Then I heard the calm voice in my head, the voice that had steadied me in so many moments of crisis. “You are drowning in distances,” it said. “Cut the mountain down to size.” I knew what I had to do. Ahead of me on the slope was a large rock. I decided I would forget about the summit and make that rock my only goal. I trudged for it, but like the summit it seemed to recede from me as I climbed. I knew then that I was being tricked by the mountain’s huge scale of reference. With nothing on those vast empty slopes to give me perspective—no houses, no people, no trees—a rock that seemed ten feet
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