Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [66]
I was understandably emotional as I reached into my backpack and took out my mom’s ashes. I opened the bag, and it was a powerful moment when I let go of her ashes, and watched them take off so easily into the wind. It was a clear blue day, not a cloud in the sky, and the ashes fluttered into the breeze and just kept going.
“I hope she enjoys her travels,” Lorrie said, and I wasn’t able to say much in response. I just watched.
Once that simple ceremony was over, Lorrie and I allowed ourselves to appreciate the majesty of the view. “Our worries seem pretty small in comparison to all of this, don’t they?” Lorrie said to me. “It puts life in perspective.”
We rested for a bit, taking it all in. But we couldn’t stay there too long. Our hike was only half over at that point.
Descending the mountain was almost harder than the hike up, because we were so drained emotionally and physically. By the end of a hike like this, every part of your body that could possibly chafe against another part of your body has done so.
When we reached the bottom of the trail at 8:15 P.M., again in darkness, we felt absolutely exhilarated despite our exhaustion. We were immensely proud of ourselves. Lorrie, who had spent years believing her body had let her down, recognized that in so many ways, her body had come through for her.
Flying home the next day in the rented plane, I circled over the mountain a few times, and we looked down at it with awe. We both joked that it was a good thing we hadn’t flown over it on the way there, because from the air it looked too formidable and steep.
“Wow,” Lorrie said to me. “Can you believe we did it?”
On the plane, as we headed over the mountain and then northwestward toward home, Lorrie, inspired, took out a pen and wrote a “gratitude letter.”
She wrote of how the mountain helped bring clarity to her life: “I realized how small our daily ‘stuff’ is. The mountain was here long before we were, and will be here long after we are gone. The fabric on my family room chairs really seemed insignificant by comparison. But what seemed supremely important during the hike was the giggling and laughter of Katie and Kelly, even when we want it quiet, and the love of our family—those living and those who have left us.”
Lorrie is well on her way to having led “a well-lived life.” She makes her way with passion and purpose, and by doing so reminds others of what is possible. I’m grateful to have shared the trail for so much of it.
LORRIE IS always on the lookout for inspiration, and a couple of years ago, she heard Maria Shriver speak at her annual California Governor and First Lady’s Conference on Women. At one point, Maria recited a Hopi Indian poem that had touched Lorrie deeply. It reads, in part:
There is a river flowing now very fast,
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid,
They will try to hold onto the shore.
They will feel they are torn apart and will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river,
Keep our eyes open, and our heads above water.
Lorrie said this poem moved her to tears. She recognizes that all of us have to find the courage to leave the shore. That means leaving the crutch of our lifelong complaints and resentments, or our unhappiness over our upbringing or our bodies or whatever. It means no longer focusing negative energy on things beyond our control. It means looking beyond the safety of the familiar.
Lorrie loves the image of letting go of the shore, finding the middle of the river, and letting the river take us. It’s a reminder that