Although I don’t doubt your inner experience, I challenge you to turn your philosophical scythe to the question of whether you really lack intimacy. Physical, sure, maybe. But your writing is the most intimate and open I have read - I know from this alone that you are capable of greater intimacy than most of us achieve in a lifetime. Whether those around you can match it is another question. You provoke it though, through your honesty.
Emma's comment motivated me to actually hit post on this. I feel driven to reach out to you. Part of me holds back from sending this because of the difference in our level of injury. (t9 here) The climber in me can't hold back because it burns to not have someone to talk to about how... lost bitter angry frustrated violating it feels to go from being the freest I've ever been in my life to incoherently pissing and shitting myself in the hospital. 6 months have passed in the blink of an eye. It was November 14th when I landed in the hospital after falling in Yosemite. I never expected to remember 11.14.24 the same way I remember my SSN or my home address. I've had a hard time finding the right words, so I suppose I'll just introduce myself.
My name is Caleb McDonald, born and raised in Southern California. Climbing came naturally to me, introduced by a friend at a local gym like many others. I love being outside. Before climbing, it was backpacking. I cancelled my gym membership when I bought my first crash pad. I quit my desk job to climb cell towers for a living. I quit my job climbing cell towers to be a bum. What do we live for? For years I'd tell myself I lived to feel the sun on my face and the wind at my back.
The Sierra Nevada's are a minimum 3-hour drive away, but they felt like my backyard. I've got a 395-freeway sticker on the right side of my car so when I passed other cars heading to Lone Pine, Bishop, Mammoth, Tuolumne or Tahoe they knew I meant business. Growing up we'd go snowboarding in Mammoth, it was a trip my family made annually. On the way you pass through Lone Pine and one year my dad had pointed out Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the continental US. The range stands tall and proud, jagged ridgeline and sharp shadows. He asked me if we should hike it. Ended up being my first backpacking trip, I went with my Dad and my Grandpa, 3 generations 3 days and 2 nights. We didn't make it to the top that time, snow and afternoon thunderstorms had us turn back less than a half mile from the top. I was blown away by the raw beauty and power of the mountains. It was no coincidence that I found myself returning to Whitney every year and season thereafter. It became a benchmark for me, how much have I improved from last year? Going from doing it in 3 days to 12 hours, from 12 to 10, 10 to 9, to add in other peaks, sprinting down scree fields or glissading mountain passes. I don't want to ramble but the significance the road less traveled has had on my life cannot be understated.
I read all of your posts. The night I ended up in the hospital, one of your posts ended up on the front page of the climbing subreddit and I've been reading ever since. It has often felt like you are pulling thoughts and emotions straight from my head and articulating them in a way I could never manage. You're a large part of the reason I started writing after I fell. The post before this one you talk about the Snowdon Horseshoe Scramble and how emotional a trip that is going to be for you. I looked into that linkup, looks hella fun. Last month I made my way back to Lone Pine and had the chance to see that ridgeline again. The tears burn just the same in that gas station parking lot as they did in the hospital bed.
Drawn to the sky, glued to the ground. Thinking about you more than you know Paul.
There are a few of us lurking here Caleb, climbers that have fallen and sustained spinal cord injuries. Please know you’re definitely not alone! Paul so articulately brings the thoughts and emotions so many of us injured face into sharp focus. Stay strong -and -a lower injury does not mean you are facing any less of a challenge!
It's been some months since I follow your writing. I totally agree with Emma down in the comments. I feel I am listening in silence to your very interesting, rapturing and curious mind and voice. It's not much what I can offer in exchange, a massive thank you for digging in places where most of people are scared to even look at. And that's worth it. And exhausting, and enlightening. Keep digging, we're listening attentively. x
Unexpectedly, I remembered Stephen Hawking while reading your post.
I know his illness came to him gradually unlike your trauma - different kinds of torment - but it made me wonder, anyway, about his inner process and how it enabled him to survive and more. I wonder, too, how much of it happens 'out of sight', beneather the waterline of the iceberg we mostly live in the tip of.
The questions you provoke in me maybe don't have answers in the normal sense, but they get right inside and properly disturb - have no doubt about that.
Can a person experiencing extreme pain be happy? I would agree that Aristotle's "No" is more realistic than Plato's "Yes". But I believe that Viktor Frankl's analysis gives a more complete answer. If there is meaning and significance in the experience - trying to avoid betraying your friends to the torturer; reaching the high-altitude summit; encouraging other people (who by and large face smaller difficulties than you do) - then the situation may become worthwhile. I do not think that Noel Chavasse, for example, enjoyed crawling into no-man's land, being wounded and then dying. However, most people would think that how he lived his life was worthwhile.
Another phenomenal post. I have learned so much from you, your clarity of expression, and as Emma commented above your intimate honesty. This does not help you I realise. But it does help me.
Hi Paul, You may be interested to hear that, in an idle moment, I asked an AI (Grok) to rewrite your piece in the style of Wittgenstein and then of Donald Trump. The results were rather good - I particularly liked the section (not from the Wittgenstein version!) "I’ve been reading this guy Aristotle—smart guy, not as smart as me, but he’s got ideas. Talks about eudaemonia, fancy word for living your best life, being excellent, the greatest."
I just wanted to let you know that I always read your posts, even if they are dark... your words have the ability to move me, and many who read them. Keep writing... Even we if we cannot do much more than listen. Sending you hugs. xoxo M
I read all of your posts, and I always feel moved to respond, but I find myself at a loss for words. But I want you to know that I'm grateful for your honesty, I often carry your words with me afterwards, and I'm glad that your pain and grief are more bearable now.
Eudaemonia is the perfection which can be reached when all possibilities align. That is not something that most humans ever achieve. Thoreau wrote that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Here we can even include all those defective men and barbarians. :D
I went searching for a post that I had made in response to a person dealing with a huge life change due to a debilitating chronic condition. Interestingly, she had also been a high-energy climber. One response mentioned a friend who had dealt with that same condition with suicide. He could not stand being a shadow of his former self. He did not last as long as you have. Even though suicide isn’t an option for you, I’m glad that you no longer feel suicidal.
Two years is a victory. Teaching is a victory. Going alone anywhere is a victory.
This may sound trite, so please take it with the best of intentions, which is how I mean it. Once upon a time, you flew. Hold that image in your head in a positive way. You were golden. You were weightless. You were powerful. You flew.
For each of us, there has been a perfect moment to treasure, a time that we flew. You had many of them. You were one of the select group of humans who achieved eudaemonia. You touched the sun. Remember that when you are frustrated and angry and sad and exhausted. Be kind to yourself. Celebrate your victories. Keep writing!
I discovered you after a post on Reddit. I went down the rabbit hole of learning about Clayton Schwartz after reading one of your other submissions, and read his entire book over the weekend. As a relatively able-bodied 30 year old guy, I gotta' say that I never thought I'd go down the rabbit hole of learning about paraplegia and all of it's intense perplexities and challenges. One thing that strikes me about you and Clayton's situations is that you were both physically strong, peak, capable, and it defined who you were as a human being. I noticed when Clayton wrote about his frustrations with the disabled community, and the societal view towards the disabled in general, he often touched on the fact that there is a general "stigma" towards not embracing your new life in a wheelchair as a new opportunity, or feeling upbeat about it. I think this stigma emerged from 2 phenomena... One, is that non-paralyzed human beings don't want to be surrounded by people who cry and bemoan their situation on a continuous basis, the human desire to surround ourselves with positivity and happiness. Two, is that there is a push from the disabled community to articulate that they aren't "any less capable" from someone who is still whole.
He wrote that this push towards this mentality is from, what he defines, as "lifers" i.e. people who have been disabled their entire life and don't know anything outside of the experience. But that these 2 phenomena extraordinarily hinder medical and scientific progress towards healing spinal injuries, "If everyone thinks we are fine, and that we are no less capable than someone who is not disabled, why would society drop what they're doing and try everything in their power to heal us"?
Clayton's writing was sarcastic and blunt, and he strikes me as someone who unrelentingly sees past the bullshit in the world. To say it is unusually cruel for god to condemn people to a life of disability goes without saying, but what do we call it when he condemns men who are at the peak of their physical form to a life of disability and humiliation? Who had their entire identity tied up in their physical progress - who live, eat, and sleep to climb, fight, and adventure? To test their muscle and bone against the world? I don't think a word exists in the English language that encapsulates such a horror. Actually, something in Clayton's book might encapsulate it:
"If you took away Beethoven’s ability to create music, you took away his soul. The tones that would “sound, and roar, and storm about him” needed to come out. Everybody can see and understand this. One cannot take away Beethoven’s music and then tell him instead to take up pottery. Why then is it so hard for people to see that paraplegia has taken away my soul? My ability to create and express the things that want to burst forth from the deepest parts of me? The joyous and wonderful and beautiful things that sound, and roar, and storm inside of me, and which I want to bring forth into the world? I can never justify myself on this account. That is simply what I am. That is simply what I need."
My jaw has been in a continuous "dropped" state after I finished his book, and I think it changed me forever (in what ways, I'm not sure yet).
I didn't come in your comment section to give you some sort of feel-good, philosophical stuff. As you can tell from my writing and grammar, I'm a pretty average dude that makes a modest living repairing computers, not the sharpest tool in the shed, etc.. In fact, I don't know the point behind this comment, or where I even planned on taking it. I guess you and Clayton have given me a renewed sense of appreciation for the little things in life. I'm not going to tell you to keep your head up, or it gets better, in fact - I want to say (and please don't take this the wrong way): HOLY. FUCK.
If I could turn back time, I would do it for you and Clayton.
Thanks. If I had my hands, I think I would have taken the route that Clayton took by now. But interestingly, I do wonder if he didn't wait quite long enough.
We will never know. I don't know if you tracked this down, but the original forum post on advrider.com where he outlined his adventure is still preserved here:
There are other commenters in that thread who also wondered the same thing after his suicide was announced by a close friend. Well at any rate, it's cool you acknowledged my post here in your Substack. I don't know what else I can say - just that you and Clayton both left your mark on some random guy that lives in the Midwest here in the States. My family and I are all avid cyclists, and you've both reminded me how important safety is, and how quickly life can change in an instant. I'll be reading your Substack posts. I hope you find peace, brother.
You come into my mind when I’m in certain physical states that are both shitty and also absurdly lucky. Like this afternoon—late June, cool air, the sting of sun, half-bent, building a goddamn swing for kids who’ll scream on it with joy I won’t hear because I’ll be off mixing concrete or doing something else. That kind of afternoon.
And there it is. That jolt. That punch in the chest.
You’d give anything to be here. In this half-holy, half-idiotic pain. In this tiredness that still carries breath and choice and movement. That thought crashes in, like a kind of uninvited grace. Because the truth is—I forget. Or more precisely, I forget to remember. I start to believe my tiredness is final. That it's all only burden. That this hut—ten years of planning, pleading, hauling, hammering—is an anchor, not a miracle.
And I remember Viktor Beránek. He’s a legendary hutkeeper at the highest mountain hut in the High Tatras in Slovakia (2,250 m). A donkey with lungs of iron. Carried seventy kilos on his back—over 750 meters of elevation—for fifty-plus years. Avalanche demolished his hut five times. Five. He rebuilt. Every time. He says: "A hutkeeper must never give up".
I don’t carry seventy kilos (except maybe emotionally). But I’ve tried to carry this hut. Carried it through bureaucracy, bad weather, the loneliness of starting something others don’t yet see. I built this huge mountain hacienda in the Low (sic!) Tatras. Not a heroic thing. But it took a decade. And now I get tired. Too tired sometimes. Feel sorry for myself.
And then I think of Viktor.
And then I think of you.
And then, something opens in me.
Hutkeepers don’t give up.
Not even in the hole.
Not even when the hut falls down for the fifth time.
