My Land of Beyond

Mr. Bryan and I went on our first official training hike for Kilimanjaro yesterday. We are taking on Africa's tallest peak in September so this will be a summer of hiking in preparation. As we hiked a section of Utah's Lone Peak trail, Bryan helped me to memorize The Land of Beyond by Robert Service. He said each line and had me repeat and the further in we got, the more feeling he added, and gestures and the view down into Utah Valley was stunning and I could see that Land of Beyond and this poem so perfectly captures my feelings toward life right now, I have to share it:

Have you ever heard of the Land of Beyond,
That dream at the gates of the day?
Alluring it lies at the skirts of the skies,
And ever so far away;
Alluring it calls: O ye yoke of galls,
And ye of the trails overfond,
With saddle and pack, by paddle and track,
Let’s go to the Land of Beyond!

Have ever you stood where the silences brood,
And vast the horizons begin,
At the dawn of the day to behold far away
The goal you would strive for and win?
Yet ah! in the night when you gain to the height,
With the vast pool of heaven star-spawned,
Afar and agleam, like a valley of dream,
Still mocks you the Land of Beyond.

Thank God there's always the Land of Beyond
For us who are true to the trail;
A vision to seek, a beckoning peak,
A fairness that never will fail;
A proud in our soul that mocks at a goal,
A manhood that irks at a bond,
And try how we will, unattainable still,
Behold it, our Land of Beyond!

You could interpret this poem as being about futility. No matter how we journey and what heights we attain, the Land of Beyond remains out of reach. But on the other hand, how delicious that there is always this stunning, distant beckoning peak to drive us onward and upward. Right now in my life, my beckoning peak is an actual peak: Mount Kilimanjaro. My sister-in-law asked the other day why I want to climb it--where is the appeal for me?

1) In 2012, I flew through Kilimanjaro airport en route from Mombasa, Kenya back to the states. I was annoyed at the out of the way stop and we picked up a bunch of chatty student trekkers just barely off the mountain that filled all the seats I had hoped to stretch out on in the long flight ahead. We took off again and I casually glanced out the window and the sight of that mountain almost brought me to tears.

It isn't part of a range, it just juts up from the plains as a singular, stunning interruption on the horizon. It's snow-capped and so high that the blanket of white on the peak blends into the clouds. I saw it and just decided that someday I would need to come back here and climb it. (This is a good thing to clarify for those of you who may have assumed that this forthcoming adventure was solely inspired by my fairly recent marriage to a mountain man).

2) In high school, I read a story by Ernest Hemingway called 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro.' It fascinated me. Much of the narrative has nothing to do with Kilimanjaro, but two things in it kept the place in my mind. In italics at the opening of the story it says:

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai "Ngaje Ngai," the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

The image of that frozen leopard, up too high just stayed with me. No one knew what it was doing up there, but I kind of understood the inclination to ascend, explore, and try.

The story is about a writer, dying at the base of the mountain from a tiny scratch that turned into a serious infection and at one point, as he looks back on his life he says: "What was his talent anyway? It was a talent all right but instead of using it, he had traded on it. It was never what he had done, but always what he could do."

That line cut me to the quick. I've always had a sense that I could do great things, but I read that line from a man running out of breaths and dreaded the thought that I might someday find that I had only ever talked about doing things and never actually done them. 

There are lots of reasons to do this: I feel deeply connected to Africa and I look forward to doing this with Bryan. I need the physical challenge and I'm enticed by the exoticism of the idea, but more than any of those other things, I am motivated by that; a desire to be someone who does things and doesn't just talk about them.

All this to say that, in addition to the other travel posts I hope to add to this blog on a more regular basis, Bryan and I will keep you updated on the training process and on our local adventures in preparation for the big, beautiful foreign one.

We'll add videos and pictures and probably more poems, so stay tuned.