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As the cleansing tonic of pure starlight showers down from above I should relate that we all came here for different reasons.
Some came because they possessed a sense of adventure that unmercifully led them from one goal to another, each new challenge a special test of the physical and the mental, of the true spirit, and once conquered there was little time for celebration as the next goal revealed itself as both obvious and demanding of their full attention. Others arrived at our snowy flank as a result of the need to escape someplace else, as an opportunity to go far away and fast, to remove one’s self from a place both unpleasant and apparently cursed with little hope. And naturally some came here motivated solely by greed, by wild ego, perhaps out of sheer desperation.
So some came here running towards it, others came running away from someplace else, yet we all now mingle sharing this special bond – together in our folly, alone in our eternal grief.
And why did I venture here you ask? Oh, a little of all of the above I suppose, plus a dash of boredom and because, well my friend, after all, it is there.
Do you ever wonder what it’s like up here when the winds scream across exposed rock and whipped ice and no man would even dare contemplate an ascent? Of all those endless howling days filled with a battering chaos which stands apart from the brief window of time in late spring when nature relents just long enough to allow for the possibility of human expedition? In some minds the summit may as well not exist at such times, that small icy patch at the top of the world being so utterly inhospitable and devoid of life that it is rendered somehow entirely meaningless, yet it most certainly does exist, even right now as you hear these very words resonating inside your mind it exists, it is just as real as the very voice inside your head that insists it must be so! Right now, at this very moment, the summit exists. It is there – it is there! And if you were there right now, somehow caught in the mad maelstrom, you might quickly come to believe that it is the rest of the world that does not exist. Close your eyes and envision it – hear it, feel it, experience it – and please hang on for your life.
Indeed, hell may be that final destination that boils with fire and damned souls but this place may be hell too, with instantaneous freezing and the flossing wind, the blinding razor snow, where the idea of finding a peaceful resting spot is as farfetched as a friendly game of croquet on the moon. And yet so many think of the summit as heaven too, the highest shiny point on earth, where snow angels await open-winged and eager to clutch to their warm bosoms those precious few triumphant dreamers.
But for me and some others it has become a kind of purgatory, a deep slippery crevasse that we can’t seem to crawl out of, and although I sense that I can’t stay here forever and I know I should not want to, somehow I can’t yet find the will to just dig in and pull myself up and out and then beyond. There are indeed many who have moved on, they finally let go, having floated off into the blinding light of their next adventure, and there was something in their eyes that said whatever happens, hey, it is okay.
But still I find that particular sentiment hard to accept. I fret and cling. Alone among the scattered dead I have found no peace – it is not yet okay.
Death. The end. But, as you can clearly see by my continued dissertation, it is not truly the end. Perhaps it should be. And I give you this one hopeful thing – no matter where you are or how old you may be or even the specifics regarding the natural or unnatural undoing of your very existence, the last mortal thought you experience will be that of your first memory, of being a small child caught within a loving embrace, comforted, gazing up into those big beautiful eyes and making the tender connection. Mother. So help me God the last vision will always be that of your own sweet mother comforting you and for that one small blessing we should rejoice!
Unfortunately it takes our own death to escape the blind clutch of this insecure world, to step back and see through its deceptions, to escape the pull of its fleeting physical charms, and like a good spring thaw last autumn’s blunders are revealed leaving our ugly intentions exposed. Only in that moment just before death do we come to understand the wonderful bounty of a simple life lived in full appreciation. That seemingly endless collection of the days of our lives have a way of piling up and turning into the brief flicker of a lifetime just as summer leaves unbelievably, incredibly, one day finally surrender to the mythological change and wilt into brown crumples finding their way back down to the patient dirt. And late on an October afternoon an old woman rakes those leaves into one more pile to burn as a murder of crows look on.
Be kind to that woman – she may be somebody’s mother and was most definitely once some mother’s sweet child.
You probably know that there are bodies scattered across this place. Physical remains left behind due to the impractical nature of any attempt at recovery. That my own body may or may not be one of them is really of no consequence to these proceedings. Did I perish on the way up or on the way back down? Did I ever even summit? It really makes little difference at all. The truth is I might have been hit by a whacked-out rickshaw driver just outside the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu as I absent-mindedly stepped off a curb while adjusting my brand new back-pack before the expedition ever even began. Or perhaps I might have dropped dead of a heart attack as I carried groceries from the corner market back home a month or so upon my return. Regardless of the specifics surrounding my own demise it is a fact that my spirit is tethered to this mountaintop, my own personal reckoning tied somehow to this lonely place.
