Back to the West

I had to blow the dust off this blog because I'm resuming my conquest of America.  Two years ago, I nearly suffocated in the thin air of the Rocky Mountains.  After ending up breathless in the Flagstaff emergency room, I realized my plans had gone awry and the hopes of completing my journey vanished like a mirage in the desert. 

This time will be different though.  How do I know that?  Well, after I finished packing and put on my plane shirt, which is also my beach shirt, I found $13 in the front pocket.  Then on the plane ride there was only one empty seat, and it was right next to me!  Everything has been coming up Murphy today and signaling good fortune.  I'm going to need it because the American West can be an unforgiving place. 

The geography of the American West, with its elevated mountainous terrain, windswept plains, and burning deserts, may no longer be an unpredictable wilderness, but the struggle for survival is real, at least for me.  My body is unfit for the altitude one must endure throughout the Rocky Mountains. A lung capacity of about thirty percent is inadequate for survival above about 2,000 feet.  I'll have to navigate heights of about 10,000 feet to complete this journey, so I'll be in the death zone.  I will rely on technology to keep me alive.  Sometimes we can trust machines more than we can trust humans.  

I just landed in Vegas and I'm about to get on the road.  There will be danger and uncertainty, but I would rather die in the mountains than have my spirit confined to the limitations of my body and the physical world.  The body is a temple and a prison.  The soul seeks to be free and the spiritual warrior fights to overcome all obstacles and retreats from nothing.  I begin with an unshakeable faith in the success of this journey because it is not a search for death, but rather a confrontation of its inevitability, and a revolt from life's meaninglessness and absurdity.