This is the first in a new series exploring what it means to find, tend, and eventually learn to live from Base Camp.

Podcast Coming Soon

For much of the Greybeard journey so far, I have written about wilderness. Some wildernesses find us. Others we knowingly or unknowingly enter. Some arrive as storms of uncertainty. Others buzz around us like mosquitoes, lure our attention, or awaken hungers for recognition, comparison, and more. Again and again I have returned to a simple framework:

Wilderness is the stimulus.
Base Camp is the space.
Choice is the response.

But somewhere along the way, a question began troubling me.

What exactly is Base Camp?

I have described it as the inner place of retreat—the space within where we can stop long enough to breathe, see clearly, regain our bearing, and choose our response rather than surrendering it to the wilderness around us.

But that description began to feel incomplete.

If Base Camp is the self, what do I mean by the self? Is the inner self simply the collection of thoughts, emotions, desires, fears, memories, appetites, and habits that I discover when I turn inward? Or are those things more like wilderness conditions occurring within Base Camp? And if there is something deeper, what is it?

Those questions followed me into California’s Sierra Nevada in late August.

My son Danny and I planned to backpack from North Lake outside Bishop, over Piute Pass, and into Humphreys Basin. Danny would eventually attempt the summit of Mount Humphreys. My destination was much lower.

I was going to Base Camp.

I carried William Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood with me. I also carried questions about awakening, our relationship with nature, and whether Base Camp might somehow be connected with something Wordsworth simply called Home.

I expected to spend three quiet days beside an alpine lake thinking about those questions. The mountain had other plans. Before I could sit at Base Camp and contemplate the inner life, I first had to get there. And getting there required a long ascent.

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The Long Ascent

Danny dropped me at the Piute Pass trailhead at North Lake Campground around 8:30 in the morning. Elevation: roughly 9,000 feet. My backpack weighed 23.36 pounds without water. I knew that because I had weighed and carefully considered nearly everything that went into it.

Tent. Quilt. Food. Cook kit. Clothing. First aid. Water filtration. To list a few items.

Every ounce mattered. I had even chosen a tent that was twelve ounces heavier because it was easier to set up and more comfortable once I reached camp. Some things were harder to justify. S’mores Pop-Tarts, for example. They made the cut.

The first miles were beautiful. Bishop Creek accompanied the trail as I climbed through the high-country forest. The air was cool. Water rushed over and between granite. The landscape was still green enough at that elevation to feel surprisingly lush.

I noticed everything. Or at least it seemed that way. But the trail kept climbing. By 10,000 feet, my body began complaining about the elevation. My heart was working harder. My breathing grew heavier. My legs began to feel the accumulation of every upward step. Then came the switchbacks. And the granite steps. Lots of granite steps.

Somewhere along the way I came upon a small group of hikers with backpacks who appeared to be about my age, perhaps older. One of the men had a magnificent silver beard. I passed them with a friendly greeting. For a moment I felt pretty good about myself. Sixty-seven years old. Back in the Sierra for the first time in a decade. Pack on my back. Still moving.

A little later I stopped at some granite steps to catch my breath. And there they were. Right behind me.

What?!

Then I realized what else was in my pack… an old traveling companion. The two-headed Compare-and-Compete monster. I knew him well. He had accompanied me through careers, leadership, accomplishments, possessions, and more than a few wildernesses. Apparently, he had slipped into my pack for the Sierra too. I could almost feel myself preparing to increase my pace. Then I caught it.

Get out of my pack and get back in your pit. I’m not feeding you today.

This wasn’t their hike. And it wasn’t a race. I turned my attention back to the trail.  That worked. For a while.

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Right, Left – One

As the elevation increased, the granite steps became harder.

Eventually I found myself wondering whether I could actually finish the climb. Then an idea came to me. These are just step-ups. I do step-ups at home in the gym. So, I created a pattern.

Breathe in… Right, breathe out… left – one.

Breathe in… Right, breathe out… left – two.

Keep going to twenty. Rest for thirty seconds. Begin again.

Right, left – one.

Right, left – two.

It worked. Instead of confronting an entire mountain, I only had to complete twenty step-ups. So, I did another twenty. And another. Head down. Trekking poles firmly grasped and planted.

• Breathe.
• Step.
• Count.
• Repeat.

