Foundation

Odd question: Who loves being in the mountains? Some of you know I LOVE to run; but more than exploring the great city of Phoenix by foot, running in the mountains on a fall morning takes the place of almost anything.The funny thing is...when I run in the mountains I am reminded that the run is not about what I can do or how far I can go but about standing on unshakable ground. I stand at the bottom of the food chain of the world. No matter what I'm dealing with in life, something made that mountain stand still, and the same thing that gives stillness to that mountain can surely give it to me. If I hunger and cry out for that solitude, I expect that it will come.

When you look at a mountain you probably don't think of it as something weak or unstable. They are composed of millions of tons of rock and sediment and mineral. There is something huge and unexplainable about spending all your energy to make it up a seven mile mountain...especially when you've been to that same place a hundred time. It's that you stand in the middle of something which holds so much energy and strength and beauty. You stand on holy ground. You stand on something created with the swipe of a fingertip. And to stand in the middle of it, to scale it, to view it, to breathe it in makes you feel that the culmination of morphing phases of life you experience had to have been planned out by something way bigger than yourself. To stand in the middle of a mountain is to understand that it didn't just show up, and must have taken an incredible force to create...one that knew how and what the end result would be: a mountain.