Leading Step by Step

Well, it’s a chance to follow the music, and spend some time with my daughter. And that’s how I found myself on the side of a central American volcano. The day before we’d spent the day trudging up the volcano carrying these backpacks that were a fraction of our body weight. The heavier you are, the heavier your backpack and mine weighed 50 pounds. I think it’s a cruel irony to give a guy who already had more weight to carry a heavier backpack. It’s like some kind of reality, TV-inspired weight loss incentive program or something.

I was also older than everyone else in the group by at least 10 years. I asked if there was a backpack weight reduction based on age. They just laughed. So we spent the day climbing through ash-enriched fields of coffee, flowers, and avocados through a cloud rainforest and into a dry ghost. Forest of ash-choked trees that had been killed by some old eruption. We set up camp 1000 feet below the summit. The plan was to get a good night’s sleep, get up early, and then reach the summit in time for a beautiful sunrise. And I thought sleep would come easily after the day’s work but that was not the case. My body was exhausted, but I couldn’t fall asleep.

The couple from Brazil, no problem, they were asleep in minutes. I finally conked out at one o’clock. Three hours after sleep finally came, a bright light shines through the window of the tent and there’s a gruff voice calling out. It’s time to go. So by 4:30 in the morning, Avery and I are hiking up a steep incline in the dark on a crumbling trail through foot-deep powdery volcanic sand. And each step was a torturous effort to find a foothold before you slid back down the slope. Oh, and I’d left my flashlight in the tent. So we hiked up that steep sandy slope, mostly in the dark for two hours. Despite all the mountains that I’ve hiked, this was the most grueling and mentally challenging ascent I had ever done. Trails in the US use switchbacks to ease the pain of elevation gain and to manage erosion, but they haven’t really found their way into Guatemala mountaineering yet.

The lack of sleep and food that didn’t agree with me also did not help. And did I mention I was older than everyone else in the group? Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a difficult challenge with thoughts like, what am I doing here? What was I thinking? Thinking I could do this? What if I can’t make it? Every person who ever chooses to do or be something more or different than they are now is gonna experience those doubts. They’re part of the price you pay by 5:30 in the morning at 12,500 feet. Avery and I were completely alone. The younger and fitter group members with lighter backpacks had gone on ahead of us. It was a different sort of alone than I’d experienced before in a foreign country, with no idea how much farther we had to go or how difficult the trail would become.

My daughter’s small flashlight and the partial moon were the only light we had in the dark. So Avery picked out the trail ahead of us. She would stop, shine her light, and look for the footprints of people who had climbed up the sandy trail before us. Then we’d scramble up another 20 feet, 30 feet, stop, catch our breath and do it again. Avery also hadn’t slept well and was feeling pretty lousy at this point. Apparently, I snore, but the Brazilian couple slept through it. I’m just saying. She told me I should go ahead and she’d catch up. No way, I said, we’re in this together and every few minutes I try to encourage her and lift her spirits. And when she’d had enough of that, she said, stop talking to me. To which I responded, Hey, this was your idea. So we trudged on in silence for a while, our spirits flagging.

That’s when a guide from another group caught up to us. He was Guatemalan and obviously accustomed to trekking up and down these mountains. And as he passed us he smiled, waved his hand in a huge cheer arc of greeting completely at odds with the expression on our faces, and said poco a poco, and then he was gone. His smile and his 0% body fat legs floated over the mountain like it was nothing.

Poco a poco that’s little by little or as I translate it step by step. I often think of his poco a poco. Whatever challenge you face, poco a poco will help. Look at the path immediately in front of you. Find the tracks of the people who’ve gone before and take the next few steps. You don’t have to know all the answers, you don’t have to know how everything’s gonna turn out. You don’t have to know how to do everything you’ll be called upon to do. I don’t suggest that the work is going to be easy.

Avery and I didn’t talk to each other for an hour or more while we were laboring up the rim of Acatenango. And at times the trail was so steep, I would literally take three steps, secure my footing, and then stop to breathe. But we made it and so will you. And one thing I can promise is the view is worth the work to get there. That was easily the most spectacular sunrise I’ve ever seen in my life. A blanket of clouds below us enveloped the cloud rainforest that we hiked through earlier the day before. Volcanoes poked through the clouds, some of them in the distance, spewing ash and smoke from ongoing eruptions and the Sunrise, illuminating all of it. The journey will change you. You’ll know you’ve done it and that you can do it again.

Until next time, be the leader you’d want your boss to be.