Doesn't matter, go up.

Mount Adams: check.

It's the hardest of the Presidentials. Called a "hiker's mountain," all approaches have at least a 4,000 ft vertical elevation gain. It's the second highest mountain in the range (5,774 ft), and as someone put it, "the highest without an auto road to the summit."
And I was in no mood to climb it. I put off my climb for a day, due to being lazy (and recovering from Mt Washington's calf-burning decent). I finally told myself, you're doing it. I woke up at 8am and the rest went like clockwork.
Mountain climbing (well, mountaineering; there's no technical climbing skills involved) and distance-hiking are studies in inevitability, I say. You get a lot of time to yourself out there (especially if you go solo, as I do). I spend my time thinking on a wide variety of topics. One of my eloquent theories that I have formulated is the "study of inevitability." For me, climbing a mountain or completing a long-distance trail is inevitable, once I set my mind to it. Sure, each step is torturous and the whole thing is difficult, but it's not a challenge in the sense that it might not work out. Of course there are the accidents and rare occurrences that can derail the best laid plans or overcome the strongest willpower. But barring those, there's no question that the job will get done.

I go to bed the night before a climb (of this simple magnitude, we're not talking Rainer here) and know that the next day I'll summit. I'm prepared, skilled and focused. It's not a question of if I'll hate it (I probably will), if the weather will be fine (my research says it will, but my pack is prepared if it's not), or if my legs will give out on the climb (they better not, because they'd have to keep going anyway). It's just one step after another.

Eventually, there will be no more mountain in front of me. I can keep climbing long after the earth stops rising. I'm not the fastest climber/hiker, but I am inevitable. Each step is progress. Walking up a mountain is the seemingly unceasing task of making one's head height into one's foot height.

And then you're done. Then you get to go back down, and that's the worst part. No achievement to look forward to, gravity mocking you like it's your friend. Slinking back to where you began.

But somehow I can distance my emotions, feelings, thoughts and so forth from my overall goal. It doesn't matter that I'm exhausted, hate the experience, think this is stupid, am uncomfortable and could think of plenty of other things to be doing at the moment. Climb.
But I'm tired.
Doesn't matter, go up.
I could turn around right now and have hot tea and watch a movie!
Doesn't matter, go up.
This mountain is stupid, there's no accomplishment in climbing it.
Doesn't matter, go up.
The trail dips while I'm not at the summit yet! How dare it!
Doesn't matter, go up.
I don't want to.
Doesn't matter, go up.

I find it's best when I don't consider the scale of the task at hand. Yeah, it's inevitable that I'll get to the top/end, and I know that, but then each moment is just a chore. I'm putting in my time, nothing special. Each step in a marathon is just the tortured completion of the whole. So if the whole is bound to be complete, that just makes the moment torture. So I free the mind and go elsewhere.

I do math problems, plan my life, philosophize, relive past accomplishments, categorize feelings, re-live past events, tell someone off, budget the month, reconcile my college experience, resolve arguments on personal and global scales, ruminate, write computer programs and tie knots. All in my head. Sometimes I talk out loud. Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I scowl, sometimes I cry. Is this normal?

Doesn't matter, go up.