"Learn to accept your night and face your trouble with patience. Not until the end of the night does the dawn break, much as fruit sprouts from the obscure belly of the earth. The gift of night may be more favorable than that of light." Faouzi Skali (1953-), Moroccan anthropologist, ethnologist, francophone religious writer, and member of the Sufi sect of Islam.
My father has this interesting "daily devotional" book that was gifted to him by a former student who visited him in Doha this past year. The book is full of sayings, mostly by eminent Islamic or Arab Scholars on various aspects of life, some more religious than others but all with a spiritual undertone. It's coupled with beautiful pictures from across the region considered to be the "Middle East" which are equally as beautiful and inspiring as the sayings that go with them. This particular saying I read within a week of returning from Tanzania, which is why I've dated this post back in July even though I didn't actually get around to writing it until now (actually writing this post August 29, 2009). For me, it conjured up images and the mental/emotional struggle that I had on Day 7 of the Mt. Kilimanjaro climb, the day that we summited.
We had gone to bed the night before at about 7pm, barely getting enough rest between then and when we woke up, 11:30pm appx, in order to start our 6 hour climb to the summit at midnight. We had a few biscuits and some tea, I stashed several clif bars in my pockets to eat on the way up and made sure I had plenty of water, 2 full camelbacks to be exact. I was comfortable with the number of layers I had, 7 on top, 3 on bottom, 2 pairs of socks, 3 pairs of gloves (liners, fleece, and wind/water shell), a balaclava, and a hat on top of that. I was actually afraid I'd overheat during the climb because I was warm enough at that point. I was incredibly grateful of my decision NOT to take a layer off on top. As most people might guess, the temperatures continued to drop during the night. And we were slowly but surely increasing in altitude, which meant lower temperatures by ever step and higher winds to boot.
The first two hours were manageable. It was slow going but I was encouraged that I wasn't yet exhausted. My camelback was starting to freeze even though the pouch and the tube were inside my backpack, and the clif bars in my pocket were rock hard, which made eating them an interesting task. I wasn't hungry but I knew I had to force them down in order to make it to carry on for the next 4 hours. Next two hours were more difficult. Fatigue was setting in. Half of our group had non-functioning head lamps which meant hiking in almost complete darkness. We were stopping at this point about every 20 minutes for rest. I took to singing songs in my head to pass the time, because really what else are you going to do on a mountain in complete blackness in sub-freezing temperatures when nobody around you has the energy to talk? I started off with a little U2, then moved to some Alison Krauss, some Dixie Chicks. It wasn't until 4am that my mind started doing some pretty weird stuff. I was exhausted physically. I kept looking back behind us to the Eastern Horizon desperately searching for even an inkling of the rising sun. Nothing. Only the dramatic paint brush of stars that makes up the milky way above us and a few other distant planets that shone more brightly. No moon. I wondered if we would ever get to the top. I wondered if I could physically make it to the top. We were barely crawling along and it was so dark that you couldn't even see the outline of the mountain to see the top (and the fact that it was basically a false summit until the very top). The songs in my head started turning to a more religious nature. I became painfully aware of my weakness. It felt as if every fiber of my body was screaming for me to stop. I had no energy. My camelback was completely frozen and so I had no water. A splitting headache started to develop for which I had no cure but to go back down the mountain. The thought of failure drove me insane. Temperatures had plummeted to around 0 degrees F. I thought I'd never be warm again. The darkness was so vast that I felt as if I would never see the sun again. That I'd be trapped in darkness forever.
We reached the final turning point of the trail and were on the last leg of the route by about 5am. "Only another hour" our guide told us. An hour seemed an eternity to me. But then the faintest bit of light began to develop in the East and in that exact moment I knew I'd be okay. I knew there was hope yet. Weakness was draining from my body as a new optimism filled my veins. It wasn't the optimism of my own ability to conquer this mountain but rather the infinite strength of a higher power which made this mountain itself, who carved it out of the earth with wind and water and lava that could carry me on towards the top of it. The stars began to fade as the Eastern sunrise became brighter and brighter, like I was stuck on this mountain caught in the middle of a cosmic battle between the coming light and the fading darkness. I felt small and insignificant as the world was transforming around me, as details popped up in the landscape which were previously hidden in the darkness. And yet, I was literally on top of the world, at nearly 5,895m, so high that you could actually see the curvature of the earth.
We reached the top just after 6am, which was only a few moments before the sun crested the Eastern Horizon. Now, I've seen the sun rise hundreds of time. I was a rower in college, and every morning we'd be out on the water in complete darkness save for the little lights on the bows of our boats propelled through that darkness by the swooshing of oars. We'd see the sun rise over the river banks, gleaming off the water and nearly blinding us as it reflected off the (sometimes) glassy surface of the Allegheny River. But there are no feelings, words, or pictures to match or do justice to the experience of watching the sun rise over an entire continent from 5,895m. Standing there watching this glowing orb of light break the sharpness of the earth's outline I felt as if there was no challenge which could not be overcome.
The gift of night is that we might realize our own weaknesses in a way that we cannot escape. Night forces them upon us such that we are compelled to deal with those weaknesses in order to welcome the morning. And in the light of the morning we can look back at the battle of the night and be thankful for the struggle. It is not until we accept, face, and embrace the darkness of night that we fully appreciate the light of the morning.
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