Ryan Mountain Guru
A postcard from Hill House and my Joshua Tree journal
Joshua Tree National Park is not the place you want to visit if you are looking for Himalayan landscapes—or gurus.
The highest peak in the park, Queen Mountain, is only 5,816 feet. Ryan Mountain, one of the park’s most popular hikes, reaches only 5,457 feet—a mile-and-a-half hike up, and a mile-and-a-half hike back down the rocky trail.
But climbing a mountain, even one as small as Ryan Mountain, always raises expectations. Something at the top must await your arrival, even if it’s only a view.
Most of the time, that’s enough, but sometimes you expect a little something more from all your climbing. A little spiritual insight, maybe.
I climbed Ryan Mountain this week. I met no sage and received no spiritual insight, but I did run into a side-blotched lizard.
He was chasing a competitor. When he had run the poacher off, he stood on top of a rock in the sun and did push-ups. That’s how he declared dominance.
“I Pump Me Up,” he was saying.
I moved in to get a closer look, and he didn’t run. Either he was a knucklehead who didn’t know I was the apex predator, or victory had completely gone to his head.
He did more push-ups.
But just then the sun moved out from behind a cloud and lit up the champion. All the hidden colors, the riches of the little dragon, came pouring out of him, flowing over his scales in a mesmerizing pattern of dots, dashes, and spots. His neck glowed orange. Along his back, a runway of bright blue speckles twinkled like morning stars.
It was a princely, technicolor dream coat. When I moved closer to inspect it, he cocked an eye up at me.
“Impressive, no?” he seemed to say.
Like I said, he was no guru. Our meeting was a mere wave of a hand, a colorful “Hello” across the species barrier. A point of contact.
But sometimes that’s all a minor summiteer and spiritual seeker needs to make a climb worth it.
This was lovely, Chris. It brought a Leonard Cohen poem to mind for some reason, one that involved a lizard doing push ups and arrived at a similar conclusion to yours.
…some days just the top of a hill feels meaningful…