Y? ... Why not?

I awoke this morning to the sound of birds chirping out my window. It was so peaceful. It was also still dark outside so I closed my eyes to try to sneak in a little more sleep. A couple of minutes later I heard it. It was the painful noise of my alarm. A loud mocking reminder of the decision I had made to arise early to hike the Y with my roommate Susie.

It was 5:45 a.m. so I did what I usually do. I pushed snooze.

5 minutes later it was sounding again. This time it was worse. I actually moved to get out of bed! Then, I thought better of it. I knew Susie had gone to bed late the night before and therefore would probably not want to go anymore. I jumped out of bed with the anticipation that Susie would be asleep and I could once again coax myself back to sleep to the sounds of the early birds' singing.

The whipping of my head around the corner must have been awfully loud because she arose almost immediately. We acknowledged each other with a sleepy wave and my head hung low in defeat as I went to change my clothes.

Now, let's make a few things clear,

1. I am not a hiker. I don't hate it but it is not something I would generally get up at 6:00 am to do on my day off.
2. I have never hiked the Y before. I have had people make plans to take me... who didn't, and activities I was unable to attend, so I've never been before.
3. Did I mention the early hour and the fact that I'm not a huge hiker?

It was just a little after 6:00 am and off we went. We were headed for the big Y on the hill. Susie was pretty excited. I was still reminding myself of what a horrible idea this was. It was almost sickening how excited she was. We started up a path that looked pretty well traveled until we ran into a person whom Susie referred to as "Yay! A fellow hiker!" She really seemed to just be taking pictures but she directed us in the way which we should go. We followed her counsel under the belief that "every path leads to the Y."

I had begun to be more awake, not more excited, just more awake when we reached a clearing. We continued up the path until we saw this:

Now if we are reading the sign correctly, what it is really telling us is, "Ha ha! Guess what? You guys are nowhere near the Y. In fact, you have not yet reached the parking lot/trailhead! Oh and just to make you feel worse, yes you could have driven your car up here and then begun to hike."

Despair began to set in... pretty quickly. As we started up the actual trail, there were two older ladies ahead of us. We looked at the map of the actual hike and Susie mentioned that it looked a lot longer than usual. I suggested that we continue by pointing out "Come on, people do this all the time, some people even run to the top!... crazy people..." After a few short bursts of energy and enthusiasm, we saw the first checkpoint ahead. The older ladies were still ahead of us and they were preparing to take a break on the bench. Susie proposed, "Ok. If they turn back we turn back. Deal?" I thought the idea absurd. So we kept going.

I quickly came to regret my decision.

People kept passing us. My knee was giving me grief (but it has been all week), and it was pretty steep. We weren't having fun. The idea was suggested that we turn back once again, but instead we decided to just try to make it to the next checkpoint. Yes folks, we hadn't even reached the second checkpoint. It was about then that we started to sing the banana cheer and talk about my days as a cheerleader. I even showed Susie a cheer or two and that kept up our spirits for a little bit. (I guess cheerleaders really do lift spirits... huh.)

One of the major highlights came when Susie suggested we do a role play by saying, "Ok. Let's role play. You're you, and you are going to try to motivate me to keep climbing up this hill." I laughed, and this is why. I explained to Susie that my method of motivation (for myself) usually sounded like the following:

"Don't you dare stop! You aren't allowed to walk until you reach the top of this hill!"
"Are you kidding me?! Quitting early isn't going to get you anywhere! Stop being such a baby!"
"If you're not sweating, you're not working hard enough!"

So, I'm not the most positive motivator in the world... I wasn't much help.

We drudged up the mountain. At one point a much older man came jogging past us! That made us feel really good. Before this morning, I had worked out 8 different times just in this week and I still couldn't find it in me to walk up a mountain that some people were jogging! At one point 2 little boys came running from behind us to which Susie sarcastically exclaimed "Thanks a lot boys. You're making us feel really good!"

Slowly, the checkpoints grew in number

3...

...

...

4...

as Susie began to use the side rails to pull herself up the mountain. Ready to give up, we finally saw the 5th checkpoint in the distance and she was determined to go no further. So I pushed her. She then remarked that half way was good enough and that we could now go home. I wouldn't have any of it. This was the time for my epic motivational speech in which I boldly stated,

"Half way? Are you kidding me, you want to give up after going half way? I didn't get up before 6:00 am on my day off to be a wuss! If I wanted to be a wuss I would have stayed in bed today, but I got up to hike to the Y and that is exactly what we are going to do!"

My speech worked... momentarily. It didn't make it any easier, or fun so it was suggested that we use our hike to make parallels to real life situations. I went first (I thought mine was pretty good) I said "Climbing a mountain is like serving a mission. You're really excited at first and 'ready' to leave the MTC and then you get to the mission field and you realize YOU'RE ONLY IN THE PARKING LOT! You haven't even really begun... and then the downhill goes a lot faster than you would expect." Susie responded "Hey that's pretty good, but we haven't gone down yet so we don't really know." That's when I decided it was Susie's turn, to which she proclaimed "I relate this to... the experience I'm having right now." I guess it could be a pretty deep metaphor for life...

 Soon every time we saw people heading down the mountain Susie would ask if we had seen them on our way up, she was using it as an indicator of hope to determine how close/far we were from the end of the hike when suddenly we looked to our left and there it was. In Susie's words it was "Big and white like the tree of life being more desirable than any other." Now that we could see it and it was in our view it was easier to continue until finally we reached the top of the Y.

We were proud of our accomplishment. So we took proper documentation.

This is us.

This is what we really felt like.

We were actually proud of our accomplishment of basically crawling up that mountain. More so, we were grateful we did it early before the sun was really out. We were feeling good. We figured that some people drove and hiked up from the trail head, but we started from our house so we figure we get extra points for that. 

As we came to realize just how steep it was on our way down, we decided to run. Yes, Susie and I ran down the mountain. I figured if I was going to kill my knee I was going to do it quickly instead of slowly. Our tune was a little different on the way down. As we passed people I caught Susie cheering people on saying 

"Don't worry! You're almost there!" Mixed with exclamations of "Woohoo! We hiked the Y!" and several "we did it"s 

We sang some random camp songs until we forgot the words, but my personal favorite was Susie's rendition of "I believe I can fly" by Rkelly who just didn't seem to grasp the same meaning as Susie did. She was inspiring people. I could tell because at one point, a girl who was on her way up encouraged her to "keep flying" and we did fly. We flew past every checkpoint, slapping every odd number and discussing what we would eat for breakfast when we reached home. We were astounded at how much faster each checkpoint had come. We were back home in much less time than it took us to hike to the top.

The Y holds a whole new meaning for us now. It's a sense of something much greater than just a letter on a hill. Each time we saw it today we had to say "Guess what? We hiked there today."

Mock if you will because it was easy for you, but it took a lot out of us. Susie was feeling so good that when we got home she stated that she felt she could do it again... and suggested we do... frequently. Last time my response was "Y? Why not?" I may think twice next time and just leave it at "Why?"