After several rounds, I raised my head. I had missed an entire section of the canyon. I had been walking through one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth and hadn’t really seen it. My strategy for successfully climbing the mountain had also made me temporarily unaware of the mountain.

So, I changed the pattern. After every third set of step-ups, I would stop. Not simply to recover physically. I would stop to notice.

• Stop.
• Calm.
• Breathe.
• Look around.
• Wake up.

Then:

Right, left – one.

Right, left – two.

And continue climbing.

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The Slog of Life

There was something strangely familiar about that cadence. We learn how to do this very early in life.

Get through school. Right, left.

Finish the degree. Right, left.

Build the career. Pay the mortgage. Raise the children. Meet the deadline. Solve the problem. Make the appointment. Answer the email. Get through this week. Then the next.

Right, left.

Right, left.

The cadence isn’t necessarily bad. Much of life requires endurance. There are stretches when the most courageous thing we can do is put our head down, firmly grasp our trekking poles and take the next step.

Parents know this particularly well. There is a kind of wonder that surrounds a newborn child. You hold that tiny body and listen to the soft breathing. You examine fingers and toes. You watch expressions. Ordinary biological functions somehow become newsworthy.

Then comes 2:00 a.m. And 3:15. And 4:30.

The sweet breath of the newborn becomes less poetic after a long night of crying.

Then come toddler years.

School. Activities. Homework. Conflict. Adolescence.

You love the child no less. But the terrain changes. Wonder gradually becomes responsibility. Responsibility becomes routine. Routine becomes fatigue. And sometimes, without intending it, we stop noticing. We aren’t ungrateful. We’re tired.

Right, left – one.

Right, left – two.

Just get through this switchback. Then another. And somewhere in the slog, something within us begins to fall asleep.

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Ullāsa

I eventually reached Piute Lake and dropped my backpack beside the water. I removed my boots and socks, unfolded my small sitting pad, leaned against my pack, and rested. My breathing slowed. My legs stopped demanding quite so much attention. And the world gradually returned.

Water. Granite. Sky. Wind. The enormous quiet of the Sierra.

I had recently encountered a Sanskrit word that helped me think about what was happening:

Ullāsa.

I had been thinking of it as an awakening of joy or delight – something rising within us in response to beauty. The important part, for me, was that the mountain had been beautiful the entire time. The canyon had not disappeared while I counted my steps. The creek had not stopped running. The granite hadn’t become less magnificent. The sky hadn’t become less blue.

I had become less capable of noticing.

The conditions outside me had changed very little. The condition of attention within me had changed dramatically. And when I stopped, something began to awaken again.

This distinction matters.

Perhaps nature doesn’t give us what we experience in these moments. Perhaps it evokes something already present but sleeping. The wilderness does not necessarily manufacture wonder within us. Sometimes it simply wakes us up.

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Wordsworth’s Forgetting

That thought was one reason I had carried Wordsworth into the Sierra. In his Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, Wordsworth wrestles with a peculiar human experience. As children, we encounter the world with a kind of immediacy and wonder that becomes increasingly difficult to sustain as we age. The world hasn’t necessarily become less wonderful.

We have become accustomed to it.

Wordsworth describes something slowly fading as childhood gives way to adulthood. That fading interests me. Because not only does it not happen all at once, perhaps it doesn’t happen only once. Perhaps we reenact it repeatedly throughout our lives.

We fall in love – and eventually become accustomed to the person beside us.

We hold a newborn – and eventually become accustomed to being a parent.

We begin meaningful work – and eventually become accustomed to the responsibility.

We move somewhere beautiful – and eventually stop looking at the view.

We obtain something we once desperately wanted – and within weeks it becomes ordinary.

The extraordinary becomes familiar. The familiar becomes background. And the background eventually becomes invisible. The problem may not be that life has lost its wonder.

We have stopped looking up.

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The Inner Wilderness

The climb toward Piute Pass helped me see another distinction that I think will become important as we explore Base Camp. The inner self cannot simply be everything happening inside me. Consider what was happening inside me during the climb. There was comparison.

• Fear.
• Fatigue.
• Pride.
• Self-doubt.
• Hunger.
• Determination.
• Habit.
• Desire.

There was also something capable of noticing all of those things. Something recognized the compare-and-compete monster. Something could say:

I’m not feeding you today.

