Before the Empress: Messages from Mount Kilimanjaro

By Michele Mattingly

When all the pieces of your life lead you to one moment in time . . . As a three-year-old, she was fascinated by giraffe. At four she longed for Africa. Throughout a lifetime, every experience, choice, and decision built the long path to Kilimanjaro. What she learned on the mountain, forever changed her. For those who need to find the meaning in their lives, this journey is a reminder that the universe only seems chaotic. All that we are, all that we do, takes us to our destiny, if we dare to look for it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684562114

Book preview

cover.jpg

BEFORE

THE

EMPRESS

Messages from Mount Kilimanjaro

Michele Mattingly

Copyright © 2019 Michele Mattingly

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-68456-210-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64544-170-0 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-68456-211-4 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgements

This is my story. It is my climb. They were my messages. Essentially, this is a book of narcissistic proportion. That being said, I need to thank a few people.

Of course, first, thank you to my family- my daughter, Julie; my son-in-law Brian; my sons, Jeffrey and Joseph; my sister, Anne; and Darlene, (who was, in every way, a mother to me). These were the first believers. Next, I am thankful to my sister-friends: Ayalla, Mayra, Patty, Sharene, Tiffany, and Vivianne, who were always an inspiration. Thank you to Mike, who fell down on Mount Baldy with me. Deepest gratitude to Kefas and the team at Majestic Kilimanjaro. You made the journey possible.

Oddly, I am also grateful to three former men in my life: Randy, Rick, and Brian. These were the men, who, despite the failed romances, never failed to tell me I could write. Their echoes gave me the courage to sit down and begin.

But the biggest thank you of all goes to a woman whose name I don’t even know…

I went to cast my vote for some local issues at the neighborhood polling place in February 2017. A woman handing out the ballots noticed my Mount Kilimanjaro shirt. She asked if I had been there, and when I answered yes, her jaw dropped.

How old are you? she asked, followed by, I know that is impertinent, but I have to know.

I’m 58.

Oh my god, you climbed a mountain at 58? How was it? Was it hard? Do you do this all the time?

It was extraordinary. It was very hard, and it was the first time.

She stood agape.

Is there a book?

No.

There should be. She grabbed my wrist.

Tell me you will write a book about it, please? Then tell Vroman’s Bookstore to let you do a book signing. I want a signed copy. You will write it won’t you? This time I stood agape.

Okay…

Good. I can’t wait to read it.

I have been writing this book since February 2017. It was written because I made a promise. I wrote about the experience, but I won’t lie, it is mostly about me. Me, me, me, but the fact is, climbing Kilimanjaro shifted my focus. I hope this book is the last vestige of my egotism and self-aggrandizement. I don’t want to talk about me anymore. I just want to talk about her: the empress. She taught me that when we look inward, the view is very small. She showed me a vantage point I never could have imagined. I am learning every day what it means to look outward.

It’s not about me anymore.

So, to my family, my friends, my unknown encourager, but especially to you who are reading, thank you. Thank you for giving me a chance to share my journey and my empress with you. May her voice inspire you, her wisdom illuminate you, and her incomparable beauty elevate you to reach your own summit.

We are all Wasafiri.

Journey on.

Introduction

"Han bad lin."

—J.R.R. Tolkien

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s, The Lord of the Rings, the elves, guardians of immortality, guide the humans in their care with this phrase, Han bad lin. This is your path.

Tolkien was expressing what we all know; that there is a moment in our lives when we must all journey forth to find our path. There is an unexplainable desire within us to discover our destiny and to give our lives meaning. When money, a house, a career, and even children are somehow not enough to define us, something internal won’t let us rest. In answer, some of us create, some contribute, and some conquer. One friend of mine makes jewelry, one volunteers in hospice, and another continually pursues higher education. When we hear that internal cry, whether we are eighteen or eighty, we all look to answer it.