We can of course speak of courage when we talk about the men and the women who have come here with but one purpose in mind. Yet what other human traits may we speak of? Well, there’s determination. Trust. Even compassion, because a true mountaineer understands the depths of each other’s sacrifices and commitment and thus a kind of mutual empathy naturally ensues. But what of the other end of the spectrum, what of selfish intention, the desire to ignore the emotional tug of those loved ones left back at home while attacking the mountain with a damn-it-all reckless attitude, squeezing yet one more ego up and through the Hillary Step in an all-out climatic blitz to the top? And what of the possible misuse of vast resources in the pursuit, of the application of great sums of money and time when all around the planet hungry stomachs beg for a scrap? What of taking at the expense of giving?
At the end of life and the advent of reflection such troublesome musings await us all.
I recall hearing about the experience of an Apollo astronaut orbiting the moon all alone inside the module while his two compatriots plodded and scooped down below. Although originally bitter with disappointment regarding his designated role, for this lonely orbiter those solo hours became an incredible spiritual experience, with the earth slowly disappearing behind the moon while out the opposite window only the vast and deep sea of space-time bobbed and swayed. And just when his worried mind struggled with the crazy thought that it may not be there anymore, that the world had vanished or had never even really existed, that maybe it had all only been a beautiful dream, miraculously our precious earth reappeared again so blue and white and full of life, the heartbeat of the cosmos.
It was still there.
All he could do was weep at the simple magnificence of it.
All of our time and lives contained within the square of that module window, capable of being blotted out with a man’s fist, and it was both heartbreaking and unsettling.
It was beautiful.
I suppose that on some lesser level the same holds true for those of us who inhabit this very spot, this omniscient perch from the top of the world, and the sadness felt from the ignorance of Man’s cruelty perpetrated upon Itself can be at times overwhelming. Up here where the air is thin the burden can be so heavy. But there can be no looking away. And with no resolution in sight it makes it all the more hard to contemplate ever letting go.
Somehow I lost my way. I’m not sure when, I’m not sure where, but the confident arc of my own life somehow got bent, a gravitational pull that yanked me out of a steady easy orbit. Yes, some of my world was wrongly taken away from me but what remained I squandered and then eventually purged with one final wiping of anxious hands. Abandoned and then forgotten I opted to flee, to keep moving, and was never particularly concerned with the wisdom of the direction. I migrated toward the higher altitudes where only a fool would ever attempt to track me down, to live among the hermits of the high places and to be fully cloaked by the thick swirling mists and the cruelty of its unforgiving environment, to become just another goggled whiskered face stuffed inside a long wool scarf.
And then one day I saw it and I believe deep down in my heart it saw me too. It surely did. A mere man perhaps, a weathered bag of flesh and bone but captained by eyes that burned and a soul that yearned, a man now inspired by the beating of a determined heart that begged to begin this final ascent, to reach the secret place where the snow angels await.
So I picked my way through the khumbu ice fall and along the western cwm. I addressed the Llotse face and advanced to the balcony. I was smitten by the smiles of the sherpas and the peaceful calm of each camp. Surprisingly sleep came easy and each day broke as a crystal revelation.
But there is no real celebration to be enjoyed at the summit. Only a moment of quiet reflection if the oxygen-deprived mind can fathom it. This is it. Wow. So which way is down? Oh, I suppose every way is down. How quickly the attention turns from triumph to the ominous task of a safe descent. The wild ego of “I did it” morphs into the outright fear of “I’ve really done it now.”
You should really take a moment to think about it. The majestic riddle of time, our world’s history, millions of cascading years toppling atop one another as the earth shifts and turns itself inside out, the Himalayas pushing up, the sheer rock-busting evolution. The wars and the plagues, the starving and the doomed – the countless souls that came before us that hoped and wept and loved. And then one day a man at long last reached this summit. But was he truly the first? Does it really matter? The truth is real, it exists, it’s out there, up there, but it can never be known by Man. Only what he experiences with his very own senses can He truly know, only what he feels in his soul can He truly worship. Everything else is conjecture, speculation, someone else’s conceit.
People are suffering.
The first man to summit is dead.
For some time now these have been my truths.
Night time passes and another cold day dawns. In the distance I detect your hesitant approach. Please, we can open our tight circle and allow you inside whether you’re just passing through or plan on staying a while. There’s always room for one more, we tangled spirits not requiring much elbow room, and over time we’ve gravitated toward a non-judgmental open inclusivity. So think about it. You’ll soon find that from this lofty perch you can easily look back down upon the world and have plenty of time to ponder the questions. Questions like - was it all worth it? Was it a waste? And why must I leave it now? You will clear your throat and then look higher towards the heavens as you must ask the final question, the question that forever looms because, after all, it is there.
Oh my God, is there anything more I could have done?
