One life. Live it.

By Jon Show — At 19,341 feet in the mountains of Tanzania, the air thins out in the early morning darkness. There is nothing to do but put one foot in front of the other, take a deep breath and repeat.

That’s where a Cornelius teen went this summer to conquer her first major summit, and maybe, just maybe, learn a little more about herself.

Kate Borkowski, a 19-year-old Cornelius native and Appalachian State University sophomore, spent seven days climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, reaching the roof of Africa on July 15.

But for Kate, now sitting at the Caribou Coffee in Birkdale with an iced latte in one hand and her journal in the other, perhaps the summit was never really the point.

Over almost 40 miles of trail, depleted oxygen and long silences, maybe it was about self-reflection, and about where a coming-of-age person fits in a much bigger world.

A Roommate and a Plan

Kate, in her words, “won the roommate lottery” when she was paired with River Savante their freshman year of college. The two quickly became best friends, spending their first year hiking and rock climbing around the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The idea to summit Kilimanjaro came together last Christmas. River was an experienced mountaineer, but Kate had never climbed anything close to 19,000 feet, so she spent months training with weighted-backpack hikes and step-up drills to tackle a mountain built for long strides.

She also had to pay for the trip, so she trekked four round-trip miles to work the cash register at Harris Teeter in Boone through the spring, then at the Peninsula Yacht Club through early summer, banking every shift she could.

It was a way to fund the mindset she lives by, “If not me, then who?” And another she has inked on her left arm, underneath an outline of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming.

“One life. Live it.”

Up the Mountain

Kate and her group climbed the Machame route — one of Kilimanjaro’s more demanding paths — a roughly 40-mile round trip that crosses several climate zones.

When they arrived and got their first close-up look at the volcano, Kate said the scale of it hit her differently than expected.

“That’s 19,000 feet and Boone is 3,000 feet,” she said. “It was really intimidating.”

Adventurers must climb Kilimanjaro with a licensed guide company — permits are mandatory — so the eight-person group was supported by guides and porters.

Day one was a muddy, six-hour climb through dense, wet jungle: just 5.8 miles, but enough to signal what was ahead.

Guides repeated the mantra, “pole pole,” Swahili for “slowly, slowly,” to keep the group’s pace controlled enough for the hikers’ bodies to acclimatize. They regularly checked everyone’s oxygen levels to test for altitude sickness.

A morning ritual became one of the trip’s running jokes. Porters would call, “Breakfast ready,” and by the time the hikers pried themselves out of cold sleeping bags and made it to the mess tent, the call had usually changed to “Breakfast cold.”

“You can only get dressed so fast when you’re in a freezing tent,” said Kate.

The second night, the guides and porters led an impromptu celebration, dancing in the cold and wind to keep the group’s morale up heading into the harder days ahead.

Day three was the first real test of altitude: an acclimatization hike to Lava Tower, at about 15,000 feet. Day four brought a scramble up “the kissing wall,” a section where climbers must lean into the rock face to keep their balance, followed by an arduous push up to base camp on day five.

Summit Night

On day six, the summit push started around midnight and took roughly seven hours in the dark and cold.

Temperatures dropped by 20 degrees. Climbers were told not to eat during the push — the body struggles to digest food at that altitude — and had to keep water sacks from freezing by blowing air back down the tube after each sip.

Their eyelashes froze on their sun- and wind-burned faces. The whipping wind was unbearable at times. But they pushed ahead in the darkness, one foot in front of the other while trying to stay awake.

The group reached Stella Point, on the crater rim of the volcano, as the sun broke over the mountains, and at 7:18 a.m. they stood atop Uhuru Peak, the mountain’s true summit at 19,341 feet.

Coming Down

The fast, grueling descent over volcanic rock to base camp took about two hours. Waiting for Kate and River was one of the porters, who set out chairs facing the mountain and poured them mango juice as they gazed upon the peak they’d just stood atop.

Two days later, before their flight home, they visited children in a nearby village and delivered supplies purchased with funds raised from the expedition.

Kate kept a journal throughout the trip, and at the airport she wrote about the things she discovered on the mountain.

“I learned how important it was to slow down, breathe, see, feel and hear, and find peace in the slow presence. The art of noticing. Life is beautiful and unfolds in so many ways, often taking time, lots of time. If you don’t stop and be patient in the slowness, you might speed right past the whole point.”

Coffee Talk

Back at Caribou, Kate puts down her journal and the pictures on her phone. It’s not easy to tell the story of a life-changing experience in a short amount of time, but life must go on.

What’s next? Well, summer is over and it’s back to Boone to pursue a degree in global sustainability.

But what else? She fumbles, like any 19-year-old. Maybe an adventure to Europe or Africa next summer. Maybe a career in humanitarian work or sustainability.

Even at a young age, she knows the only certainty in life is that no one knows what’s next.

She pauses and turns to the final entry in her journal.

“Who would I be if I had everything figured out at 19 years old?” she reads. “Surely not a continuous learner with a wide open mind and a big heart to spread love.”

And with that, she smiles, content with what she learned on the journey, and treks off to her next adventure.