In my life, there were two marriages, four children, two divorces, two master’s degrees, and two international trips. There were two bankruptcies, two foreclosed houses, and one life-threatening disease. Some lessons were harder to learn than others, and some experiences were worth repeating; but when 57 rolled up on me, I suddenly realized there was more behind me than before me. Then a cry echoed in my ears at a pitch only I could hear. It haunted me, reminded me that like all humans, I was ultimately alone; and worse, it confirmed my deepest regret, that I was alone with a past that did not give me satisfaction.

My life seemed like a B movie: somewhat entertaining and largely forgettable. It was not a loveable classic to be watched again and again, because although my memories were both pleasant and horrible, creating a dramatic plot, at the end of the film, I would not leave with a feeling of two hours (or one lifetime) well spent. It was empty, and that year, so was I.

That is how the journey began. It began with financial hardship, emotional distress, and despair; but that is how most miracles begin -- with defeat, and while the journey up the mountain was a long one, the journey to make the journey goes back even further. This is my story…

PART ONE

Before

Going Home

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.…

—William Faulkner

It was 1961. My mother, father, two sisters, and I traveled along Pacific Coast Highway in a 1955 station wagon. At a time when there were no car seats or seat belts, I sat on my older sister’s lap and, for amusement, twisted colorful pipe cleaners into animal shapes. I gave them names and took them on adventures along the vinyl seats and window’s ledge while a sea breeze blew my little-girl curls. How long had we traveled that day? I can’t say because time is irrelevant to a three-year-old. I do remember, however, that when my animal world became tiresome, I lifted my head and casually glanced out the window. What I saw was water that stretched far beyond my range of vision. I had never seen so much water! We lived forty miles inland, and trips to the beach were not part of our routine. In fact, this was my first trip to the beach. This was a rare day.

I dropped the twisted fur wires on the floor and squirmed to my knees. With small hands plastered to the window, I cried out, My Pool! It later transitioned into a family joke. That day the Pacific Ocean became my pool.

I believe children have a natural connection to the physical world. They fearlessly dig their hands in mud or sand, catch fireflies and frogs, dive into icy water, make snowmen with uncovered hands, and lie in the grass to watch clouds. Additionally, ownership is a big thing. My mommy, my toys, my house, and even the swing in the park that was abandoned becomes personal property when another child takes possession. So, the combination of ownership and the natural world leads children to see themselves as stewards, guardians, and sometimes even dictators of places, people, animals, and wildlife.

Along the way, we lose this. Adults take ownership of cars and houses and our universities or schools. We take possession of our children or spouses, but adults rarely identify pets as theirs. It becomes the family dog or the children’s cat. We visit the beach or the forest, but it is no longer ours. Maybe that is why a public park after the Fourth of July looks like the city dump. It’s not my park, so why should I clean it up? It is a tragedy of adulthood, this loss of connection; but there is one constant I believe, one ownership we don’t lose, and that is home. My home. Almost anyone you see will take ownership of home. For some, it is the place they were born. It could be a city or town or state. For some, it is the person whom they most love and trust. A boy goes home to mom or a husband home to his wife. It is not the building they live in. It is the person who makes home. It is the same with a town or state. It is not the concrete or the sidewalks. It’s the people who live there, the places where people we love congregate and share memories. That is what we call home and we proudly own it.

While we are all able to identify some primary home, most of us ignore the place deep inside that is our primal home. When people travel abroad, they often feel a connection to another continent or country. They get a sense of comfort, belonging, and familiarity even in places they have never been before. Home is a state of mind. Perhaps, even a state of soul.

At the Griffith Observatory in Griffith Park, above the din and traffic of Los Angeles, the planetarium narrator closes the star show with a panoramic sky view of the stars as they would appear without light pollution or atmospheric anomalies. As he projects the array of silvery stars on the ceiling, his final comment is,

So in truth, everything in the universe is made of the same materials. Even we are made of star dust. Perhaps, this is why every time we look at the stars, we feel we are going home.

