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A Promise Kept: Climbing to the Mount Kilimanjaro Summit

The distance is done. Powerful winds roll to the southeast, brushing past and enveloping you at once. Despite this, you remain steady and firmly planted to the point you’ve attained. The rocky and icy ground at your booted feet, terrain once rugged as it is treacherous, now feels almost smooth underneath, welcoming in a way, as if you’ve been expected for some time. A sundry of feelings lightly settles over you, like a warm blanket to counteract the unusually cold air. It is here that intense exhilaration is met with unprecedented calm and more, all tirelessly earned over the course of many days.

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Forward, Still: Ruminating on Grief and Loss

It’s the socks. They’re unmissable even in this setting, a faux pas that should be called out here and now. Bright and swimming with a medley of colors that takes squinting to identify, echoing the tie-dye t-shirts so popular decades ago. Except this exact clothing has no apparent order to its look-at-me visage; it’s all entropy and devoid of style, dominated by something approaching pink and turquoise. And oh my, is that actually burnt orange? With each passing second, my shock mounts with intensity, while the wearer of said socks, a tall and lanky man, quietly coughs and moves his fist to his mouth, before lowering his hand and falling silent again, gazing forward like everyone else in the immediate radius...