Twenty Three
Twenty Three seems to be of some significance to me of late. When I turned 23 years old a few very important things happened to me. I’d just got married and have never looked back, I got my Bachelors Degree and graduated. It was also when I first started to think about moving to Canada from Ireland at some point in the future. During my time at College I had access to a free Gym daily and would spend time working out and running on treadmills during my time between labwork and lectures. I weighed ~170lbs but a lot of that was muscle weight. When I left College, got a job and settled into married life I started to gain more weight. The problem was that I had increased my caloric intake over time because I had been building muscle mass. I suddenly stopped working out when I graduated as it was no longer free or convenient to go to a gym but my body was now used to the larger diet. I wouldn’t say I ballooned over night but over the course of 3 years I believe I gained over 110lbs. The last time I weighed myself I was ~270lbs and then I just stopped weighing myself for months but I know I got a fair bit heavier. I’m going to conservatively estimate I reached 280lbs but it was probably more. I want to be clear at this point that my weight didn’t bother me much, and I don’t look back now and think how awful it was that I let myself get that heavy. I believe that the body is a machine used to achieve the aspirations of the mind. If your aspirations don’t require you to have the body of a gorilla or a cheetah then you shouldn’t waste time trying to make it look and respond like that. It’s like buying a Ferrari just to drive to the Supermarket. My interests back then resided in mostly sedentary endeavors. I loved to consume visual media; Games, Movies, TV. My job was sedentary but I enjoyed it. I worked on and with computers, in my spare time I would build, “tweak” and “overclock” computers and then play PC games on them. We like to laud the thin, fast and strong and chastise the fat, slow and weak and this is unfair. A person should be viewed based on how happy they are, regardless of form or means, and back then I was happy. Then the Financial crisis in 2008 happened. It didn’t drastically affect me, but it soured the milk enough that living in Ireland lost its...
Mt. Rainier
The highest point I had been too before I attempted Mt.Rainier was the summit of Wedge Mountain at 2892m’s, in Garibaldi Provincial Park, B.C., and I remember feeling a keen sense of achievement at having scaled that height. Just knowing that it was the highest summit in the park made it feel like more of an achievement for me, like I had conquered some invisible force, a force that as you reach higher becomes more and more oppressive. Rainier, which stands at just over 4300m’s (14,411ft), was now going to be the tallest mountain I had climbed to date. Despite the many mountaineering trips I had taken in the last few years, the trip to Mt. Rainier felt like something outside of the scope of anything I had known. This was a big mountain and it felt like it deserved a deep respect of it’s own. “….the most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings.” - John Muir As I stood at the Paradise visitor centre looking up at Mt. Rainier on that hot August afternoon, I couldn’t help thinking of how close it seemed. It looked no farther than a stone’s throw away. Rainier just stood there in all it’s glory, streaks of grey rock showing through the late summer snow, deep crevasses gouging the glacier that tumbled down within my view, brightly colored wild flowers dotting the grassy meadows in the foreground. Standing alone in all it’s immensity with no concern for the tiny creatures standing below looking on in awe; standing there thinking that we could somehow conquer this mass of stone and ice. But as usual the mountain doesn’t care that we are there or that we care to struggle and gasp our way up it’s flanks. It is just there, and it was in my own mind that I felt this sense of the mountains willingness to accept us, allowing us to pass and giving me the opportunity to test myself. I remember looking at the winding path that made it’s way in the direction of Camp Muir, comparing it to previous hikes in my mind, thinking it wouldn’t take long at all. The mountain after all looked so close, like a super-imposed image on a screen, but no matter how long I walked that image remained the same distance away. My sense of scale was becoming more and more obscured. At that moment I remembered a quote I had seen in an outdoor store earlier that year regarding the Himalaya, it said “everything is so much bigger and so much farther away than you can imagine”....
Video: Shattered
I remember watching this short film last year (shortly before Ice Climbing myself for the first time) and it really touched a cord. Not only is the cinematography outstanding but the moral of it is also. It deals with the question everyone who takes risks in the Mountains asks themselves. Why? Why do it? Anyway, enjoy it. I know I do. As Ice Climbing season comes back around again I was reminded of it so I thought I’d share...
Sometimes I forget…
I forget that I’m mortal. Ah, that macabre topic, Mortality. Oh how we like to ignore it. Posts like this usually stop being read around this point. We were all happily wrapped in our cocoon of distraction on the internet and in general and I had to remind us of the inevitable, that hourglass over our shoulders that never stops trickling sand. I like to read about Entrepreneurs and those that are driven by a singular passion. They all share one important way of thinking in common, they are all acutely aware of their own mortality. But they don’t view it as a negative, they channel that knowledge into fueling their passion to live well and follow their dreams. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. - Steve Jobs Procrastination and laziness are symptoms of forgetting we are mortal. Sometimes I waste a day doing nothing. The weather is bad and my energy is low and I’ve lost focus, like today actually. I spend time locked in a mental ouroboros of questions like: “what does it mean”, “where am I going”… the usual ones we all ask ourselves at some point. Sunrise comes and sunset goes and the day is gone. At the end of each day, before I sleep, I try to take stock of how I’ve grown. Even if that growth is mental alone or purely physical then I will sleep well. As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. - Henry David Thoreau But just wasting time to pass the day will ultimately bother me. I do it, I’m human, I need to decompress sometime. I also see the benefit of taking some time for personal reflection. But it’s important to not let oneself get into a habit of it. Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. - Mahatma Gandhi I read once that feeling a nagging sense of dissatisfaction is a good thing, it’s what drives change in our lives. If we were satisfied and comfortable, why would we ever change or grow? So I embrace that feeling of dissatisfaction. I am mortal. The knowledge of it pushes me out of bed earlier in the morning to experience more of the day. When I sit idle watching fiction on TV that teaches me very little I feel a visceral unease to move. I...
That Moment in the Mountains
Spending time in the wide open spaces of the mountain valleys and even in the more enclosed spaces, when I feel myself right up against the rock, I feel this sense of “this is the only place that I belong”. Being in the mountains, pushing my body to its physical limit, leaves no room for any other thoughts in my mind than just putting one foot in front of the other. I love this detachment from my “real” life, this detachment from the thoughts that usually cause me unneeded and undesirable stress in the “real” world. The petty thoughts that don’t really matter but seem to crowd my mind at work or at home, now have no meaning out here. My mind is free and clear to think about staying warm, safe and attaining that desired summit. My physical needs are all that matter now. It’s this stripping down to basic needs that appeals to me. We have become so used to being distracted; to having our senses dulled that we sometimes forget how alive we can feel by feeling the bitter cold on our face, by feeling the rush of fear that forces us to focus on holding on tighter or by feeling a thirst that causes to crave water so bad that you can literally smell water vapor in the air. It’s these raw and very real needs that make me remember how simple life actually is. In these wild places I feel so small. I feel this comforting sense of insignificance, like very little of what I do here out here will actually change this wild place. The rivers will continue to carve the land and the mountains will remain still and cold. I am calm. There are no requirements out here, the wild places demand nothing of me....
