aiming high

​PLAN YOUR COURSE OF ACTION
 
Rising dark and forbidding in the early morning, its head swathed in a scarf of mist, Mount Toolybrunup is the second highest peak in the Stirling Ranges of Western Australia.
            Over breakfast, around the campfire, my family and I planned the climb the mountain.  It was 3,000 feet the highest we had ever climbed – the prospect was daunting yet exciting.

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 SET THE GOAL
            We set a goal – to have lunch at the top of the mountain.  It should have been easy, but we were not far up the mountain when our lungs began to pump like a blacksmith’s bellows.  Our hearts pounded against rib cages like birds trying to escape. Our resolve was starting to weaken.  The higher we went, the harder it became.
Vanessa, now my son’s wife, slapped her aching legs, ‘Legs, do as I say.’  She was trying to summon up energy, willing her legs to take yet another step and another.  We were suffering from jelly-legs.

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​REACH THE TARGET 
​We sat on a rock, taking a rest in readiness for a final onslaught to the summit
In a wide semi-circle and drank in a vista of mountains marching northward.  Beautiful in their varying shades of blue. Vanessa is smacking her legs again saying, ‘I feel angry with my legs.’

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​DON’T LET SUCCESS CHANGE YOU
            ‘Don’t waste energy on anger,’ I replied. Getting frustrated was the last thing we should do if we wanted to reach the top.  Eventually, we clambered over the last boulder and were on the summit of the world.  What a vision!

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