It is a false equivalency to deduce a giddy mountaintop based on how one feels on the summit. A mountain can’t be giddy.

I am giddy.

I am on the summit.

The summit is, therefore, giddy.

No, no, no. That’s silly, the summit was the summit, and I simply stood there. But there was something about that place, a lack of oxygen maybe.

A trio of purple butterflies zipped past the summit block, up and over the sharp ridge as if the 11,000-foot crest was no more than a low-strung picket fence separating three rambunctious kids from an ice cream truck on a hot summer day. Giddy is the summit—a combination of hypoxia and gratitude, of accomplishment, and sheer unblemished grandeur.

So vast is the Sierra that as I gazed south I couldn’t help but feel lepidopteron—small, yet very much alive. Winged. Spastic.