The Meaning of it All

It’s everything, it’s the meaning of life: to climb and climb and climb.

Pull and swing without a care. But you’re covered in chalk or spikes, strung with a string. You can only go so far. You can only get so high.

How long is a piece of string? 60 metres, since you ask, but we carry two so we can go wherever we want. Everything is focussed on going up-up-up and away, lives devoted to this cocktail of climbing. Jobs turned down, plans changed, lives dedicated (obsessed?) to climbing. What’s the catch if you fall?

It’s the rush, the thrill of it all. The adrenaline and endorphins and entrapment. Imagine being high above your gear, the inky sea licking its lips and splashing up the rock: eager for the taste. The peregrine wheels, the gulls scream. Elbows start to rise as you snatch from pinch to punch. This’ll be a fight, but it’s too late now. This is rock ’n’ roll!

Imagine being high on the mountain. Committed. The real deal. Pure white ice fires into a deep blue sky. Your head tucked into your neck against the wind, your future tied to the only other person in the world. Ragged breath, and the solid swing of an axe. Climbing! But in what reality? What did you expect life to be like, once you returned to earth after so many days in a dream?

To make this cocktail, take two parts whiskey, two parts strength, and all four parts of the mind. Add a dash of desire and a hint of silliness. Distill to the pure essence, and turn up the volume. Does anything else matter when you’re doing what you love?

The bigger and badder, the bolder and madder. Years go by, chasing the dream. Each time we return, eyes a little richer, memory a little wilder, and feel the contented buzz. It lasts all night, like the whiskey - no mixer - but in the morning we’re climbing again. Until the phone rings, and we’re slapped by sobriety. Have you heard from him?

I guess the meaning is clear, after all. Despite the knife’s edge, and despite it’s draw, climbing is everything… but the sum of it all is to end up back where you started.

***

Postscript
I stumbled across some of Simon Armitage’s poetry recently, and then immediately wrote this, pretty much in one sitting. I noted many of Simon’s poems have a ‘dark’ or surprisingly deep ending, and perhaps this is reflected in my own writing above.
I suppose I’m also reflecting on my own experiences in climbing. As part of a study for Bangor University two weeks ago, I was asked about my relationship with climbing, a ‘high-risk sport.’ “What does it mean to me? Do I need to climb? What does risk mean, or how does it colour climbing?” I fidgeted and squirmed and inevitably some of those thoughts have made their way into the above text.