On the Precipice of Mid-Life
A scenic outlook
I sit on the precipice, a boulder outcrop on the trail up to the ridge. Splayed out before me is the wide view of a town I’ve lived in for the last twenty years, raising my kid, participating in various jobs and businesses, friend groups and community groups. From above, it is merely a valley speckled with homes, stores, and offices, glittering in the late day sunshine. Somehow this is a conglomeration of my adult life. And it is gorgeous. Mountains wrinkle and roll in green ribs interspersed with river drainages emptying into the encircled watershed. Beyond all of this, past the sage-strewn mesa and the great gash of gorge in the prehistoric geological rift is the cerro that signifies my home, a three-peaked hill in the desert.
On the precipice, I am well aware that my life is ready to shift dramatically. Perimenopause continues full speed ahead with increased progesterone intake in steady intervals. My hair is shimmering in grey streaks behind my ears, my back aches daily, tightening and squeezing even as I increase yoga, weightlifting and chiropractic. I used hiking poles to climb this hill, something I never would have done a few years ago because it made me feel old and now, I love them for multiple reasons.
I still feel young. But I cannot help but see that there is an end in sight and more pertinently a deterioration, a slowing down, a change. I will not be able to shovel foundations, teach three yoga classes in a row, or hike up mountains forever. I am not implying that all of this will happen soon (although you never know), only that the inevitability of it is now apparent in a way it never was in my youth. Time is going faster, and it feels like it is running out. This unexpected change in point of view has led me to put more money into retirement funds than into travel, and to consider my possibilites in bite-sized pieces instead of long-term commitments. The sense that it is too late frays at the fringe of my future.
I find myself at midlife craving more. More simplicity, more streamlined, more purpose, more fulfillment, more accomplishment, but also less. Less ambition, less success, less fame and fortune.
Nature is a mirror. When I look out at this scenic view that I have witnessed perhaps hundreds of times in twenty years, it still brings me joy. I still feel blessed to be here, to be embraced by these mountains. I need no one to validate what home means to me as my younger self would have, constantly questioning where she belonged. Here I am, at home, at home in the world with my marriage, my house, my daughter, my body, my mountains, my rivers, my friends, my trees.
I have no idea what the future holds, only that there is one and it’s on the way down this hillside and it will be a new view, but just as beautiful as it was on the way up.
