Hours have been spent pouring over maps, staring at pixels of a digital image that is supposed to represent cliffs, campsites and mountains. This place is half a world away, but i've never been more sick of looking at a place i've never been.
In 10 hours this 80 page document that details our climbing trip to France is due. Itinerary's, meal plans, budgets, safety plans and endless descriptions of the route are spread across the library table. The room is empty except for Drew and I, but somehow we have never felt so cluttered and confined. The pieces of paper are falling off the desk (no desk seems big enough to hold them all) and no matter how many times I number pages we can never find the ones that are needed.
This is trip planning.
Later that night after bringing down the beast that was our trip report I started my walk home. Exhausted, brain hurting and wondering why I took this on in the first place, I wondered about where this love of a vertical life came from. What sane people spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of planning to camp out in a foreign country so that they can climb up cliff faces?
Staring at the bathroom mirror, brushing my teeth I thought about how climbing is an inexplicable addiction. Endless articles have been written about how mountaineers swear off climbing after close calls or even watching their friends die on the mountain. How sport climbers can shatter ankles & break legs but will hike back to the climb site so they can try again before even fully recovering.
I remember speaking to a climbing guide once and the subject of love & relationships came up. He immediately laughed and said that for a climber (and guide especially) "Our chapstick outlasts our relationships"
I still consider myself very new to this community of climbers but never have I have found such a collection of enigma's.
All I can determine for now is that if this sport really is a lifelong addiction, then I'm already too far gone.
Here we come France.
OS
No comments:
Post a Comment