How do you keep going?

Stubborn courage. Pluck. Steadfastness. Tenacity. It's what can move us past or up or over or through or around the obstacles we encounter on our journeys. It's what can keep us on our quest's path, as it has done for this month's Quest Maker Glenda Maurice, who made the choice not once but twice to "not to just give over and quit" but to go ahead and accomplish her journey no matter what happened.

Glenda's story sent me back 30 years to Arizona's Gila Wilderness on my 3-week Southwest Outward Bound Course. I'd wanted to do something to stretch beyond my comfort zone. How would I - a sedentary high school English teacher, survive in the wilderness - backpacking, hiking, camping, rock climbing, spending 3 days in solitude with water as my only nourishment and running 10 miles to end the course?

Some of my fellow teachers had laid bets I'd be home before the course ended. There were times when I wasn't so sure they'd lose.

When I immediately fell onto my back, after donning a backpack that weighed half as much as I did.

When I landed smack on my tailbone in the Gila River, making every step an agony and sitting down out of the question.

When I, scared of heights and vehemently opposed to not being in control, rock climbed for two days.

I desperately wanted to be on the sidelines, not hooking my carabiner to a rope and climbing further and further from the ground, trusting someone else to keep me from smashing into the ground. Yet I'd come too far to give up.

In the afternoon of our first day rock climbing, I confronted Devil's Dingle, a climb with an overhang so enormous it hid the top of the cliff from view. I watched as Outward Bounder after Outward Bounder managed to clamber up, out, around and disappeared over the outcropping. Over and over I climbed up. Over and over I fell. Over and over I stood aside to watch as one more person succeed where I had not. I was the last one climbing that day, Devil's Dingle still out of my reach.

Walking back to camp in tears, I refused to yield to Devil's Dingle. The next morning, I was the first one back at the rocks. I wasn't leaving until I'd made it to the top. I'd like to say it happened on my first attempt that morning.

It didn't.

Late in the afternoon of our second and last day of climbing, I finally got past the outcropping and scrambled to the top.

In the years since, whenever I have faced what seems like an insurmountable challenge, I return to the top of Devil's Dingle and remember the deep feeling of confidence that welled up in my heart because I had chosen to "not to just give over and quit." And I remind myself, I can do it again.

However, I didn't face then - nor have I yet faced - the kind of enforced detours Glenda has. I haven't faced the loss of my life's destiny.

Losing her voice changed everything for Glenda - her self image, her very truth. So did losing her mobility. Both times she wondered how to keep going. "Then," as her friend Kathleen Bohn describes it, "came her inspired next move."

Call it stubborn courage, pluck, steadfastness and tenacity: Glenda chose not to yield. She chose to move into the unexpected opportunities that arose from adversity. Now when I encounter an enforced detour and find myself returning to Devil's Dingle in the Gila Wilderness, I'll invite Glenda's resilience along to inspire my own next move.

How do you keep going?

PS. Glenda loves the calla lily. "The calla lily is such an exquisite it holds so much in it when it slowly opens it is a vessel. Plus I adore the way Katherine Hepburn said it." [To hear Ms. Hepburn's speak of calla lilies as Terry Randall in Stage Door, click here.]