A flash of incandescence between Doric columns! Aristotle looks up from the papyrus scroll that he is in the laborious process of fireproofing. He does this on the advice of the Traveller who occasionally manifests in his presence, and whose lips bear cryptic news of times yet to come. It is on the advice of the Traveller that the Father of Logic has undertaken this great labour that will preserve his work for the ages. Unfortunately, it is only the ink that is fireproof and not the barren parts of the scroll itself. Centuries later, as an inferno consumes the Library of Alexandria, his words will rise on the updraughts like dark spiderwebs, carried out across the expanse of the Great Harbour, and thereafter over the Mediterranean, where capricious sea breezes will pull them apart.
“What news do you bring me?” he enquires. “Does my work yet endure in your time?”
It does learned one,” replies the Traveller, in a manner that could be construed as respectful, obsequious, or openly mocking, depending on the disposition of the listener. “Your Doctrine of Mean has taken root within human resources departments across the worldly realms, in addition to some of the infernal planes. It is made manifest in the paperwork for employee self-assessments, where one must strike a balance between two extremities in order to keep one's job.”
“I harbour no comprehension of these things of which you speak,” replies Aristotle.
“Human Resources embodies good intentions either liberally squandered, or turned towards tertiary goals in a manner that is self-interested and ultimately self-defeating,” says the Traveller. “Employee Self Assessment is when an immediate superior assists you in taking aim at your foot, while documenting your incompetence as it occurs, so that it can be raised with you at a later date.”
“It seems that man in your time has become estranged from his inherently rational nature,” says Aristotle. “He should seek to return to an earlier state of being.”
“The current en-vogue term is 'return to monke',” replies the Traveller. “I should add at this juncture that, contrary to your belief that man exists as an enduring physical archetype, he is actually an evolution of the great apes.”
“Then where in your vexing existence can it be said my work has decisively made its mark?” exclaims Aristotle, throwing up his hands in exasperation.
“Well,” says the Traveller. “There is one man who was badly crippled in a fall.”
“Ah! A follower in the wingbeats of Icarus!”
“Since the fall of which I speak occurred in Albion, we can reliably say that he was nowhere near sunlight. He fell from a rock face and now uses your conception of eudaemonia to cement his perception of himself as a failure.”
“Then I was right!” says Aristotle with the sociopathic glee of a schoolboy who has just pulled all eight legs off a spider. “This man in his wretched state recognises his inability to flourish!”
At which point the Traveller is whisked away, carried back along the temporal streams to the birthplace of time travel in Bournemouth, leaving me to point out you have chosen to view your existence through the prism of a philosophy that conveniently conforms to your current negative perception of yourself. In a recent entry you reassured your readers that you were not becoming goth. Well, if one spends an inordinate amount of time wallowing in the bleaker moments of The Cure, then one may exacerbate an already gloomy disposition. Obviously your situation is bad; that is likely an understatement, but it is not hopeless and it is not without the potential to flourish.
Aristotle had a very narrow and regimented idea of how happiness could be achieved. Plato was nearer the mark I think. I have interacted closely with people who were dying; some who had literally weeks left on Earth and who were happy, not because their suffering was soon to end, but because their circumstances, despite limiting what they could do, had cut through the bullshit that stops people enjoying life.
Many other philosophers have written on the subject of happiness. Bertrand Russell wrote book on the subject which I don't have to hand, but I recall that he described many ways to achieve happiness. Some of these options, involving physical activity, would be off limits to you, but there are roads that you can explore.
Maybe start out small – look for moments of happiness that you can build on. “Good minutes make good days.” I read that, coincidentally, this evening in a poem that Douglas Dunn wrote about his late wife Lesley, who died young of melanoma of eye – a tragedy for a woman whose profession was in the visual arts. If Dunn is to be believed, then despite ending her days bed-bound, she continued to lean into life until the day she died. Or in his words:
Although I don’t doubt your inner experience, I challenge you to turn your philosophical scythe to the question of whether you really lack intimacy. Physical, sure, maybe. But your writing is the most intimate and open I have read - I know from this alone that you are capable of greater intimacy than most of us achieve in a lifetime. Whether those around you can match it is another question. You provoke it though, through your honesty.
