Sunrise on the mountain
We start long before dawn, in deep frost and darkness, driving up the winding track towards the mountain. At the snowline we stop and put on climbing gear, harnesses, packs, axes, and we trudge up the hill as the eastern sky begins to lighten. The air is still bitterly cold but we are warmed by the climb, our exhalations clouding as we breathe heavily in the thinning air.
We crest the last ridge before the icefall we are to climb and in front of us lies a frozen lake, smooth, silent, impossibly flat in a land otherwise without horizontality. The ice is thick and we start to walk across, westwards, booted feet crunching as we stride. And just as we reach the middle of the lake, the sun rises behind us, and the surface all around lights up with a million tiny diamonds, a million ice crystals glistening, reflecting the rising sun. I have never seen anything so beautiful.
I took it: your turn
Take the A List Apart survey 2008.
Thinking about risk
Clearly there can be too much risk: some things with potentially big upsides can be too risky to take on. But can can there be too little risk?
If you totally eliminate risk you’ll never lose big, but you’ll never win big either. It’s an opportunity cost. While you were staying safe, you could have been taking risk and succeeding. Instead, you’ll have to satisfy youself with the results of safe – which are never as good as the results of risk. The downside? You have to be willing to fail.
This applies pretty much everywhere. If you try to eliminate the risk of failure, you’ll never climb that mountain, ditch that job, ask that girl out, or build the Next Big Thing.
I’m not saying you should never cover your arse: just that you need to hang it out a little bit now and then. And be willing to occasionally get spanked.
Oh, the years, they go so fast
Me, May 1971.
Autumn, night
There is no more lovely music than the soft fall of rain.
Coming full circle
Bikes I have ridden: year acquired/number of gears:
1975: 1
1976: 3
1983: 18
1992: 21
2001: 27
2008: 1
So a couple of days ago I succumbed to a long-felt need and bought a singlespeed bike, a Kona Paddy Wagon. Just one gear. Freewheel optional. Fantastic.
When the hill gets steeper, pedal harder.
Overnight hike in the Snowy Mountains
K walking through wildflowers near Guthega. Mt Kosciusko in the far background. A magic night camping by the Snowy River, followed by an arduous trek back around three mountain peaks.
Advice for overnight backpacking:
- Pack sheets of kitchen paper between your Trangia pans. It’ll stop rattling and give you something to clean up with.
- Wear long pants/gaiters when walking through long, scratchy heath, or you’ll end up like me.
Rafting the Franklin
Got back a week or two ago from spending nine days rafting down the Franklin. It’s a very different thing, to only have one thing to do each day: to get down the river. Sometimes paddling, sometimes shooting the rapids, sometimes humping the raft over rocks or lining it down waterfalls.
There are so few wild places left.
Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc
When I was twenty, an architect friend-of-a-friend designed a house where kitchen and shower wastewater ran in a stream across an internal atrium, the idea being that an awareness of one’s effluvia was a prerequisite for dealing with it effectively.
At the time, I didn’t grok it: I had an intellectual appreciation for environmental concerns, but I didn’t see what I do now – how intuitively right his solution was. What is it, to feel something deeply, rather than just thinking it? What’s the difference between “knowing” and knowing?
Up a mountain in New Zealand
Double Cone at the Remarkables after some ice climbing. I never seem to have my helmet on straight.