Worth the Weight?
October 31, 2024 at 08:52AMThis beautiful and intensely thoughtful essay by climber Michael Gardner was first published by Alpinist in Spring, 2024. It is being re-featured to commemorate Gardner, who tragically fell to his death on October 10, 2024. It is hard to read some of Gardner’s thoughts on mountain life in retrospect—they are truly heartfelt.
The weight of it all feels too much. He was lost to the same life that killed my father. This spring, I’d exposed myself repeatedly to fatal risks. And I’d been rewarded with fleeting experiences of interconnectedness. I’d felt the euphoria of a sense of place and purpose: the way the blood rushed back to my fingers as I reminded myself time and time again that I am alive. How the sun crested the ridge, bringing hope and survival, infusing me with the will to step one foot in front of the other. How a smile from a knowing partner reminded me that we were seeking not the end to a journey, but a timeless feeling of harmonic resonance—in which our efforts become one, and all thoughts of any arbitrary goal fade away before the simple experience of the pulse and lifeblood of the mountains.
Now I feel stripped of all that joy. I still feel a connection with those landscapes and those people, but it’s one of the earthly condition—which is to say that everything and everyone changes, and when we pass on, only fleeting memories linger like the ephemeral glow of dusk over a mountain range before all that remains is dark night sky. Like the emerging light of dawn that seems, at first, like a promise of life, before it turns into a threat as rising temperatures dislodge seracs, and debris tumbles down steep mountain walls. All the beauty that I find in the mountains is constantly shifting, and the moments of clarity and purpose seem to shine and fade as quietly, but surely, as each day’s sun.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/10/30/worth-the-weight/
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