Why is it that good always has to fight an uphill battle?"I thought for a moment, then said, "I don't know. Maybe that's the point. Good things are higher up.

Evenings were peaceful, smoke settling in the quiet air to soften the dusk, lights twinkling on the ridge we would camp on tomorrow, clouds dimming the outline of our pass for the day after. Growing excitement lured my thoughts again and again to the West Ridge_.There was loneliness, too, as the sun set, but only rarely now did doubts return. Then I felt sinkingly as if my whole life lay behind me. Once on the mountain I knew (or trusted) that this would give way to total absorption with the task at hand. But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find what I really sought was something I had left behind.

Feel yourself climbing the mountain.

Sometimes the darkness lives inside you, and sometimes it wins.

__ don't want to lose you__hen why are you the one that keeps letting go?

The question stayed with me every day, through every class, through every Op. I felt its teeth tighten around the back of my neck each time I was dismissed without a second look; it had locked it__ jaws and wouldn__ let me or my conscience go.