Jeff Belanger - The Call of Kilimanjaro: Finding Hope Above the Clouds

ITS JUST AFTER THREE in the morning, and Im as cold as Ive ever been in my life. Id estimate were at around the 18,000-foot level. I cant breathe. Im fighting for every molecule of oxygen. I suck in air as deeply as possible, but my face is so cold. I cover my mouth with a mask for warmth, but then I cant get enough air. I alternate between warmth and breath.

Im back in my childhood, suffering through an asthma attackmy ribs ache from the strain of deep inhaling. Its dark. The only light is a hazy, tan halo around my feet from my headlamp. My body is sore from six days of climbing this mountain, and from my muscles screaming for more oxygen. I dont think I can go any higher. It would kill me to get this close and turn back. Yet pressing on could also kill me. Weve already passed two plaques marking where people have died.

I cant help but question (yet again) why Im doing this. Between gasps for air, I think about my brother-in-law, Chris. When cancer took him just over a year ago, he was only a few years older than I am now. Im doing this in his memory, but if Im being completely honest, Im mostly doing this for me. Im testing myself at a time in my life when Im otherwise in a rut.

Every step is part of that test. I lift my right foot higher on the mountain, then my left, pushing through air thats growing thinner by the step. But thats the only way I know to reach the top: one step, then another.

Time bends and stretches on this mountain like clay worked in the potters hands. Was it only six days ago since I took that first step, somewhere far below?

I HAD IMAGINED what the first step of this journey would feel like. I had thought about taking a photo or video of that monumental footprint so I could show everyone back home how I would put my foot down with authority at the beginning of the six-day climb to Uhuru Peakthe highest point on Mount Kilimanjaro. But in truth, I am fifty yards up the trail before I can wrap my head around the fact that were on our way. My T-shirt is already wet with sweat beneath my backpack. My water bottle bounces from my right hip as it swings from the carabiner attached to my pack. Beneath the midafternoon equatorial sun, the temperature around seventy-five degrees, the African forest makes its way into my retinas, slowly coming into focus as if Ive emerged from a dark cave into bright sunlight.

Its fitting. My mind is as scattered right now as it was back home. I think about the work Im missing. I feel selfish for taking this time and money away from my family. I ask myself if Im physically and mentally prepared. Did I train enough? Did I pack everything I was supposed to? And why am I doing this, anyway?

The view of Mount Kilimanjaro from the roof of my hotel in Moshi, Tanzaniamy first in-person glimpse of the mountain.

Im a forty-two-year-old dad and husband. Thats who I am. What I am. And it succinctly describes my life. My body isnt in perfect shapeI have the Dad Bodbecause I dont get enough time for myself, I work a lot, and I struggle every day to find the balance between family, career, friends, health, and my own well-being.

Back at home in Massachusettsmore than 7,000 miles from here on Kilimy life has been a treadmill. Wake up, work, family, sleep, repeata rut. Its a rut of my own design, but a rut nonetheless. There have been plenty of days when I only get about an hour of quiet after my daughter goes to bed. And considering how much spinning around my typical day entails between deadlines and appointments, an hour isnt enough time to delve inside and try to shine some light on that wide-eyed inner kid I once knew, who had questions about everything and wondered about big stuff.

Jack Kerouac wrote in his 1958 novel The Dharma Bums, In the end, you wont remember the time you spent working in an office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain. I get it. Shoot, I got it when I first read it years ago, before marriage and family. That doesnt mean Ive always heeded the advice.

But you can stare at a mountain for only so long. Eventually, you have to climb it. Usually a mountain is a metaphor for something big in your life. For me, at least this time, its literal. Mount Kilimanjaro is my mountain. Kili has called me for years, but this time Im answering. At 19,341 feet, its the tallest peak on the African continent. Sitting just south of the equator in eastern Africa, on the border of Tanzania and Kenya, its the largest freestanding volcano in the world.

This is the region where, almost three million years ago, the earliest ancestors of the human species first walked out of the Great Rift Valley to begin their endless journey to wander the Earth. Their task: be fruitful and multiply. And multiply they did! Now theres billions of us. No wonder I feel lost in a sea of people at times. I cant help but rub my belly button and consider its former connection to my mother, and her belly buttons former connection to her mother, and so on, and so on, all the way back to somewhere near here in Tanzania.