Often people ask me, “What are you trying to prove?” Or, “Is this some kind of world record?” I’ve often been told that either I’m on a fool’s quest to find myself, or just a selfish thrill-seeker, even somebody too lazy to get a real job. If I could open my eyes and see that I’m a rabbit in a three-walled box or a fish in water, would I be able to escape? Is my box pride? Or, its alter ego, low self-esteem? Am I making a difference? Or, am I trying to prove something to myself?
I mumble, not loud enough to distract Chris, but loud enough to give my prayers resonance, “I promise. I’m going to retire in Cape Town. Just let me survive with a sound body and mind. I don’t want to end up like Goran: I’ve had my adventure. I don’t need to set a world record in order to feel accomplished. I could feel satisfied just planting a garden someday.”
(Click for “FALLING UPHILL” GALLERY)
When handed an ice axe in the beginning of the day, I joked with my current cycling companion Stefani from Switzerland, “I bet we won’t need this but for a photograph.” However, throughout the day I discovered many uses for my axe: as a hook to pull myself up; a wedge to lower myself; a brace against an opposing wall; in the end, my knees weak and feet blistered, I use it as a cane to hobble back to the bus, last out of 50 people. New Zealand must be laughing at me: “Do you think you’re special Mister I-bicycled-around-the-world?” Perhaps, I can use my axe to chip away my need to prove myself better than others.
Postscript: After I had published this story, I found some notes that I had forgotten. Once years before I began my journey, I asked Goran if he was as scared as I was to begin his next adventure: “Yes, a little,” he admitted. “It’s important to be a little bit afraid. If you’re not, you will die very soon. It’s a calculated risk. You have to have the right sense so you can turn back at the right moment and don’t continue when it’s too dangerous. That’s very important. Some people really push the limit, and then they are out on the adventure forever.” Now that Goran has begun his adventure into forever, his words ring in my ears like an ominous self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s curious that this idea had somehow embedded itself in my mind and grew like a seed — a seed that has since blossomed into the understanding that one doesn’t have to achieve summiting Everest to feel as accomplished as the simple act of a child building sandcastles on the beach. I wonder what other seeds, good or bad, that I have planted in my mind. And, though the idea of death being a calculated risk is a melodramatic seed — or is that weed? — perhaps, I can plant a fruitful idea right now. Hmmm…. If I could plant any idea, anything I could imagine, what would it be?
For information on ordering Stoll’s book, “Falling Uphill,” go here: www.theargonauts.com