Home. Connection, belonging, and ownership; but perhaps it’s not just where we belong, but what we belong to.

Back on the floor of that 1955 wagon amid the discarded pipe cleaners was also a stuffed giraffe. Five inches in length, with threadbare plush and a broken neck, this was Gooby. The pipe cleaners were only a cursory entertainment, but not my Gooby. He was the favorite toy. He traveled with me everywhere, to the drive-in and doctor’s office, to the park; and that day, to the beach. He went everywhere until the day he disappeared; and I was told he went home. (How else can you comfort a child whose favorite toy has vanished? Going home is understandable, even to a three-year-old.)

Some months later, I was looking through a magazine left lying on the coffee table. In it there was a photo of a tower of giraffe moving through the savannah with Kilimanjaro in the background. It was Gooby! I was terribly excited. I wanted to know, where is this place where giraffes walk, this place where there are no buildings or cars? My sister told me. It is Africa.

It is home to Gooby and all his relatives.

If it was home to Gooby, it most certainly must be home to me. Gooby went home. I want to go home. The fascination with Africa began that day.

Over many years, the desire slowly faded to an ache, and later to a dull remembrance.

As with most people, I chose a more conventional life. I married, had children, began a career and over ten years watched my world unravel in a flurry of disappointments and frustrations. The marriage ended in divorce. My dreams were a casualty.

A divorced woman experiences a number of transformations. She feels first abandoned, then rejected. Later, she is angry and afterward confused. Depression arrives. Finally, she enters into a hum. She establishes a routine in her life, this gives comfort, and in accepting this position, one or two subtexts emerge. She is either content to be a grandmother/mother and keeps working, keeps gardening, keeps visiting her friends and allowing the end of her life to glide quietly into old age; or she begins a quest to find romance again. What is interesting is that the romance isn’t always with a partner. Sometimes, the romance is with an ideal. This woman takes on the journey to find one more aspect of fulfilment, because she is not contented with being a grandmother or an employee, and she cannot imagine quietly gliding into old age. On this path, she stamps her feet and kicks the rocks along the road, continuing her search to the very end.

On an uneventful Wednesday afternoon in a dentist’s office, I discarded the Cosmo and House and Garden magazines and picked up the National Geographic. Jimmy Stewart in, It’s a Wonderful Life proudly announced, it was a magazine for explorers, even for armchair explorers. Those glorious landscapes, Baobab trees, and a tower of giraffe, all reminded me of that day I saw the first picture of the savannah. When I turned the page, I saw Mount Kilimanjaro for what seemed like the first time. In the glossy color photo, it wasn’t part of the background. It was the foreground. Kilimanjaro had always been just part of the picture, a place for giraffe. Now, it was the whole picture.

An avid reader can of course appreciate the metaphor of a mountain, and wheels began to turn. I was mesmerized by the mountain. What would it be like to climb that mountain? So many bits of my life converged in that moment, it seemed I had to go. I knew I wanted to go. My stomach churned with desire, and there was a heat of passion overtaking me. Why did this one photo impact me so much? I have to go.

When my name was called I set the magazine aside and left my desire on the seat of that waiting room; but the call remained. The desire I thought was discarded, waited. The need did not go away.

Every year people go to Africa. They go to watch the animals, which is a perfectly sound reason. Some people go to climb the mountain, also a good reason to go; but for me, the need for the mountain went beyond a childhood fantasy, or even the romanticism described in Toto’s song.

Kilimanjaro was a call to go home. Birds migrate from one location to another without knowing why. Our call to go home is much the same. When young people finish college, before they begin their new lives, they go home. When a person has been long away and needs a sense of grounding, he goes home. So many stories and movies tell us of a hero whose purpose is realized only when he returns home, for in that context, all things become clear. I was needing to go home—to my primal home. The question about the meaning of my life lay on that mountaintop, and I knew it.

