From where I am sitting right now life and time feel like such contrasting things, yet they are so closely intertwined. We live life for a certain amount of time and then we die.

I’m thinking about this because I am sitting by myself in a very large open area surrounded by rising mountains. Down in the center of a dip sits the remains of an old cabin. It looks like it was made without any nails and had just wood for a roof. It is falling in and the people who lived here are certainly long gone. But I can imagine them here, running cattle on the open ground in this isolated spot, shivering to keep warm in winter.

The cabin was most likely built here for the same reason I am stopping here for the night: water. I am getting mine from a pipe running into a cow trough. It seems like pretty good water. I imagine theirs came from the wet patch just below the cabin. No fancy pipe for them.

As I sit here eating dinner I feel how fleeting life is. Yet, ironically, just the next week or day now feels like an eternity. It struck me that what I am doing is difficult in this 90-degree-plus heat with little to no shade and long stretches with no water. My hip or groin or something is hurting enough to cause a limp, and I feel weary. I have a steep, long climb tomorrow over uncertain terrain with a fairly heavy pack. I suspect it will be one of those days I have to chunk down into minutes just to get through it.

I am certain the people who lived in this rundown cabin had plenty of days like that. Yet none of it really matters now. It reminds me that my challenge out here is to try to find something beautiful in each moment, because in the end my life will be fleeting. That I passed this way will mean little to nothing to anyone but me in this moment, so I might as well make it a good one. I think I’ll start my day tomorrow with some happy songs.