Materhorn Bear

Today little bear experienced a wide gamut of emotions... excitement, terror, fear, confusion, anxiety, perseverance and finally triumph! Little bear came across a mountain today, in the prairies. Well, at least it was a mountain for him. A tall rock edifice... and little bear stood at the foot of it and looked up and decided that he was going to scale this mountain. He wanted to see what the view was like from up there. He wanted to see what it was like to climb a mountain.



Stuck bear



So little bear started up the mountain... and the first part went pretty well. He found excellent foot and hand and claw holds, and nimbly inched his way upwards. But then... at one point, he realized that he had climbed himself into a corner. There were no more handholds above him... or even clawholds...



He couldn't go upwards. He couldn't go the left. Gulp! Little bear looked down and realized how far he had come... Gulp! He was going to have to retrace his footsteps. And little bear learned that sometimes going down is much harder than going up! Gingerly he inched his way back down, losing all of that hard-won elevation, until he came to another route.

And upwards he went again, climbing and climbing, until finally he came to the ridgeline. This was the top... sort of... but along the ridge crest thre was a peak, and that was the real top! Carefully he inched his way along the knife edge ridge, a shear drop to either side. Oooh... little bear couldn't bear to look down, so he kept his eyes on his goal. Until finally, he was there!

Little bear stood on the peak and exulted in his triumph! He had done it! He didn't let the wrong turn get to him. Nor the height.

Which is a good lesson for us as well. Sometimes we go in one direction and realize that it isn't working out. And sometimes, rather than retracing our footsteps, we keep trying to push that direction, and waste a lot of energy. When really what we need to do is back up, regroup and try something else. Had little bear not done that, he might still be clinging to that mountain...