Emma's comment motivated me to actually hit post on this. I feel driven to reach out to you. Part of me holds back from sending this because of the difference in our level of injury. (t9 here) The climber in me can't hold back because it burns to not have someone to talk to about how... lost bitter angry frustrated violating it feels to go from being the freest I've ever been in my life to incoherently pissing and shitting myself in the hospital. 6 months have passed in the blink of an eye. It was November 14th when I landed in the hospital after falling in Yosemite. I never expected to remember 11.14.24 the same way I remember my SSN or my home address. I've had a hard time finding the right words, so I suppose I'll just introduce myself.
My name is Caleb McDonald, born and raised in Southern California. Climbing came naturally to me, introduced by a friend at a local gym like many others. I love being outside. Before climbing, it was backpacking. I cancelled my gym membership when I bought my first crash pad. I quit my desk job to climb cell towers for a living. I quit my job climbing cell towers to be a bum. What do we live for? For years I'd tell myself I lived to feel the sun on my face and the wind at my back.
The Sierra Nevada's are a minimum 3-hour drive away, but they felt like my backyard. I've got a 395-freeway sticker on the right side of my car so when I passed other cars heading to Lone Pine, Bishop, Mammoth, Tuolumne or Tahoe they knew I meant business. Growing up we'd go snowboarding in Mammoth, it was a trip my family made annually. On the way you pass through Lone Pine and one year my dad had pointed out Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the continental US. The range stands tall and proud, jagged ridgeline and sharp shadows. He asked me if we should hike it. Ended up being my first backpacking trip, I went with my Dad and my Grandpa, 3 generations 3 days and 2 nights. We didn't make it to the top that time, snow and afternoon thunderstorms had us turn back less than a half mile from the top. I was blown away by the raw beauty and power of the mountains. It was no coincidence that I found myself returning to Whitney every year and season thereafter. It became a benchmark for me, how much have I improved from last year? Going from doing it in 3 days to 12 hours, from 12 to 10, 10 to 9, to add in other peaks, sprinting down scree fields or glissading mountain passes. I don't want to ramble but the significance the road less traveled has had on my life cannot be understated.
I read all of your posts. The night I ended up in the hospital, one of your posts ended up on the front page of the climbing subreddit and I've been reading ever since. It has often felt like you are pulling thoughts and emotions straight from my head and articulating them in a way I could never manage. You're a large part of the reason I started writing after I fell. The post before this one you talk about the Snowdon Horseshoe Scramble and how emotional a trip that is going to be for you. I looked into that linkup, looks hella fun. Last month I made my way back to Lone Pine and had the chance to see that ridgeline again. The tears burn just the same in that gas station parking lot as they did in the hospital bed.
Drawn to the sky, glued to the ground. Thinking about you more than you know Paul.
- a fellow punter
There are a few of us lurking here Caleb, climbers that have fallen and sustained spinal cord injuries. Please know you’re definitely not alone! Paul so articulately brings the thoughts and emotions so many of us injured face into sharp focus. Stay strong -and -a lower injury does not mean you are facing any less of a challenge!
will message you direct
It's been some months since I follow your writing. I totally agree with Emma down in the comments. I feel I am listening in silence to your very interesting, rapturing and curious mind and voice. It's not much what I can offer in exchange, a massive thank you for digging in places where most of people are scared to even look at. And that's worth it. And exhausting, and enlightening. Keep digging, we're listening attentively. x
Unexpectedly, I remembered Stephen Hawking while reading your post.
I know his illness came to him gradually unlike your trauma - different kinds of torment - but it made me wonder, anyway, about his inner process and how it enabled him to survive and more. I wonder, too, how much of it happens 'out of sight', beneather the waterline of the iceberg we mostly live in the tip of.
