Nothing will make you question your own physical abilities more than being passed by a pregnant woman and a group of senior citizens on a mountain trail. I could not help but laugh at my own absurdity as I trudged gracelessly up the rocky path of Mount Sinai. Images of glorious, rugged mountain explorers quickly shattered in my head as I caught sight of myself. Sweating and gasping for breath, I was beginning to wonder whether this “climbing Mount Sinai” business was as fabulous as I had imagined. But if Moses could do it wearing sandals, then I could too, right?
I never quite seemed to connect with history the way that others do; I appreciate it, even marvel, but always felt disconnected from what it means to stand in the places where history has moved the world. I thought my months spent in Egypt might help, and yet even the Pyramids did not seem to cure me. So it was not as I clambered, pathetically out of breath, up the winding pathways of this ancient mountain that I expected to understand the power of history that lives on. People from all over the world had come to climb this path dotted with camels and barefoot Bedouins, racing the sun to the peak. Stark against the night sky, the flashlights of climbers formed a winding trail all the way up the mountain, moving and breathing to remind you of the thousands of other human hands carrying them.
Ascending this mountain were young and old, pregnant women and men with walkers—an incredibly humbling crowd. Lost in the movement, we all pushed forward up the path beaten into the ancient ground by so many feet before us. As I reached the top and sat, breathing and waiting for the sun, it came almost barreling up from the jagged etches of the horizon. The valleys below us lit up in brilliant blues, reds, pinks, and impossible colors I thought could only exist in a painting. Songs came pouring down from the peak in languages I could not identity and did not need to. Religious hymns mixed with prayers, Buddhist mixed with Muslim, and somewhere a sombrero-clad man strummed a ukulele. What could I do in this moment, but laugh. Laugh, and laugh, and laugh. There are some places and moments in this world that are just too meaningful for our limited selves to comprehend. The significance of walking up this mountain in a strange, sweaty pilgrimage—it overloaded our senses, rushed like a broken dam into our being and unified every single climber in the absurd magnificence of what we just witnessed. This somehow personified the Egyptian people, who live in quiet appreciation of a world so ancient it stretches beyond a cynical, adult imagination. Descending back down the twisting path, I marveled at how this most grand and mythical of activities—climbing a biblical mountain in the cradle of civilization—was the most human I have ever felt in my life.
