Early blog post today, I gotta trek my ass outside to go interview one of the biggest names in Chicago architecture (no no, not Louis Sullivan, he be dead), so it could be worse. I just don’t even want to go out there.
It’s also my luvah’s birthday today, so happy birthday love, I’m so glad your parents had sex.
So…I just finished reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer for the second time. Actually, I started it Thursday morning on the train and was done by Friday at 7:00p.m. It is a short book, but most of all it is the single most addictive, drama inducing book I have ever read.
Krakauer is a journalist, mostly for Outdoor Magazine. He was asked by them to go to Everest in 1996 with the ill-fated team of climbing guru Rob Hall. That day they summitted (sp?), over 12 people died. The IMAX guys were also up there filming that year as well, and luckily, provided some support.
But the book is so nerve inducing it’s almost hard to read. We all know I have a little Everest love, but this is like the ultimate Everest book. It’s like loving a chocolate sundae and then getting one with a bajillion scoops with eight different kinds of chocolate on it.
And even more amazing to be reading it in 20 below weather, when these guys are battling for their lives at 28,000 feet and temperatures of 100 below. There are many amazing stories in the book, poor Rob Hall got stuck up on the summit (just below actually) because of a sudden storm and actually managed to survive a whole night up there. He had no tent, no sleeping bag, no nothing. And no one could rescue him and he died the next morning after talking with his wife over the radio. MY LORD.
Then another guy, Beck Weathers, was left for dead by his team (you have to on Everest, they leave all the dead bodies, because NO ONE has enough energy to take them down, you would be putting yourself at risk), with his arms outstretched like a zombie, his waist buried in snow, and somehow, SOMEHOW found the instinctual part of his brain and stood up and walked back to camp. He was severely broken, lost his nose and both hands to frostbite, but made it.
They find people up there dead, with all their clothes off, like they just ripped off everything, arms outstretched...waiting for death I assume. The thin air clouds your judgement, and in the case of edema, can absolutely drive you crazy, people will be walking back to camp and just walk right over the edge, or believe their oxygen masks are suffocating, and just take them off, or turn up each others oxygen all the way, thinking they were just opening it a little, mistakes are so easily made on the Mother Mountain.
I also recommend his other books Into the Wild and Under the Banner of Heaven, but this book goes down in Hixx history as truly, the most interesting book I've ever read. Even if you don't have the Everest itch, it will grab you and hold you, I promise.
And here I am, at sea level, in 20 degrees below zero knowing there is no part of me that would ever make it out alive, and how thankful I am, so thankful, that I have a warm bed, a warm man and a warm dog to save me.
Oh yeah, and Lost and Survivor both start this week!
One extreme to the next in this blog entry, one extreme to the next.
Happy birthday baby, I love you.
2 comments:
i hate the cold. a lot. a lot. so, i gotta say, that everest shit? that's one thing where i'm like... that's just man's arrogance. pure arrogance. where it's like ... we're gonna do this. we're gonna conquer this thing. and look. a lot of people don't. nature is like ... ummm, yeah, no. here's a fucking beat down. and i just think ... why? why waste a life? he had a wife. maybe some of those people have kids. why do that? why just give it all up like that? cause you just have to beat it? cause you just want to see if you can? cause it is so important to you to beat a mountain?
?? maybe i'm not that dedicated. or maybe i'm realllly stubborn about other things, but i just don't get it. i love/am scared/am awed by the fact that sometimes we still can't beat stuff. we're small. we can't conquer floods and hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes. we can try and outsmart them, but ultimately, we are human. we have a spark of the divine, but we are. not. god.
sorry for that rant. :/
It's really a fascinating thing, the mountain climbers, the true mountain climbers.
The only thing I can say about that is yes, Rob Hall did have children, many of them do..but I don't think it's arrogance. I think it's a calling, like almost anything else.
These men (at least most of them) didn't just wake up one day and want to go to Everest. It's a sport, a dream, something to overcome.
But man oh man, does it take a really specific kind of person to do it. Krakauer says its an exercise in pain, and how much can you stand.
Hell, I think boxers are just as nuts as mountain climbers.
I dunno, it's just a completely different kind of person than I will ever be.
Either way though Smuss, I like your rants.
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