This has been the hardest week since I started. The failure of my sponsorship proposal and the death of Walter Nones have really taken a toll on me. I didn’t train as hard as usual and my morale is quite low. This is happening 2 weeks out of my trip to New Zealand and I know I must bounce back. I thought about the journey I have started and like most mountain climbers I have always avoided the thought of dealing with the consequences of alpinism. The constant threat of injury or death plays a huge role in why people climb, the way the climb and why some of them eventually quit. Alpinism often means high risk and loss of life. It is about your friends dying up in the clouds. Sweep away by avalanches or cowered under a volley of stones, perhaps frozen to death alone at the bottom of a deep, dark crevasse. This is about people dying doing what they love and spectators speculating, judging and maybe having the last word. This is about people and the risks they take: the risks they are equal to, the ones they barely get away with, the one that kill them. I personally believe that as climbers we need to accept fear. The mind produce fear, so fear is subject to its control and we need to acquire the difficult yet essential skill of directing fear, harnessing it as a source of energy. Nobody control a situation in the mountains and it’s vanity to imagine one can. Instead we must grow comfortable with giving up control and acting within uncertainty. Climbing itself has no value, and it is only given worth by what each individual is willing to commit to it. For Walter, the mountain was everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment