An old friend of mine and his staggeringly talented collective released a new film recently with a tremendous collaboration of athletes, adventurers, and photographers, titled Into the Mind. It's a breathtaking meditation on what it is that drives humans to experience that ultimate edge of adventure, the thin and wavering line between glory and death. Full of achingly beautiful scenery, feats of athleticism and grace that defy description, and set to an incredible score, it's an absolute triumph of a film. I have angst about plopping down $1.29 for a song on itunes, but the day it was released, I gleefully threw down the $9.99 for the film.
It's a strange experience to watch a film like this, but even more so as a mother. Up until the birth of my son in 2003, my life was defined by adventure and exploration. At the height of my climbing ambitions, I was part of a group of women formulating plans to climb Ama Dablam, even though that never came to fruition. I've expeditioned at the roof of the world over 19,000 ft in the Himalaya, climbed numerous high alpine routes in the Western US, been pinned on a glacier in an epic snowstorm in Patagonia... I've been THAT smiling woman, the one with the high-altitude tan and tangled sun-bleached hair in pictures, grinning as wide as the sky, raising a victorious bloody-knuckled fist into the air. There was a point in my twenties when I had reached a level where it was time to take my adventures seriously and run with incredible athletes like my friend Jimmy (one of the "Into the Mind" collaborators), gain further sponsorship, and go the distance... or not.
I ended up taking a very different direction when I fell in love with my son's dad. Where a few of my cohorts turned right, I went left. Nothing will slow your roll towards alpine glory like the realization that if you continue on that path, you won't see your love for 6 weeks at a time, and that feels far more horrible than gasping for breath in thinned air, because that love becomes the oxygen to your 26-year-old self, and even worse... you may not come back. The list of friends and climbing acquaintances that have died in the mountains is a long one, and I shudder every time I hear of another death far afield. I sometimes picture a group of us standing almost 2 decades ago shoulder to shoulder in a circle, and then I see that same picture now, and the sparsity is startling. I will tell you that they died doing what they loved, that their deaths were akin to taking flight, but inside I'm questioning what it all really means, or even what it was for. I spend a large part of my career now walking with death, and while it is many things, I'm not sure it's what my friends ever set out of for, seeking some sort of glory in the finality. No one climbs to die, but there is a potent draw to edge closer in the dance, to taste and touch the very edge of the void that literally and figuratively is with you with every crampon step, every swing of the axe, every steep turn.
After a stint in the Himalayas, I found myself unemployed, in love, and then island bound for the remainder of my twenties. There were the occasional shorter trips, but nothing touching that far edge of exploration and reason, just longing for more. I worked a variety of jobs, and built a life with my then-husband. We dreamed of starting an adventure company in Nepal, of travels, climbs, and odesseys, but the reality was making a living on that small island and figuring out who we were in this new life. Just when I thought I had it figured out, something entirely unexpected happened-- pirate fetus boarded the mothership, and 10 months later, I embarked on what has been the most incredible, terrifying, joyous, grand adventure of my life.
The moment I held my son for the first time, everything I thought I knew dissolved. What blossomed was a love like I'd never even imagined, a feeling a thousand times more powerful than standing on a high pass between Nepal and Tibet. Other things changed, too, things I never would have expected. My ambition for "adventure achievement", if you will, took a new form. The glory was no longer in being one of the few to climb something new or difficult, it was simply in the act itself. I didn't want to bloody my knuckles trying to climb 5.12. I became content-- euphoric even-- to cruise a 5.6, to feel the simple joy of muscle and tendon moving over rock. I would read about a friend's first ascent of some Karakoram peak, all while nursing my baby. I couldn't help but wonder at the staggering duality of the lives we were living.
Life evolved again, but this time, it was survival, not adventure. By all accounts Zane's dad and I had a "good" divorce. There were moments in my high-octance climbing days that I was truly terrified, and none approached the new world, the utter consumption that is a marriage crumbling. Maybe it's an avalanche. You think you can ski the line, run it out, a little worse for the wear, a little frightened, but okay. The surprise is in thinking you're in a steady gentle slough, and then it's a wall of concrete, and you're fighting for breath, for movement, and for hope. You are survivors, skis broken, hopes shattered, disheveled and unsure, but somehow-- you have to start back up the mountain.
The "mountain" has been good to me. Always full of lessons, challenging, achingly beautiful, and never ending. In another unexpected turn, I find myself on an adventure of family and motherhood far vaster than I ever could have imagine. Like an experienced mountaineer, I've learned so much from the tragedy of the past.
There's a tenacity in me that I suspect I share with my friends on the likes of Nanga Parbat, albeit in radically different forms. Mine is the sheer will of choosing joy when the road is tumultuous, of consciously cultivating each day and appreciating the small victories. There's the joyous fierceness of watching my step-daughter figure out multiplication after weeks of tears and frustration, of hearing her brag to her father how smart she is. I get the bloody-knuckled victory of watching my sweet boy skillfully confront a schoolyard bully with kindness and an emotional depth far beyond his years. Instead of a bomber cam into a splitter granite crack, I have the warm tight squeeze of my youngest step-son's hand as he jets into his classroom, an inherent gesture of love and fortitude. I don't get to watch the sunlight break on a 6000 meter glacier, but the glow that alights over my step-son's face as he ever-so-furtively alludes to his first crush-- that, that is magic. These beautiful little people, watching them kick the steps into their own ascent, helpless at times as they fall, and marveling at the resilience as they stand back up, shake it off, and climb on. At night, there is no tent, no shivering under an icy still moon awaiting the 2AM start, but there is the sweet cadence of my husband's breath as he drifts off to sleep, as hushed and reverent as the rhythmic turn of skis. These are the moments of grace and triumph that I never could have imagined at 19,000ft, that I never saw in those pictures of the wild-haired girl on top of the world.
Funny, I started writing this blog post with every intention of painting the picture of watching "Into the Mind" with my husband and children. Their gasping amazement when I told them that yes, I had climbed mountains just like that, and the looks exchanged between my husband and I of "yes, we once were", the knowing that he, too, could feel the curve of the ice-axe in his hand as we watched the climbers on-screen. Our kids watched the film in awe and astonishment. In a truly chilling moment, they all, to a kid, said "I want to do something like that some day", and I knew on a cellular level the terror and angst my mother and father must have felt in my blooming and growing, in the absolute wild uncertainty of life. Finishing this post, something different has emerged.
Our adventuring days are far from over, but we will never be featured in a big-screen ski flick. We'll be the harried couple on the local hill with the 4 kids alternately bickering, laughing, and hucking themselves off home-made jumps. You may have seen us at Smith Rocks, our monkey children on top rope, shouting wild encouragement, high-fiving each other at how "rad" they all were. We didn't climb a vertical inch that day-- it was about passing the torch of experience, of tasting the sheer joy of feeling your body and mind work together to scale rock-- but we were the parents sneaking a shared "victory" beer behind the minivan while they all climbed into their respective booster seats, everyone intact, smiling, and stoked. Some day, you might see us in retirement, all our dog-eared mountain and ocean toys packed into a 4WD explorer van, planning the next adventure, sending postcards to our children and their children. I might not be hang-dogging a 12b, but I'll for damn sure be climbing, ascending, celebrating.
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