pounding.

there are moments when you're most certainly more alive than others.

be it those times that you're lost in the growing pound of your heart, the faint taste of salt seasoning your thirsty lips, and your weary lungs drawing in the morning air that keeps the cycle going, while your legs are screaming as you force them to continue along the winding country road, 13.1 miles and counting.

or when you're rolling on to your back, your breath buried somewhere deep in your chest from the impact, your hands grazing the newly exposed flesh of your chin and chest brought to life by your own lapse of carelessness. remembering the moment of reveling in the freedom of the cool summer air kissing your face changing abruptly to a face full of earth and a body full of  shock and a mountain bike full of devastation.

or maybe those times that you're standing on the edge of certain death, toeing the edge of a three hundred and nine foot waterfall, tasting the almighty fall's mist that's hitting your tongue, swallowing the warm air around you.

or when you're climbing/crawling/dragging yourself up mt. sopris stone by stone, enveloped by clouds and trying to ignore the adrenaline threatening to overtake you as you peer left and right to immediate drop offs that whisper of your potential death.

these are the times when you become aware of what should be a self-evident truth, though one we so often forget - the truth of your very existence, the reality of you and your breath and heartbeat and sweat and blood and what we westerners have labeled your 'soul.' it's these experiences that shake you from the insidious complacency always threatening to overtake you. though it may mean anxiety, though it may mean ache, at least you know this one truth:

you're alive.