I was much braver when I was younger. Or perhaps I was just younger. I studied abroad without knowing a soul; I moved across the country without a job and with very little money. And those risks paid off. While in England, I met lifelong friends, traveled to places with history measured in tens of centuries rather than centennials and came home with my viewpoint forever broadened. Becoming a Coloradan a dozen years ago (though a dozen years puts me no closer to being one of those rare breeds, a native), clearly changed my life. Roads diverged, and here we are.
Somehow, though, in the last decade, I’ve taken fewer risks. You don’t like change, my husband would say with a shrug, and somehow that had become true, and hearing it said made it more true. It became a reason and an excuse all in one. I went into a period of anxiety, which I still fight in thankfully lesser ways, where routine seemed even more important. Sit down you’re rocking the boat. When getting through the day in one piece is a battle, there isn’t a lot of wiggle room for risk. My career path had always lacked ambition – I didn’t know how to marry my wish to never be management with career advancement – and anyway it seemed like my husband had enough ambition for both of us. But eventually it seemed like it wasn’t just my career path that lacked ambition, but my life. The most terrifying quote on Earth, I think, is Annie Dillard’s, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” I didn’t feel like I was leaving much of a legacy, in big ways or small ways. For a while, I just dwelled lethargically in that place until finally, the risks of stagnancy were bigger than the risks of moving forward. It was out of this place that I began making small changes and my Frozen Grapes goal to be alert, healthy and present was born.
Today, we went for a hike as a family as we try to do on a Sunday. Our hike is generally fairly local and not too arduous, but with deep-sigh-contentment scenery. Today’s hike was no exception. One town to the south of us is Castle Rock, and Castle Rock boasts a “castle rock,” a big square rock on the top of a high plateau. We’ve been meaning to hike to the top of that rock, from Rock Park, for a while. The actual path of the hike was pretty similar to most of our other family hikes. Dirt inclines with some rough steps built into the trail here and there, some rocks creating natural steps other places. When we got to the top of the trail, though, we realized that the top of the rock, our destination, was simply up the rock itself. We’d been scrambling over other rocks to explore small caves and crevices, but this was the first scale of significance. But, we’d come to see the view from the top of the castle rock.
The way up is about 80 feet high, and though not particularly perilous, it involves several places where there isn’t a clear path forward. Find three points of balance, my husband told the girls (and me), and you’ll be fine. Midway up, Eva started to cry. “I’m scared,” she said. “I don’t want to do this anymore.” This is one of those parenting moments when there are valid points on each side. If your child is scared to tears (although with Eva tears are usually pretty temporary), where’s the lesson? Trust your gut? Push through your fear? We’re right here beside you? Hopefully the right answer is a little of all three. We pushed on, heaping praise on our young scramblers, and taking photos from the top. 
On the way down, momentum is different, and where you could pull yourself up on the ascent, it’s dropping yourself down on the descent. At one point, Patrick, carefully balanced, lifted Eva down, but as Samantha’s spotter, I didn’t have the strength for that, and her legs weren’t quite long enough to feel the ledge below. I braced my foot on the ledge to give her another couple of inches, but going backwards, it was still a game of trust. “There’s a ledge right there, I promise. You’ll step on my foot, and then be down.” And she did, and she was.
Sometimes courage comes in smaller doses, but it’s no less valiant for that. Knowing that you can navigate in a daily way gives confidence for the bigger challenges. I think I realized today that I’ve been equating courage with the willingness to step into a new frontier without a safety net. But really, it’s not so much that I haven’t changed my life in major ways lately, but that I feel like I’m finally moving forward again, and that I like the view from here.