Something noticed that my head had been down too long. Something chose to stop. Something could receive the beauty of the canyon again. That distinction seems important. Perhaps every thought that passes through Base Camp is not the self any more than every storm passing over a mountain is the mountain.

Some things are simply weather. Some are habits accumulated over decades. Some are appetites. Some are fears. Some may be wounds. Some are messages inherited from families, cultures, organizations, technologies, and the age in which we happen to live.

The work of Base Camp may therefore begin not with controlling everything inside us, but with awakening enough to notice what is there. Before we can choose differently, we have to see clearly. Before we can see clearly, sometimes we have to stop.

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Stop

Later that afternoon, this would become much more than a pleasant reflection beside a lake. I would cross Piute Pass exhausted. I would choose what appeared on my navigation app to be a reassuring green trail instead of following Danny’s counsel. There would be no trail. I would find myself alone among boulders and ravines while the old voices of fear and inadequacy grew increasingly loud. And once again, the answer would begin with the same small act:

Stop.

But I didn’t know any of that yet. For now, I was sitting beside Piute Lake with my boots off. The mountain was still there. So was the trail. So was the work ahead. But for a few minutes I didn’t need to accomplish anything. I could simply notice. Water moving. Wind touching my face. Granite rising around me. Breath entering and leaving my body. Something inside me had become quiet enough to receive what had been there all along. Perhaps that is where Base Camp begins. Not with a tent. Not at 12,000 feet. Not even with silence. It begins with enough wakefulness to realize:

I’ve been walking with my head down.

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Enter Base Camp

You don’t need the Sierra to practice this. Your long ascent may look nothing like mine.  Perhaps you’re raising children. Caring for an aging parent. Building a career. Recovering from loss. Navigating chronic illness. Trying to hold a marriage together. Starting over. Living with uncertainty. Or perhaps nothing is particularly wrong. You’re simply busy.

Right, left – one.

Right, left – two.

Whatever your terrain, notice the cadence.

Stop

For a moment, stop moving toward the next thing. Stop solving. Stop rehearsing. Stop scrolling. Stop trying to make this moment become another moment.

Calm

Enter Base Camp and breathe five times.

Breathing in I am calm, breathing out I am restful.

Again.

Breathing in I am calm, breathing out I am restful.

Continue for five slow breaths.

Let your forehead soften. Relax your eyes and jaw. Allow your shoulders to drop. Notice your hands.

Rest

Don’t search for an insight. For a few moments, allow nothing to happen. Look around. Listen. Notice something that has become ordinary. A tree outside your window. The sound of rain. Your spouse moving through the kitchen. Your child’s voice. The dog sleeping nearby. Your own breathing. Stay there long enough for the familiar to become visible again.

Heal

Then ask quietly:

What has the slog made difficult for me to see?

Don’t force an answer. Perhaps nothing comes. That’s all right. Pick up your pack when you’re ready. There are more switchbacks ahead.

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Look Up

I eventually put my boots back on. I shouldered my pack. The weight hadn’t changed. The elevation hadn’t changed. The granite steps ahead hadn’t disappeared. But something had changed. I had. Or perhaps more accurately:

something within me had awakened.

I returned to the trail.

Right, left – one.

Right, left – two.

The cadence continued. But every few rounds I stopped. I breathed. And I looked up. Maybe this is one of the first things the long ascent teaches us about Base Camp:

We don’t have to wait until the wilderness ends to enter it.

Base Camp can appear beside a lake. On a granite step. In a parked car before walking into the house. At the kitchen table. Beside a hospital bed. In the thirty seconds before answering an angry email. The wilderness may continue. The climb may continue. But we can wake up while we’re still walking.

In the next post, I’ll continue beyond Piute Pass, where I encountered something most of us find difficult to resist when we’re tired, uncertain, and afraid:

a green line promising to show me the way.

It looked safer than the unknown wilderness. So, I followed it. There was just one problem.

There wasn’t actually a trail.

If this post resonated with you, consider sharing it with someone who may be walking through a similar wilderness. Not as advice. Not as correction. Simply as a trail marker. Small reflections shared at the right time can become guides for someone else’s next step.

Until next time—be patient and kind with yourself, return to Base Camp, and learn something for the next trek.