Acacia Hill

My local bike shop--Broadway Cycle in Monticello--hosts a Thursday night social ride for anyone who wants to come. Last night was the first that I have been able to join this summer because the NSC velodrome also has racing on Thursday nights. It was a great ride. My friend Jeff was also riding, as were a number of people whom I know from around town. The group spread out a bit over the course of the ride, but you were never out of sight of the other riders.

I had heard rumors about the hill up Acacia off of County Road 106--steep and curving--but had never ridden the hill. Until last night. Wow, what a hill! It is steep and has a deceptive curve halfway up. I have never ridden a steeper hill and all of us in the group that I was with were struggling a bit. It was one of those hills where it would be easy for a lone rider to stop and walk the rest of the way up. But when you are riding with a group, it feels better to push hard and labor up to the top.

It was the group that was riding together that made the difference on the Acacia hill. It was nice to have others around while riding on the flats and the rolling hills before and after. But on the toughest part of the ride it was VERY good to have the rest of the group struggling together. And no one had to wonder, "Am I the only one this is hard for?"

Other parts of life are not as transparent as the Acacia hill. We rarely see others battling up the same hills that we are climbing. And it can become disheartening to look around and feel like I am climbing a mountain while everyone around me appears to be cruising on the flats. While I would generally agree that much of life is just plain difficult, the difficulty does not need to be crushing. But, how do we make the rest of life's hills as transparent as the Acacia hill?

It requires trust and a confidence that the people we are showing our "hills" to will not slow us down, but will climb with us. It probably starts with engaging with others. My Acacia hill experience would have been negatively different had I been riding alone. Then it requires honesty on our parts--just calling it what it is. No one climbing Acacia hill in my group was pretending that the hill was no big deal--we were all struggling. And it calls for us to actively encourage each other. Even in the midst of the challenge of Acacia hill, those of us on the climb were calling out encouragement to each other--"Good climb;" "Keep at it;" "Downhill on the other side."

Struggling up Acacia hill was not a sign that any of us were weak or didn't belong on the ride. It was simply part of the reality that hills are steep and require more effort than riding on the flats. In the same way, struggling with parts of the rest of life does not necessarily indicate weakness or that something is "wrong with me." Some parts of life are just more of an uphill struggle than others.

Pressing on,
-Ken