Patience is a virtue of which I have none. It is also a lesson forced upon you by its very definition. The only way to overcome it is by training to endure it. By my own admonition, I require more training. I spent the first 3 days of my Tahoe vacation, waking up early, hiking, skiing, driving in less than appropriate conditions, freezing my dog, and ignoring my family for the ultimate snow pic. Finally, on the evening of the 3rd day my “patience” was awarded with a
sunset over a fresh snowed grove of trees. I came home victorious over all the conditions of life that conspired against my quest. But it wasn’t really until later that I understood my real lesson when I decided to hire a guide to show me some backcountry skiing routes. I was a bit worried as my guide was on 28 year old legs, and I was on my rickety 42 year old legs. We began the climb at what I thought was a ridiculously slow pace…even for my legs. Then my guide, who knew of my photography affliction, started to point out different perspectives of the mountains from up high. I told him that I was happy he had mercy on my legs going so slow up, and he replied, “No need to rush it, and the slower we go, the more pics we may find.” He was right. The pictures started to appear out of thin air…please pardon the pun. Finally, we topped out, shed our skins and picked our line down through the waist deep powder. Again, my lack of patience conspired against me and some of my tumbles were less than fun on my 42 year old knees. To which my guide responded by telling me, “…I’m not much of a skier, but I think if you have some patience to let your turns finish, I’m sure you will find that the next turn will just present itself.”
Sure enough, as I sat back on my skis and let the turn find its own correlative, I was able to find bliss. As we skinned our way back up to another ridge, whilst in deep meditation on putting one ski in front of the other, I began to see the that the conspiracy was really against my unfettered persistence. I always took pride in my persistence, but now, at what cost? Maybe patience is the persistence required to attain a goal without losing all the other achievements you’ve attained whilst using that very virtue. Or, maybe everyone just needs a good ol fashioned ass beating every now and then to put things into perspective.