Open your eyes
Push yourself inside
Contemplate all of your senses
Tell them what you want to lose
- 30 seconds to mars

Of course there’s no need to lecture. I’d be preaching to the choir. No, I’ll just go for sharing the experience. The last couple years I’ve noticed that I’m starting to feel like the oldest geezer on the hills. It seems to me that the Vertical Limit for people over 40 is about 200 feet.

Here in my little part of the planet the big hills stand about 500 feet over the lake. Still, Devil’s lake State Park is the premier climbing destination in the Midwest. For climbers it’s not the vertical height that matters, but the difficulty of the ascents. The red quartzite cliffs in the park certainly provide variety and an occasional challenge. Each weekend every cliff and every nook seems to have bodies hanging from or ascending them all.

If you don’t climb but still want to enjoy the view, there are trails that criss-cross the bluffs and give you a good view of the area. Usually though once you pass the first benches about halfway up, the age factor takes over. From there you are surrounded by youth. Now at 42 I certainly don’t feel old and I do see people my age out enjoying the hills. Still, few are the ones that are there for the sheer joy of it all. Most of the folks my age seem to be suffering self-imposed torture. Often they are red-faced and sweating profusely while chasing children and yelling for them to slow down. Others fill the benches while guzzling from bottles of mountain dew and struggling to regain their vision. Packs of smokes lie on the rocks marking a myriad temporary resolutions made on quartzite steps. There has to be good in the weekend heath assessments, yet I fear the feeling rarely lasts past the following Tuesday.

Some middle aged folks are enjoying their day of course. There are athletic types in sweat bands and nasty shorts who run the trails with seeming ease. Romantic couples in tans and greens hide under the shade of red cedars. Guys in polo shirts and kaki shorts zip up the rocks with high-tech walking sticks in hand. Once in a while I’ll even pass that one person or couple who are 70 years of age if they are a day. I want to drop to the ground and celebrate their existence! Of course what I really do is just smile and say, “hello”.

Hiking the trails over our little mountains helps me to appreciate nature. It also helps me appreciate the fleeting nature of youth and life itself. Each time I stand on top of a cliff, I can’t help but think about the time when I won’t be able to do it again. I feel that sense of urgency to soak it all in. To hold a wisp of a memory of the time when I was still able to cross the 200 foot line and take in the beauty. A time it seems that for many, comes way too soon.