Going Up

Breath after hard breath, legs dripping with lactic acid (which is actually just a proxy for how much waste your muscles are accumulating but unable to clear), eyes up, lean forward, arms pumping, stop, 3 minutes done, hands on knees, stringy spit, “thats 4”, turn around and jog down again.

Hills have a way of stretching and bending time and distance. From the top of a hill, you can see landmarks that are miles away. From the side of a hill another minute can feel like an eternity. If you want to know what purgatory feels like, do hill repeats and compulsively check your watch. This warp in the space time continuum has forever drawn humans to elevation.

Today, I was on Bussey Hill in Boston’s Arnold Arboretum to build my aerobic engine and strengthen my little leggies. I never made it to the top, but I climbed it over and over again. After 3 minutes was up, I stopped in my tracks and returned to the bottom. Not one extra step upward, not a single ounce of energy wasted outside my arbitrary 3 minute window for ascendance. It was purely a means to an end.

A group of 4 older folks saw me go up and down and up and down during their journey up the hill. Same place, same time, different reality. Time must have moved quickly for them. They meandered and paused with their giant cameras and high powered binoculars, spotting birds and deliberating on identification. They were in the canopy of the tallest downhill trees. The unreachable became much closer. Ohhhh how exciting!

A surprising amount of people were going up that hill at 6:30 in the morning. Some folks I glimpsed in my fog of workout were literally stopping to smell the flowers. They took pictures on their way up, and had blissful smiles on the way down. For them, time passed like it does when you’re with friends: slowly at first, little by little, moment by moment, then all at once.

I never made it to the top. For me, the hill was a training tool. I imagine what they saw from the top of that hill was magical though. Boston’s cityscape laid out in front of them like a carpet of buildings dotted with dust and trees, softened by morning light. You could stare at it for hours, and realize only seconds have passed. That vista, that experience is impossible from the ground. You must go up.

Humans love to go up. Peaks must be summited, passes must be cleared, mountains are where the gods live. Hell, I live on top of a steep ass hill. I like the view. Elevation is special to society. Its sacred, beautiful, scary, safe, alluring, and useful. It is so many things for so many people. At its core, as it distorts your sense of space and time, it is a shift in perspective.