The Simplicity of a Cheese Sandwich

Today for lunch, I ate a smashed cheese and honey-mustard sandwich. Unremarkable, except that it was at the top of Calabasas Peak, all 2160 feet of it, in the Santa Monica Mountains east of Malibu. While I was eating, a mayfly fell at my feet. A lizard ran down the side of the rock, stopped in front of the fly, looked at me, ate the fly, looked at me again, and took off as fast as he came, making it for a brief moment the most popular lunch spot I could see for miles.

It was hike #1 towards reaching the summit of Mt. Whitney next August. In terms of my physical health, the last two years have been a blurry combination of feeling sorry for myself after a bunch of health crap (I say that so I don't have to use the c-word), paralyzed by the anxiety of "what if it comes back?" Why did it take two years to get back into things I love doing, like communing with a lizard over lunch? And now, how do I fight off these feelings of being angry with myself for throwing a two year-long pity party?

I like cheese sandwiches. I like hiking. Sometimes, a day shouldn't be any more complicated than that, and our minds shouldn't search for meanings ahead or behind these moments.

End pity party.