Thursday 30 August 2012
IV
I
met a man in the forest. He sat on a chair, a simple, wooden chair. ‘Why are
you sitting here?’ I asked him. He smiled. ‘This is the place where pigeons fly
themselves to death against the tree trunk,’ he said. ‘That tree over there, to
be precise,’ and he pointed to a large fir tree. ‘Why do you want to see that?’
I asked him. ‘I prefer seeing the improbable over the impossible.’
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Fatigued and probably edemic, I passed an ascending climber I knew from the M. expedition. I asked him why Dhaulagiri, why any of these crazy peaks. He answered it was the taste of his crampons skidding down a cravase and the smell of the rope stopping him; it was the sight of the cold in his lungs and the sound of his utter exhaustion. Most of all, though, he said it was the feeling of clouds being split by a summit he may die trying to achieve.
ReplyDeleteSuper, Dave, as are all of your comments.
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