Nature presents its fair share of challenges and obstacles, but so far, the human imagination has been up to the task. We always seem to find a way up and over, through, under or around most things the natural world throws our way. Hiking the Incan trail in Bolivia I was struck how often stairs are the solution to the challenge. When the pitch is too steep, the footing too uncertain, stairs provide a more sure way to move forward. In Mesa Verde the stairs are rickety wooden ladders, on the Yosemite Mist Trail the stairs are carefully placed stones, in Big Sur logs and backfilled earth ease the ascent from low to high. On a larger scale, the Grand Escalante Staircase reveals the progression of wind, water and time as the benches and cliffs step progressively higher from south to north. Stairs come straight, spiral, helical, switchback, or alternating tread, each set an invitation to something we can’t experience from where we are currently standing.

Mehmet Murat ildan says “We are all on the stairs, my friend; some of us are going down, some of us going up!” Depends on the day – right? I quit running bleachers a long time ago, but I still remember some of the things stairs taught me. First, – don’t overthink it. They’re just stairs. Pay attention to where you put your feet, but also remember to look up. Keep the goal in sight – even if it’s just the next step. Don’t compare yourself with the person ahead or behind, and especially with the person that just blew by you. It’s not a competition unless you decide it is. There are many things we have to compete for, but being outside isn’t one of them. Sometimes taking the stairs is just a walk. Remember to breathe. Keep going. Enjoy the view. Someone deliberately put those stairs there for you and me to climb. Take the first step, then the next, and see where it leads.

---

Additional Reading

12 Amazing Staircases Around the World

---

Fun Facts

• The world’s most extreme staircase has 11,674 steps climbing 7,753 feet up the face of Mt. Niesen in Switzerland.

• Some modern sources credit a Swiss architect named Werner Bösendörfer for the first attempts to standardize staircase guidelines in 1948.

• Oldest staircases include: the Mohenjo Daro Staircase in present-day Sindh, Pakistan – between 2600 BCE and 1900 BCE, the ancient Ziggurat of Ur, in present day Iraq – around 2100 BCE, and steps in the Tower of Jericho in present day West Bank, around 8000 BCE.

---

Quotables

“My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness.”

– Michaelangelo

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase …”

– Unknown

“If climbing the stairs is not difficult, you’re probably young.”

– Unknown

“A man’s health can be judged by which he takes two at a time, – stairs or pills.”

– Joan Walsh Anglund

---

Poet’s Corner

Mother to Son

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Stairs – A Toast

By Oliver Herford 

Here’s to the man who invented stairs
And taught our feet to soar!
He was the first who ever burst
Into a second floor.

The world would be downstairs to-day
Had he not found the key;
So let his name go down to fame,
Whatever it may be.

---

 Try This