I'm remembering a fight I had, oh, years ago, with a friend's husband, who is the exact kind of person to adore Krakauer and McCandless and all that--the fight was about mountain climbing, actually, since he was reading all about local mountains he wanted to ski-hike up, and I was of the opinion that mountain climbing is a dumb pastime because it's so resource-intensive, and rather than proving that the people who do it are Brave Independent Can-Do Sorts I was appalled by the huge expense of SAR for them...
And part of it is, yeah, my perspective has been warped by always being aware of how merciless the world can be. I don't need to step very far to be "aware of my mortality". I and the people I loved could easily end up in life-threatening situations just by doing afternoon chores. And we did; I nearly died when I was 14, and my godmother nearly died twice in the time I lived next to her. It wasn't hard.
(Although I suspect a lot of my irritation with mountain climbing was really sour grapes; if I were able-bodied I would love to run up and down mountains and Experience Nature. But that ability's been taken away from me and replaced with pain. So.)
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I'm remembering a fight I had, oh, years ago, with a friend's husband, who is the exact kind of person to adore Krakauer and McCandless and all that--the fight was about mountain climbing, actually, since he was reading all about local mountains he wanted to ski-hike up, and I was of the opinion that mountain climbing is a dumb pastime because it's so resource-intensive, and rather than proving that the people who do it are Brave Independent Can-Do Sorts I was appalled by the huge expense of SAR for them...
And part of it is, yeah, my perspective has been warped by always being aware of how merciless the world can be. I don't need to step very far to be "aware of my mortality". I and the people I loved could easily end up in life-threatening situations just by doing afternoon chores. And we did; I nearly died when I was 14, and my godmother nearly died twice in the time I lived next to her. It wasn't hard.
(Although I suspect a lot of my irritation with mountain climbing was really sour grapes; if I were able-bodied I would love to run up and down mountains and Experience Nature. But that ability's been taken away from me and replaced with pain. So.)