10/31/09
A friend said, not long ago, that she’d assumed I’d been sick all my life.
“No,” I answered with some surprise; “I was a perfectly well person until I was thirty.” Even then, Crohn’s disease was less than a minor inconvenience for several years. Which is to say, I was fine when I climbed this mountain, now I have to find the strength to climb back down.
All my young life I expected to be a traveler, an adventurer; I got a BA in Anthropology primarily to learn about the most remote places and people in the world, before I visited them. I dreamed of standing on the plains of Kenya, watching the Wilda beast wandering by, walking the electrified canyons of Tokyo, eating locusts and guinea-pig in Guatemala. But it never happened. I squandered my twenties, in all honesty, so I can’t blame everything on the disease, but I will tell you this: I do not look at the adventuring class with jealousy. I have my own road to walk and it is as grueling as a trek across the steppes of Mongolia. And although I will not achieve fame or notoriety for the struggle I face every day, no books will be written about me, or movies made, I understand that living this is a feat equal to any adventurers struggle. I wanted a test of my character and I got one, the scenery is not so spectacular, agreed, but the oxygen level is so poor at the top of Everest that, I have been told, it’s rather difficult to appreciate the surrounds. Then having climbed, you are nothing more than another statistic, without having retained the strength to climb back down.
I don’t even know where I am on this mountain, this trip came with out a map or altimeter, the cloud cover is dense and I can’t see a god damned thing. But I feel as though my oxygen canisters are still full and for the next while, at least, I’ll be alright.
