A Metaphor

Yesterday I climbed Chichontepeque, the San Vicente Volcano.

It seemed like such a great, fun idea. As we began the hike through coffee plantations in the brutally hot morning sun over loose rocks at an incredible incline, I almost immediately regretted my decision. It was so ridiculously difficult! The whole ordeal took about nine hours and I was royally ticked off for about seven of those hours (one fun hour was spent at the summit eating peanut butter and another fun hour was spent laughing at Chadd when he fell on the way down and broke a huge rock in half with his butt). But generally it was just miserable. I just kept thinking, “Why am I doing this to myself?? This is just stupid!!” Hours were spent hauling myself over boulders with my hands. Really the only reasons I made it to the summit were because, well, I’m stubborn and because my buddy Rhett spent about three hours verbally dragging me up the mountain. So after spending the whole climb up angry at life, I reached the summit and it was really incredible. It was almost unbelievable to look down 7100-something vertical feet at the town in which we had started and realize how high we had come. And it was so cool to get to be there with all my friends. When I took a moment to stop and look around it felt really great.

I decided it was a pretty apt metaphor for my Peace Corps service.