Xan Conquers Mt Fuji

Mark Twain:  There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.1

 

“In all of living, have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.  Those who move forward with a happy spirit will find that things will always work out.”  Gordon B Hinckley

 

Once upon a time, when our family was living in Tokyo, Xan was invited by her friend, Jillian Boss, to climb Mt Fuji.  Mt Fuji is known as an active volcano, though it has not erupted since the 1700’s. Jillian and her younger sister were going along to help their dad, who was the scout master, but he just had knee surgery and couldn't climb Mt Fuji with the scouts.  The scouts in Tokyo climbed Mt Fuji every year, and Brother Boss wanted to keep his promise to take the scouts on this annual trip.

 

The group traveled by train to the base camp on Friday afternoon.  Brother Boss stayed at base camp but gave Jillian the scout backpack and a walkie talkie.  Then everyone hiked to station Five of ten stations and spent the night.  Saturday the plan was to take the rest of the day to hike to the top and then be back down to the base camp by dusk. 

 

Saturday morning everyone started off nice and early, with everyone walking the trail to the top of the mountain at their own speed. The weather was good, but it was super windy, which kicked up lots of dust in the air.  Xan’s contacts began to get dry, and she had a hard time opening her eyes to see where she was going.  Jillian let Xan hold onto her back pack so that Xan could keep her eyes closed for much of the trip.

 

At about station 8 Jillian’s sister, Miriam, began to get altitude sickness. So they stopped.  While they were resting Jillian saw contact solution in the scout backpack, so she offered it to Xan.  Just in case, Jillian tried to use the walkie talkie, but they couldn’t hear Brother Boss.  It was still really windy so Xan and Jillian huddled really close together so that xan could take her contact out without it blowing away or getting dirtier.  Xan put her contact in her hand, but when she went to drop some solution on it, only a thick yellow fluid came out, which totally grossed them out.  Jillian tried giving it a good shake, but it stayed the same. Jillian said, “maybe it is some kind of Japanese solution.”

 

Jillian kept trying the walkie talk until her father finally could be heard.  She told her dad what had happened and much to her surprise her dad started to laugh.  He said that what was in the bottle was not contact solution, but was consecrated oil, for administering to the sick when giving a priesthood blessing.  There was nothing else to do but let the ruined contact blow away in the wind.

 

At this point some of the scouts that had made it all the way to the top, passed the girls as they were on their way back down.  Miriam decided to go back down with them.  So on their own, Jillian and Xan decided to climb as far as they could.  It was still really hard, Xan kept tripping because one eye was really blurry and her contact in the other eye really hurt.  She kept tripping, so Jillian was super nice and let her old on to her back pack and helped Xan by guiding her and warning her of objects that might be in the path ahead.

 

They made it okay to station 9, but they heard from more scouts who were on their way back down that the hike from 9-10 was the steepest part.  It had taken so long for Xan and Jillian to get that far that now it was almost dusk, the time they were supposed to be down at the bottom at the base camp.  They had to decide what to do.  They really didn’t want to quit when they had come so far.

 

Just at that point they saw two scouts that were their age coming down the trail from the top.  These scouts stopped to see how the girls were doing.  When they heard what the girls had been through, they offered to help get the girls back to base camp.  The trail on the way down had lots of loose gravel spread around lots of boulders.  It was easy to get down by sliding in the gravel, as long as you could see the boulders so that you could maneuver around them.  The boys got on each side of Xan and helped her shoot through the gravel, but kept her safe from falling over the boulders, and made it possible for the girls to make it to base camp on time without getting injured. That part turned out to be pretty fun and they laughed a lot as they went

 

When Xan first started, she was glad she could help her friend Jillian, and when it was hard, Xan was so glad that Jillian was willing to keep going and help Xan along the trail.  When they couldn’t hear Brother Boss, they tried their best, and even though the bottle in the back pack wasn’t the help they thought they needed, after they tried a little harder, other help came along. 

 

Xan said “Sometimes success looks different at the end than what you thought at the beginning,  and often there are multiple answers for every problem and many people who can help.”

Written for 2021 Family Gathering “Faith To Move Mountains”

Devotional #10 “If you’re  ever in trouble, I'll be there on the double …”