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I use to live next to a dead volcano (it's not as cool as it sounds) which had trails leading up from the base to the top. Anyway, I was really into running back then and I decided one day that I would wake up before the sun rose. I wanted to climb to the top to greet the sunrise. I wake up at like 4am and head out. It's freezing, I'm in shorts and thermals. All I have is a flashlight but otherwise it's pitch black as I'm sprinting through bush, over creeks, and around blind turns. My fear response had never been stronger in my life. I finally get to the hill that leads up to the top of the volcano and hit the side at full speed. Not wanting to check for animals or look into any of the numerous caves around me. The trail follows the edge of the volcano all the way up. One side was bush and darkness, the other open space and nothingness. As I'm coming around the top my heart is trying to excape my chest, my hands are frozen into fists and my legs are made of lead. Finally, I get to the rocky top where other people have left offerings and the like. Then I look out east to the mountains in the far distance. The sun just barely peaks over and light shoots out in every direction. In that moment I knew my ancestors. I knew the earth. I saw the SUN and it was GOD... Spent the rest of the morning on on my back enjoying the open sky
Running does things like that to the mind. The first time I ran 10 miles, I started hallucinating around mile 8. I was running through the forest and the wind was gently swaying the trees back and forth. I understood for the first time that trees are the lungs of the earth, steadily breathing in the cO2 and breathing out oxygen for the rest of life on earth.
I was just talking to my wife today about how trees lived long before the bacteria that could decompose wood, how generations of trees lived and died and just stayed there. That the reason we have coal is because of all of these trees that died ages ago and couldn't decompose. Not only are trees the lungs of the earth, but the only reason we ever got an atmosphere that we could exist in is because of the innumerable trees that captured carbon from the air and contributed oxygen back to it. Trees are fucking amazing and we owe them everything.
20% of oxygen is from bacteria and around 50% comes from plankton, the last 30% is mostly trees.
The oceans are the lungs of the Earth and climate change threatens to cause plankton to decrease in numbers or switch from carbon absorbers to carbon emitters.
Happy New Year.
Rainier?
I'm not actually sure what it takes to summit it, but this sounds like it could be the place.
Albuquerque?