Life Wish

 

February 7, 2022

 

Greetings from the peak,

 Yesterday I went for a run in the winter, a twenty-mile loop in our arctic mitten.  I left home in the dark, the sky was scoured clean by pitiless winds, and only a few stars braved the blackness.  The world outside my balaclava was covered with snow, held in place by brittle cold.

 The first miles gave me no reason to be optimistic, which I knew better than to pay attention to.  Knowing better doesn’t always matter.

 By the time it was light I was in the farmlands, where the wind sliced over the open places and erased any register on Fahrenheit.  It reshaped the snow, sending sensual shapes over the icy roads.  The condensation on my mask froze solid, and my legs went numb from the relentless cold.

 I stumbled across the snow, slipping on the ice underneath, moving so slowly it might not record as running.  I’ll admit, if I hadn’t been ten miles from my front door, I would have given in to the temptation of a warm fire and steaming cup of coffee.  I was tired, the week’s miles stacking up in my legs, now two leaden trunks under me.

 I was fumbling with my water, frozen slush in the bottle, when the sun finally crested the horizon.  In that moment the light painted the white canvas with a brilliant gold.  The sun found  a range of tiny peaks in the snow thrown off the road, a tiny replica of giant mountain cousins around the world.  When I just focused on them, I could have been watching the sunrise on the Himalayas; the stark white, the blue shadow, all burnished in the warm light that seemed to only exist on the peaks.  Then I remembered something. 

 A few years ago, I watched a documentary about a group of alpinists, mountain climbers, a small cadre of world caliber adventurers who decided to summit Meru in India.  It’s not the highest mountain to climb, or the most famous, but it has been nearly impossible to accomplish.  The story is compelling on its own, but the foundation of it tells something else.

 Conrad Anker led this team, a world-renowned climber who has summited Everest three times.  He has climbed some of the most challenging peaks in the world, and for every ascent, there are at least as many failures, some of which nearly cost him his life.   Most of Anker’s friends have died by falling off mountains, which led someone to wonder if they all have a death wish.

 “It is not a death wish; it is a life wish.” he said.

 I wrote it down when I heard it, and seeing it later by itself on the page, it seems a little dramatic.  Except I know the context.  The answer was to say: we have found the edge of human endurance, the most demanding challenge to our abilities, we have tapped the essence of our human experience.  When we are there, we are fully alive.  Since we have been there, we have to go back again, not to tempt death, but to call to life.

 My adventures never take me to anywhere close to death; at worst, maybe some sore legs and a numb face.  I don’t live that life, not this time around.  Once in a while, though, I realize how any of us, even plodding runners, can scrape away the dullness.  We find ourselves touching what is in us, sometimes undiscovered, and it grabs us by both wrists and demands we pay attention: it is a life wish.

 Occasionally people will hear about my running and shake their heads, wondering what I am running from, or if there are some masochistic tendencies at work, or perhaps I am trying to prove something, or maybe some other experience from the template of their own life.  But in truth, it’s because that’s one of the places I find my life wish.

 Conrad Anker said: “Meru is the culmination of all I’ve done and all I’ve wanted to do.”  It took three tries, monumental efforts, which nearly killed a good friend.  And they went up because that’s where life is.  And he says this: “The summit is what drives us, but it’s the climb that matters.”

 In ten weeks, I will run Boston.  These long runs are building blocks for that challenge, but I need to remember that they are also part of the climb.  It’s the climb that matters.  The climb, the miles, the hours of practicing the violin, or raising a child, or teaching or hacking at words to make them say what you want heard.  It is the climb, that’s where the life wish is.

 We have to invest ourselves to find it, we have to reach past the easy, the expected, or the status quo.  That’s why sometimes it looks dangerous or reckless or crazy, or worse, like a death wish.  So, we do it, because from the moment we are created, and every time after when we are shown where it is, we wish for life.

  

Hope this finds you wishing,

 

David