In the end, my trips will be the stories that I have told. This is true even if I am the only one that I tell those stories to.

In the end, my life will be the stories that I have told. This is true even if I am the only one that I tell most of those stories to.

On trips, I live stories, and then I tell stories. And sometimes I tell myself stories (about what could be) in order to then live them.

In our day-to-day lives we are constantly telling ourselves stories. We make sense of our lives by the stories we tell. Stories are inherently sense-making (if they are told well). A story has a beginning, an ending, and a “sensible” timeline that describes what happened and how the events are related. Stories describe linkages, connections. Stories connect me.

There is a story in this picture:

There are stories in the distant views. Stories to be followed, meaning to be found.

— Steve Musson

And so Kipling tells me:

“Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the ranges — Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!”

— Rudyard Kipling, “The Explorer”

And so I go into the mountains for the stories they hold.

And I come back from the mountains with meaning.