The Edge
(Hoover
Wilderness) Atop the highest mountains,
into the deepest of valleys, across the vast and reckless seas, this is where you feel the
edge split open your tender flesh, then rip into your fragile mind, and finally tear open
your titan spirit. In these places where surplus is not an option, and loneliness is
a plague, you can feel the edge strike deep. The edge is sharp when all you
have to hear is your own cluttered mind. The edge is fierce as it tells you that all
you held faith in is weak and dying. The edge can torture forth a mad babble that
reveals brutal fact. Isolation can do this. Loneliness can draw forth the
edge. Yet as you journey upon mangling insanity you can find an aura of grand
virtue. There is honest strength to be found. There is a point when the edge
is cutting so painfully that your face turns to try and avoid it, but the edge is abstract
and is within you and it can’t be turned from. It can destroy you, or it can
make you. If the time is spent in trying to avoid the mad pain, the loss will be
great. You can be wasted. But to face the edge, to thrust the edge into your
own guts, to mock its limits against yours, this is where you turn the odds. To see
what the edge has revealed, to gaze into your physical, mental, and emotional organs as
they spill out and to not turn away in pure disgust, this is strength, honest strength.
Tell your fears, “This is how it is. I have seen it. This is what
I am. This is what weakness has made me.” Look at what you are. The
edge reveals truth. It will show you what you are. It cannot lie, but your
body will, your mind will, and your emotions will all lie. They will try to prove
that they are not weak. These things fear for their mortality. They want to be
what they are not. See through them. Let them go to the limits of their death.
Force them to it if necessary. Let them face the reality of their demise.
Then let them be reborn, unafraid, at your own will. If they are unafraid
they will not lie: fearless things do not have to lie. Let the liars and the cowards
die within you, and recreate yourself as what you always dreamed to be. Isolate
yourself within Honor, Integrity and Guts. Be an isolated hero in your heart.
Atop the mountains, into the valleys, across the seas, the edge will cut you,
Be brave…be wise.
For five days directly after my seventeenth birthday I was
alone in the Hoover Wilderness fourteen miles north of Bridgeport, California. I
entered via the Obsidian Campground. I drove in on a dirt road which was about four miles.
The last mile is a little rough, but I made it in with a VW Rabbit. I parked
at a private gate and hiked in five miles. The hike is simple. My pack weighed
about eighty pounds, I weighed about a hundred-and-twenty. At the time I was trying
to find what I am. I wrote this article a few years later. I spent a great
deal of time alone in the Sierras. I talked to myself a lot. “I”
came up a lot in my poetry. I meditated for hours at a time. I was trying to
make myself a hero so I could carry out my causes. I wanted to face the most
difficult situations and defeat them so no matter how tough life’s journey became I
wouldn’t fold. I stayed the first night at a rocky river’s edge that I
couldn’t cross with the backpack. The water was up to my chest. I tried to
build a bridge the next day. I drug a large fallen tree to the edge of the river and
walked it to a vertical stance and pushed it over. It fell about three inches short
of the other side and washed away. It took me two hours to complete the failure.
I knew that at one time the river had a rope across it so I felt along the shore.
I found the rope under the water. I couldn’t know how well attached it
was but I went into the water anyway. I pulled myself across and hiked to the High
Meadow, which is surrounded by beautiful, often snow capped cliffs. To reach the top
of those cliffs and hike sixty miles south would bring an adventurer into Yosemite
National Park. I stayed at the meadow for a time in the snow and I hiked back to
camp two miles. My body was not fed well in these days. My mind was spinning, trying
to grasp what it wanted to be. My emotions were wracked with hormones and the
anticipation of the loss of my virginity, which would happen the day of my return to
civilization. When one is surrounded by the real silence of the world it is
difficult not to give in to the mental pessimism that one experiences. No matter
what physical feats, or what mental literary achievement, or what luck I had found in
relationships, I couldn’t set myself free. I couldn’t be comfortable, I
couldn’t be without fear. I ruined some great things because of my fears.
I thought I was brave, but no. I began to see my cowardice as I thought upon
some of my situations in the societal world. But I saw what I was because I refused to lie
any longer. I wanted, and still do want, to be my own ideal. But this takes
time to build. Weakness takes time to fix or let go. Atop the high mountains is
where I first began to see myself honestly. When I need to regain my strength I go
there still. I go there to see myself, so that I don’t betray my own character.
The Hoover Wilderness is still one of my favorite places on this planet. I
don’t often see anyone there, which is strange for how accessible this beauty is.
Stephan Pacheco-Founder of LibertyCore |
A
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