The questions you provoke in me maybe don't have answers in the normal sense, but they get right inside and properly disturb - have no doubt about that.
thank you and with love
Can a person experiencing extreme pain be happy? I would agree that Aristotle's "No" is more realistic than Plato's "Yes". But I believe that Viktor Frankl's analysis gives a more complete answer. If there is meaning and significance in the experience - trying to avoid betraying your friends to the torturer; reaching the high-altitude summit; encouraging other people (who by and large face smaller difficulties than you do) - then the situation may become worthwhile. I do not think that Noel Chavasse, for example, enjoyed crawling into no-man's land, being wounded and then dying. However, most people would think that how he lived his life was worthwhile.
Another phenomenal post. I have learned so much from you, your clarity of expression, and as Emma commented above your intimate honesty. This does not help you I realise. But it does help me.
And yet the beauty that emerges from your liminal state is breathtaking. With affection, X.
Hi Paul, You may be interested to hear that, in an idle moment, I asked an AI (Grok) to rewrite your piece in the style of Wittgenstein and then of Donald Trump. The results were rather good - I particularly liked the section (not from the Wittgenstein version!) "I’ve been reading this guy Aristotle—smart guy, not as smart as me, but he’s got ideas. Talks about eudaemonia, fancy word for living your best life, being excellent, the greatest."
wishing you strength on a shitty anniversary!
I just wanted to let you know that I always read your posts, even if they are dark... your words have the ability to move me, and many who read them. Keep writing... Even we if we cannot do much more than listen. Sending you hugs. xoxo M
I read all of your posts, and I always feel moved to respond, but I find myself at a loss for words. But I want you to know that I'm grateful for your honesty, I often carry your words with me afterwards, and I'm glad that your pain and grief are more bearable now.
Eudaemonia is the perfection which can be reached when all possibilities align. That is not something that most humans ever achieve. Thoreau wrote that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Here we can even include all those defective men and barbarians. :D
I went searching for a post that I had made in response to a person dealing with a huge life change due to a debilitating chronic condition. Interestingly, she had also been a high-energy climber. One response mentioned a friend who had dealt with that same condition with suicide. He could not stand being a shadow of his former self. He did not last as long as you have. Even though suicide isn’t an option for you, I’m glad that you no longer feel suicidal.
Two years is a victory. Teaching is a victory. Going alone anywhere is a victory.
This may sound trite, so please take it with the best of intentions, which is how I mean it. Once upon a time, you flew. Hold that image in your head in a positive way. You were golden. You were weightless. You were powerful. You flew.
For each of us, there has been a perfect moment to treasure, a time that we flew. You had many of them. You were one of the select group of humans who achieved eudaemonia. You touched the sun. Remember that when you are frustrated and angry and sad and exhausted. Be kind to yourself. Celebrate your victories. Keep writing!
Hi Paul,
I discovered you after a post on Reddit. I went down the rabbit hole of learning about Clayton Schwartz after reading one of your other submissions, and read his entire book over the weekend. As a relatively able-bodied 30 year old guy, I gotta' say that I never thought I'd go down the rabbit hole of learning about paraplegia and all of it's intense perplexities and challenges. One thing that strikes me about you and Clayton's situations is that you were both physically strong, peak, capable, and it defined who you were as a human being. I noticed when Clayton wrote about his frustrations with the disabled community, and the societal view towards the disabled in general, he often touched on the fact that there is a general "stigma" towards not embracing your new life in a wheelchair as a new opportunity, or feeling upbeat about it. I think this stigma emerged from 2 phenomena... One, is that non-paralyzed human beings don't want to be surrounded by people who cry and bemoan their situation on a continuous basis, the human desire to surround ourselves with positivity and happiness. Two, is that there is a push from the disabled community to articulate that they aren't "any less capable" from someone who is still whole.
He wrote that this push towards this mentality is from, what he defines, as "lifers" i.e. people who have been disabled their entire life and don't know anything outside of the experience. But that these 2 phenomena extraordinarily hinder medical and scientific progress towards healing spinal injuries, "If everyone thinks we are fine, and that we are no less capable than someone who is not disabled, why would society drop what they're doing and try everything in their power to heal us"?
