Rest day and book recommendation
July 5,2004Today my schedule said rest or 30 mins. easy. Since I'd raced on Saturday as well as the weekend before, I decided to take the rest day. Past injuries have taught me that it's not wimpy to rest on such days; it's saving myself for the long run.
So instead of sharing a run, I'll recommend a wonderful book, Joe Simpson's _The Beckoning Silence_. In this book, Simpson reflects on his mountaineering experience, including some close calls, questioning whether he should give up climbing. In the closing chapters, he writes about a particularly harrowing yet much dreamed about and planned-for ascent of Eiger's North Face. It is a compelling account, in which he and his partner find themselves in the midst of very stormy conditions, learning later of the deaths of other climbers on the mountain the same day. Once again, Simpson finds himself both repelled by and attracted to the sport and the mountains.
And as a reader of this book, I also experience both the draw and the fear. Every mistake seems to loom large with consequences--an awareness that even the slightest mis-step can be fatal. Even my very limited experience with rock climbing in an Outward Bound course makes me very aware of just how frightening it would be in such a position. I feel no drive to buy rock climbing equipment and follow the author's footsteps.
Yet the attraction even to the book makes me wonder. I who wrestle with sometimes seemingly insignificant decisions--and then I realize that sometimes those small decisions can be fraught with consequence, whether or not one is suspended on a rockface thousands of feet up. I think of the day that I went with my mother to her last doctor's appointment, how near I came to missing the bus that would have gotten me to her apartment in time to accompany her and my brother to the hospital. The time that I had with her that morning was my last chance to be with her and talk with her, share photos with her...my last chance to give her a hug. What if I'd missed that!
And yet oddly, some mistakes may become blessings in disguise: had I not lost my job, I might not have been as free to be with her that morning or to have time to enjoy lunch with her the day before.
Simpson and his friend encounter a problem with a rucksack getting stuck and their having to free it. His friend tells him they too might have been on the icefield where the others were killed.
All we can do in the face of indecision and fear of consequences is to pray for wisdom and act as best we can. And recognize that to live is to keep making choices, something that keeps demanding courage of us whether we're standing securely on solid ground (or are we ever entirely secure?) or on a mountain with rockfall all around. Simpson's words sum it up eloquently:
"We looked up at the vastness of the Eiger filled with a mixture of exaltation and apprehension about what we were about to do in the morning. To me that is everything mountain climbing is about--the outcome uncertain, the spirit subdued, the challenge open--a free choice to take up or walk away from. More than anything it is about taking part--not success or failure, simply being there and making the choice."*
Maybe that's also what life is about, whatever the choice may be.
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* _The Beckoning Silence_ (Seattle, WA: The Mountaineers Books, 2003).
posted by DPMcManus @ 8:26 AM
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