What Happens to a Dream Deferred?

What happens to a dream deferred? Langston Hughes posed this question many years ago and it has stuck with me my entire adult life. You see, there comes a time in every man’s life when he comes to a crossroads and has to make a decision. Left, right, forward…or turn back and go home. When it comes to mountain climbing, sometimes the decision isn’t the man’s to make alone. Sometimes the mountain gives the man more than one reason to tuck tail and retreat to the warmth of his living room, bar stool, or wherever the plan was hatched to tackle such a massive heap of ice and rock.

For me, this massive heap was Mt Rainier. My two previous attempts at summiting this enormous volcano were thwarted by equipment failure and the elements, respectively. This mountain was my white whale and I was Ahab. However, they say the third time is a charm, and for my friend Erik and I, frozen and dehydrated from the sub-zero winds, it was just that. There is nothing sexy about hiking to the top of a 14,411 mountain. I liken it to the sport of wrestling…all guts and very grueling. It’s 70% mental and 30% physical. With all the motivation in the world tucked under my yellow climbing helmet, I reached the top in 7 hours. Once you achieve a goal of this magnitude though, you feel invincible. Bulletproof. That is I.

At 8:30 a.m. on September 5^th, 2010, I was at the second highest point in the lower 48 United States, looking down onto a fluffy sea of clouds, wondering how many people out there were still asleep and dreaming, while I was wide awake and living out mine. A changed man? Most definitely. My dream deferred did not shrivel like a raisin in the sun. Instead, it basked in the UV-rich glow of high altitude rays, fulfilled and beaming.