Clayton's writing was sarcastic and blunt, and he strikes me as someone who unrelentingly sees past the bullshit in the world. To say it is unusually cruel for god to condemn people to a life of disability goes without saying, but what do we call it when he condemns men who are at the peak of their physical form to a life of disability and humiliation? Who had their entire identity tied up in their physical progress - who live, eat, and sleep to climb, fight, and adventure? To test their muscle and bone against the world? I don't think a word exists in the English language that encapsulates such a horror. Actually, something in Clayton's book might encapsulate it:
"If you took away Beethoven’s ability to create music, you took away his soul. The tones that would “sound, and roar, and storm about him” needed to come out. Everybody can see and understand this. One cannot take away Beethoven’s music and then tell him instead to take up pottery. Why then is it so hard for people to see that paraplegia has taken away my soul? My ability to create and express the things that want to burst forth from the deepest parts of me? The joyous and wonderful and beautiful things that sound, and roar, and storm inside of me, and which I want to bring forth into the world? I can never justify myself on this account. That is simply what I am. That is simply what I need."
My jaw has been in a continuous "dropped" state after I finished his book, and I think it changed me forever (in what ways, I'm not sure yet).
I didn't come in your comment section to give you some sort of feel-good, philosophical stuff. As you can tell from my writing and grammar, I'm a pretty average dude that makes a modest living repairing computers, not the sharpest tool in the shed, etc.. In fact, I don't know the point behind this comment, or where I even planned on taking it. I guess you and Clayton have given me a renewed sense of appreciation for the little things in life. I'm not going to tell you to keep your head up, or it gets better, in fact - I want to say (and please don't take this the wrong way): HOLY. FUCK.
If I could turn back time, I would do it for you and Clayton.
Thanks. If I had my hands, I think I would have taken the route that Clayton took by now. But interestingly, I do wonder if he didn't wait quite long enough.
We will never know. I don't know if you tracked this down, but the original forum post on advrider.com where he outlined his adventure is still preserved here:
https://advrider.com/f/threads/seattle-to-argentina-on-a-klr650.136505/
There are other commenters in that thread who also wondered the same thing after his suicide was announced by a close friend. Well at any rate, it's cool you acknowledged my post here in your Substack. I don't know what else I can say - just that you and Clayton both left your mark on some random guy that lives in the Midwest here in the States. My family and I are all avid cyclists, and you've both reminded me how important safety is, and how quickly life can change in an instant. I'll be reading your Substack posts. I hope you find peace, brother.
thinking of you today, I noticed the date.
Hi
You come into my mind when I’m in certain physical states that are both shitty and also absurdly lucky. Like this afternoon—late June, cool air, the sting of sun, half-bent, building a goddamn swing for kids who’ll scream on it with joy I won’t hear because I’ll be off mixing concrete or doing something else. That kind of afternoon.
And there it is. That jolt. That punch in the chest.
You’d give anything to be here. In this half-holy, half-idiotic pain. In this tiredness that still carries breath and choice and movement. That thought crashes in, like a kind of uninvited grace. Because the truth is—I forget. Or more precisely, I forget to remember. I start to believe my tiredness is final. That it's all only burden. That this hut—ten years of planning, pleading, hauling, hammering—is an anchor, not a miracle.
And I remember Viktor Beránek. He’s a legendary hutkeeper at the highest mountain hut in the High Tatras in Slovakia (2,250 m). A donkey with lungs of iron. Carried seventy kilos on his back—over 750 meters of elevation—for fifty-plus years. Avalanche demolished his hut five times. Five. He rebuilt. Every time. He says: "A hutkeeper must never give up".
I don’t carry seventy kilos (except maybe emotionally). But I’ve tried to carry this hut. Carried it through bureaucracy, bad weather, the loneliness of starting something others don’t yet see. I built this huge mountain hacienda in the Low (sic!) Tatras. Not a heroic thing. But it took a decade. And now I get tired. Too tired sometimes. Feel sorry for myself.
And then I think of Viktor.
And then I think of you.
And then, something opens in me.
Hutkeepers don’t give up.
Not even in the hole.
