25 years ago I had a 'peak' experience - substance free - at the top of Yosemite Falls. After several months on the road and 26 years of bottled emotions, a catharsis came. I fully experienced, for a few hours at the top of Yosemite Falls, what the mystics call the 'oneness of being.'
I knew of it intellectually; I had now tasted of it experientially. It was brief as was the bliss and ecstasy at having completed the hike which to seasoned travelers was strenuous, certainly, but just a drop in the bucket compared to the grandeur of the remainder of the park.
My wife and I traveled to California to visit someone whose life had intersected mine after a 20 year journey - he, along with Christopher McCandless and Robert Pirsig, had, unbeknownst to me, traveled the same terrain as I - and we spent the balance of the week on the east part of the state.
One of the reasons, and a certain denouement for me and peak experience for my wife, was to re-hike to the top of Yosemite Falls to see if I could touch the image of that earlier experience. And we did, now 25 years older. 3.2 miles vertical via switchbacks and 3 1/2 hours later we arrived.
Curiously, I felt nothing. Not in a negative sense just no rush of flashbacks. It did not look familiar, unable to compete with the image I had bowed down to for all these years. As we walked the terrain up top it slowly came back but with the river dried up I had little frame of reference.
As Johnette Napolitano sang, though in different context, the 'images of everything between now and then' found closure. Complete closure. I am at peace.
Life is made up of moments and it is those moments that sustain us.
