To Excise.
"To Excise”: to actively confront and eliminate negative thoughts, emotions, or past experiences that are causing you distress, essentially "driving out" these internal struggles like one would expel an evil spirit in a religious context; it implies taking decisive action to overcome personal challenges and negative aspects of yourself.
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find ways which in yourself have altered.”
Potentially hyperbolic I know.
But for those of you who have done it, it fits and fits well. While I never try to write what other people have lived or experienced, I am sure I am not the only person who has, or has chased their “demons”.
Let’s first define the pretty visceral idea of a “demon”. Without trying to sound like everything is level 10, a demon can be anything and everything. Addiction, loss, doing the same thing, not doing anything, a place, a person, hell maybe even a real demon!
But for me, for this year my “demons” reside in the form of a race, and a place. I guess they are both places, and they are both mountains. I decided last year while experiencing my father-in-law move on from this earth, and being shown what really matters in this life, that this year was going to be a year I excised some past “demons”.
I am lucky enough only to have two major attempts that I was unable to achieve. One was climbing the Mooses Tooth in Alaska, the second being completing the Power of Four in Aspen and the last being able to complete the Grand Traverse of the Tetons. All of these efforts I came up short for reasons only the mountains can provide. Too much snow, Twisting an ankle, and a lighting storm. I was at varying ages, and all were attempted prior to having a family.
And so here we are. 2025. The greatest commodity, time, has offered itself to me and death has shown me it should not be wasted.
29 weeks of training are behind me and (The hay is in the barn) for the Power of Four, which happens on February 22nd. Hundreds of miles running uphill. Over and over. Weights, garages, trails, early as fucking hell mornings, cold dark uphill skiing after silent drives to the mountains have come together to create what can only be realized as a form of confidence. Confidence to show up, confidence to know it is going to hurt, confidence to know it is going to suck. And the confidence to know I did all I could.
These attempts have no guarantee. I have broken skis in half before, a dropped water bottle, a broken boot. The variables are endless and no matter what risk is never fully eliminated. There is no road, no marked trail and thinking about the possibility of failure again is honestly gut-wrenching.
The quote from Mandela has been one of my favourites for so many reasons. Visiting, experiencing and seeing things a single time is easy. But showing up to the same place, race, mountains, city or whatever the place decides to be, is when we experience OURSELVES. We notice how WE have changed sometimes for the better, or worse, or to accidentally confront the memory of who we once were.
Either way, Experiencing the training, the effort, the mentality, the “suck”, the maturity this time around after attempting it a decade ago has been exactly what Mandela talks about. Feeling and seeing how you have altered is the gift I hope we can all experience.
No matter what demons we chase to be free of.