Not even when the hut falls down for the fifth time.
Not even on an ordinary summer afternoon.
thank you
A flash of incandescence between Doric columns! Aristotle looks up from the papyrus scroll that he is in the laborious process of fireproofing. He does this on the advice of the Traveller who occasionally manifests in his presence, and whose lips bear cryptic news of times yet to come. It is on the advice of the Traveller that the Father of Logic has undertaken this great labour that will preserve his work for the ages. Unfortunately, it is only the ink that is fireproof and not the barren parts of the scroll itself. Centuries later, as an inferno consumes the Library of Alexandria, his words will rise on the updraughts like dark spiderwebs, carried out across the expanse of the Great Harbour, and thereafter over the Mediterranean, where capricious sea breezes will pull them apart.
“What news do you bring me?” he enquires. “Does my work yet endure in your time?”
It does learned one,” replies the Traveller, in a manner that could be construed as respectful, obsequious, or openly mocking, depending on the disposition of the listener. “Your Doctrine of Mean has taken root within human resources departments across the worldly realms, in addition to some of the infernal planes. It is made manifest in the paperwork for employee self-assessments, where one must strike a balance between two extremities in order to keep one's job.”
“I harbour no comprehension of these things of which you speak,” replies Aristotle.
“Human Resources embodies good intentions either liberally squandered, or turned towards tertiary goals in a manner that is self-interested and ultimately self-defeating,” says the Traveller. “Employee Self Assessment is when an immediate superior assists you in taking aim at your foot, while documenting your incompetence as it occurs, so that it can be raised with you at a later date.”
“It seems that man in your time has become estranged from his inherently rational nature,” says Aristotle. “He should seek to return to an earlier state of being.”
“The current en-vogue term is 'return to monke',” replies the Traveller. “I should add at this juncture that, contrary to your belief that man exists as an enduring physical archetype, he is actually an evolution of the great apes.”
“Then where in your vexing existence can it be said my work has decisively made its mark?” exclaims Aristotle, throwing up his hands in exasperation.
“Well,” says the Traveller. “There is one man who was badly crippled in a fall.”
“Ah! A follower in the wingbeats of Icarus!”
“Since the fall of which I speak occurred in Albion, we can reliably say that he was nowhere near sunlight. He fell from a rock face and now uses your conception of eudaemonia to cement his perception of himself as a failure.”
“Then I was right!” says Aristotle with the sociopathic glee of a schoolboy who has just pulled all eight legs off a spider. “This man in his wretched state recognises his inability to flourish!”
At which point the Traveller is whisked away, carried back along the temporal streams to the birthplace of time travel in Bournemouth, leaving me to point out you have chosen to view your existence through the prism of a philosophy that conveniently conforms to your current negative perception of yourself. In a recent entry you reassured your readers that you were not becoming goth. Well, if one spends an inordinate amount of time wallowing in the bleaker moments of The Cure, then one may exacerbate an already gloomy disposition. Obviously your situation is bad; that is likely an understatement, but it is not hopeless and it is not without the potential to flourish.
Aristotle had a very narrow and regimented idea of how happiness could be achieved. Plato was nearer the mark I think. I have interacted closely with people who were dying; some who had literally weeks left on Earth and who were happy, not because their suffering was soon to end, but because their circumstances, despite limiting what they could do, had cut through the bullshit that stops people enjoying life.
Many other philosophers have written on the subject of happiness. Bertrand Russell wrote book on the subject which I don't have to hand, but I recall that he described many ways to achieve happiness. Some of these options, involving physical activity, would be off limits to you, but there are roads that you can explore.
Maybe start out small – look for moments of happiness that you can build on. “Good minutes make good days.” I read that, coincidentally, this evening in a poem that Douglas Dunn wrote about his late wife Lesley, who died young of melanoma of eye – a tragedy for a woman whose profession was in the visual arts. If Dunn is to be believed, then despite ending her days bed-bound, she continued to lean into life until the day she died. Or in his words:
“Refused all grief, but was alight
With nature, courage, friendship, appetite.”