Everyone has his Kilimanjaro. In this tapestry of life, before we can say the picture is complete, we need that defining thread. So that day, I recognized the call. I tried to push it aside, but I knew, at some point, I was going to Africa. I knew I would go to the mountain.

And I knew I would be going home.

Before the Mountain

Before the deed comes the thought. Before the achievement comes the dream. Every mountain we climb, we first climb in our mind.

—Royal Robbins

The fact that you are still reading means that you and I have a connection. This is a personal experience in my life, and I want to thank you for allowing me to share it with you. It’s my hope that it will be either an entertainment or an inspiration to you; but at the very least, I hope it leads you to a place of wonder and questions. When I made the announcement about climbing the mountain to my friends and family, without exception, each one said, When you get back you have to write about it. I dismissed it because, I thought, what would make my journey any more noteworthy than anyone else’s? I disdainfully regard most personal narratives as exercises in egotism, with the possible exception of Frederick Douglass’.

In retrospect, it isn’t my experience that needed cataloguing. The woman in the voting station wanted to know about the mountain.

Was it hard? What was it like?

It was the question of whether or not it was possible for someone else. That was the real reason to write. My family and friends thought it was to tell my story, and that would have been easy to dismiss, but this was more. This was about the mountain and how each of us has it within us to climb. Whether it is an actual mountain or a metaphoric one, we climb to achieve, find ourselves, be renewed.

We all journey-on. We climb over mountains and across deserts and go through jungles in our daily lives. Some of us have a journey that is less challenging than others, but most people have a fair share of difficulty, frustration, unexpected change of events, and detours that we grudgingly accept. This isn’t just about climbing a mountain. It’s about all the journeys and side trails and pitfalls that take us to the place where we finally discover something significant. While all our journeys are of value, this particular kind of journey, the kind that requires physical as well as emotional stamina, this is a game-changer.

Over fifty years, I took more detours than I would have liked. I chose to visit my mountain because it wasn’t a detour. I came to learn that it was intention. The world was getting too small, and the burden of it too heavy. The smallness of repetitive, empty cycles—work, shop, clean, fight the IRS, work, shop, clean, go to a movie, work, shop, fight the IRS…The daily mundane existence was a burden I could no longer endure. I just needed to stop. I had to find a moment and a place in time when life offered more than routine and struggle. Those photos in the magazine in the dental office brought clarity out of confusion.

Before Kilimanjaro, I felt directionless. As a young woman, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be married, I wanted to raise a family. I wanted to do all those cool things that parents do with kids—go camping, visit the beach, help with homework, plant a garden, join the PTA. Many people make those kinds of plans, and some of us get them. Some of us never get them. We can’t control every event in our lives, in truth we control very little, and this is what creates discontentment.

No one gets married thinking, I will be divorced in ten years, but it happens. No one takes a job thinking, this job will disappear in five years, but it happens. Life twists us in so many directions. Is it any wonder we—as individuals, as Americans or maybe even as humans—answer the question, How are you? with the retort, Fine, because there is no way to express how UN-fine we really are?

I was sleepwalking though my life, allowing one boring day to bleed into the next.

This journey, my journey, is an everyman’s journey. The mountain isn’t just a mountain. It is all the mountains we metaphorically climb throughout our lives; and the empress, she is our voice. Everyone hears her. She may come from Kilimanjaro, or she may speak in the quiet of meditation, or the lonely silence of a long road trip, or she may even whisper to you in the shower; but we all receive that message we most need to hear, if we allow it to be heard over the noise of our own will and self-interest.

For me, the empress is my sauti ya ndani, my inner voice. How this voice became the empress? I will tell you…

***

In 1982, Sea Biscuit won the Triple Crown, Chariots of Fire was the Academy Award winning movie, Cats debuted on Broadway, and a pop music group called Toto wrote a song that made it to the top of the charts for several weeks. The song was Africa.

I was twenty-four years old and in love with that song. It took years for