Another View

Adversity forces a new focus on life

Editor: I would like to share some thoughts I had as I read the Oct. 28 article titled “ Marketing the thrill of skiing.” Featuring local resident and cinematographer Craig Beck.

His quote “All of life is a dream- an illusion and we are our own dream masters. Each alone controls his dreams,” and struck a familiar chord in this 11 year sierra resident and passionate thrill seeker.

My mountain dream began in the summer of 1978 when I moved to Yosemite valley to work for a summer. I quickly found life in that dramatic thrill zone. a city kid all my life, I went nuts with the challenges of exploring and meeting the mountain on their level.

That summer job just carried over to winter, a winter that saw me on the slopes for 110 days of skiing, my first season ever. Winter turned to spring and my first pair of rock climbing shoes, that was it. Life now came down to a focus on what i believe to be the ultimate sport, rock climbing, Yosemite style. Big walls of steep, hard, California granite.

Day after day I sunk my hands into those luscious crack lines that made my arms fill with blood just looking at them. as one thinks about rock climbing, “you never reach the top, their will always be a new and harder project for tomorrow.”

A level of excellence achieved on CA rock often leads one to higher snow cover walls in far away lands. Their the “Adrenaline junkie” can get large doses of fear that last for days and works at a time.

But as simply and as simply as I can put it to you, I was empty inside. True, this emptiness was often times ignorable by all the business as I chipped away at my adventure list, but it never left, and i found myself lying to myself that it really wasn’t there.

It has been said in many ways by many people before us, that it is only in adversity that a man sees clearly, both himself and the life in the world around him.

My moment of adversity came in a deep, and personal tragedy. Life became very real in a moment. Gone was the strength I had in a mindset that believes “all of life is a dream and we re the dream masters.”

I found strength in who i believe with all my heart is the creator of all things, Jesus Christ. I leaned heavily on Him then, and now that my time of crisis has passed he has become the love of my life, and in Him and Through Him I have found real life.

So i share this tale with you; my heart is this, “we are all beggars in this life and this is one beggar who just wanted to tell you where i found some bread, a feast of it.

Mick Deiro

Tahoe Vista Times