Off the mountain

Wow. Was that lovely mountain getaway really only four days ago?  It’s amazing how quickly I’ve gotten pulled back into the desperate juggling act that is my normal life.

This is a good time to remind myself of the following poem, which my mom clipped out of a magazine sometime in the early 1980s.  For years she kept it posted on the refrigerator.  I saw and read it so often throughout my childhood and adolescence that I know it by heart.  And I’m glad I have it in the pocket of my  memory, to pull out and ponder on days like this.

You can’t stay on the summit forever.
You have to come down again …
One climbs, one sees;
One descends, one sees no longer.
But one has seen.

There is an art to conducting oneself in the lower regions
By the memory of what one has seen higher up.

— Rene Daumal