How to Flourish

A lesson from Mother Nature.

It’s like we took a wrong turn somewhere and landed smack in the middle of paradise, yet the How to Flourish title of this blog post probably won’t come as expected.

We meant to be here, my husband and I, at Great Sand Dunes National Monument. It was intentional. And I’d been here decades before, as a little girl with my family, on one of our Colorado vacations. But it was so much more than I remembered.

Five days later and I can’t stop thinking about it; haunted by its strange power. I can’t explain it.

It was no gentle presence, these dunes.

It wasn’t kind or particularly sentimental. It didn’t appear to recognize me, or care much that after thirty five years I had returned. Some places on the map seem to embrace you. This one was totally indifferent. And yet I couldn’t get enough.

The tallest dune at Great Sand Dunes National Monument is enormous, rising 755 feet from base to crest. With every step you take, like walking on the beach, the sand gives way beneath you, creating added exertion that never lets up. Now envision walking on that beach, in the deep movable sand, not the easy part sand-packed by the surf, and then tilt it straight up, rising 700+ feet into the air.

Not leisurely.

In fact, not many people can do it at all. But scaling these dunes to get to the top was something I intended to do. In fact, I wasn’t leaving here until I earned that supreme view, no matter what monstrous effort it had in store for me.

In that moment, the question of how to flourish seemed pretty clear.

Conquer this dune.

Earn the best views.

Pretty straight forward, I thought. So I began.

It’s always a little disheartening to exert myself in nature with my husband. Not for any reason that he’s responsible for–except that he’s got brute strength and I do not. So I pretend to keep up, until I can’t anymore. And then he patiently waits for me to catch my breath. I go as far as I can and then I stop, and then I progress a little further, and then I stop. Eventually I get there.

That’s all that matters, I tell myself.

But this day, from the moment I initiated my usual strategy, Mother Nature responded with slap after slap. The sun got hotter and brighter, fully emerging from its siesta behind the clouds. The sand just kept getting deeper as I trudged higher, and the dunes turned cruelly steep.

Finally, already on the brink of full-blown defeat, the wind picked up.

A lot.

Really, sand dunes? Really?

Before I knew it we were getting sand-blasted so severely it felt like being on the receiving end of a rubber bullet firing squad. And deafeningly loud! But we’d come so far. Just over that higher ridge, was the nirvana of views.

I had to make it.

My muscles were screaming by now, shaking. My ear canals were literally filled with sand. There was no respite. From every direction came more blasting sand.

“Take small choppy steps!” my husband shouted at me through the howling wind, offering me the best strategy for scaling this Sahara-like ridge. My face was broadcasting pure hell, hot and red. “You look like you’re being tortured!” Aaron yelled to me. “Let’s go back! This is ridiculous!” But there was no way I was admitting defeat when the summit was just forty or fifty feet above me!

We kept going.

It seemed way too easy for Aaron. But his effortless stride always gives me strength. I draft from the energy of his momentum. And after another thirty minutes of sheer hell, I emerged to the top…

…only to find another layer, hundreds more feet up, and the crushing realization that I was nowhere near the summit.

It was just an illusion. Another cruel trick from this callous desert.

I wanted to cry.

I collapsed in the swirling sand, protecting my face from the sand bullets as best I could, my heart beating out of my chest, my lungs on fire. “I can do this” I told myself. “I can do it.”

So I got back up. This new ridge was even more treacherous. The wind felt even more powerful. I took ten more steps, which seemed to take forever.

Finished.

And then my quadriceps literally gave up. My legs buckled underneath me. For the first time, there was no beating myself up to take one more step. My body said game over. And that was that. I couldn’t push legs that would no longer work.

“You go on ahead!” I screamed through the wind to Aaron. He resisted, telling me he didn’t want to continue without me. I assured him it was no worry at all; that we had come this far (by now we had been hiking up those dunes for close to two hours) and he had to photograph an image from the top!

With reluctance, he trudged up ahead and I assured him I’d be right here when he returned. His form disappearing up the ridge, he turned with his Hollywood smile, walking backwards, and yelled, “Stay alive… I will find you!” Replaying Daniel Day Lewis in my favorite scene from Last of the Mohicans. He vanished into the sand tempest while I remained, laughing from his comedy relief delivered with perfect timing.

And there I sat.

By far, this was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been in nature. Blown around, sand-blasted, my muscles like cooked spaghetti, my lungs pissed off in every way, my contact lenses loudly complaining. All systems in unison sang, “what the f*&k are we doing here?!”

But all I could do is smile. I chuckled at the ridiculous self-imposed drama that I was embroiled in with one of the most beautiful landscapes I had ever seen. “Don’t take it personally,” Mother Nature said, bored and untouched by my efforts, as she filed her nails with the blasting sand.

It was then I realized that in the universal question of what does it take to make me tick, what does it take to make me feel alive, the question of how to flourish, I realized, this is exactly it. Right here. Right now. I maintained my embattled ways for as long as I possibly could, and then all that was left was to surrender to the sand.

Suddenly all that seemed sane was to stop complaining and start listening.

So I asked Nature a favor. As long as I was up here, getting the most aggravating skin exfoliation I could imagine, I asked the sand to help me exfoliate my spirit. “Blast off the layers I no longer need”, I requested.

I gave the wind permission to scrub from me those old patterns that no longer serve me. Then I quietly sat with her while she did her work, blasting and blowing. I sat in the middle of the raging din with my eyes closed, legs crossed, and a Buddha smile.

When my husband finally returned, he brought back the most incredible gift, which was the view from as high as he got (which wasn’t actually the top).

The gift.

The gift the sand, the sun, and the wind gave to me–after hammering me for hours–was a feeling of lightness so freeing, I know Nature delivered. I left a thick coat of used-up experiences on those dunes, stagnancy, heavy with expired energy. A coat I no longer needed or wanted.

Nowhere else on the planet could have unburdened me of that as efficiently as these dunes.

It was the best experience I could have asked for.

So, if you were to ask me how to flourish, I would answer you this…understand that every experience in nature has embedded gifts. We can either spend our time complaining, or spend our time listening and receiving. Every experience has something to give you and some expired, heavy thing to take from you.

All you have to do is ask.

Much Love,

Kristy