to accomplishing my goal. Why do I do it, embrace this self-possessed and some would say silly goal? Why would anybody? I have nothing to prove. Really. While the goal may serve to offer warmth to my ego, pride and self-value, any more they don't go that far either way. I'm more satisfied than that, content with who I am and where I am.

One friend says I do it for my spirit. Sure, my spirit benefits. Another says I need it. Yeah, sure, but either claim is too easy and too missing the point. This is not the first year I've set the paddling goal nor the first time I'll meet it, presuming I do. Am I just being contentious with myself, in obstinate denial of a simplistic reason that would immediately clear the wonder? Should I give over to just because?

I have another silly goal. This one is a lifetime goal. I'm four summits away from soloing the Lower 48's state highpoints above 10,000 feet elevation. There are 11 in all. If the weather cooperates, December also may be the month for topping out on Nevada's Boundary Peak. If not, if my health holds I know that one day I will summit that peak as well as the final three. The most difficult ones are already behind me.

It must seem silly, I know, to ponder the reasons behind these goals. While I am serious about the goals, I am less serious about knowing the why behind them. All I really need to know is how I feel about the goals. And they feel right.

But it's an interesting challenge to understand the why, even when the answer may be lost in the superficiality of "because I can." I prefer to believe the answer is more closely linked to the depth of famed climber George Leigh Mallory's answer to why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest: "Because it's there."

In Mallory's answer, "there" is his story - one that can be known truly only by him - so it is probably impossible to know what Mallory, the man, not only meant but felt by his famous answer, a response that has been pondered and stumped by generations. The details are indeed in "there," perhaps as trite as in over there or, in what feels closer to my reasons, in the sense of there being a place where one experiences personal heights - Nirvana, if you will - otherwise a state of bliss. There. Because it's "the" there.

And, because I want to, because I can, because I need it, because it feels good.

There we go.