The Winds of Change Are Blowing

With such a huge goal looming overhead, a training regiment that needs strict attention and the daily nuances of life seeming to collide, it is days like today that break up the monotony giving me a chance to breathe without setting me back.

With winds of change blowing, they come carrying a new season and air thick with winter. San Gorgonio, a place that sparked my love for the wilderness and a playground that lets me test myself both physically and mentally has been at the brunt of these winds. As the warm weather seasons come to an end, today was a day to get out and take in some great mountain air before the snowshoes and crampons become permanently attached to my feet.
Today I walked a path I have once walked before, over and under logs, around and between the rocks, skirting mountain streams all while chasing shadows trying to regain the warmth they stole from my finger tips. And though this had been a trail previously taken today proved different.With me walks with a new perspective, things change, life all around us changes, sometimes it seems for the worse but in actuality its for the better. As I crunch my way through the frost choked grass, life holds on to what sun it has left, leaves cling to trees as if to disregard the inevitable but its the beauty in this I now see.
Winter will come and I will strap on my crampons, find peaks to climb and stare winter in the face as to prepare myself for the great task that lay ahead. To some the thought of a baron frozen landscape seems uninviting. And as quickly as the cold turns its back on the delicate we turn our back on it. But it is this I love. Creating a new trail only to be blown over by newly fallen snow. The idea that it is still possible to place your foot in no one elses tracks. It is the freedom winter brings, wiping the slate clean and letting us choose our own paths that inspires me and pushes me forward.
With a little more than 6 months before our climb on Denali I open my arms to winter as it is now time to  start putting myself to the test. Bring on the winter because it is these winds of change I now embrace for they will carry me NORTH.