I have always had something of a strange relationship with heights, especially as I dislike climbing ladders to hang Christmas lights and would rather not place myself on one of those giant hunks of metal commonly known as a 737. Both are situations in which I feel a marked lack of ease, and so I avoid the former when I can while medicating the latter with AM doses of breakfast-grade ethanol.
And in spite of this, I tend to seek out heights whenever I can, in places both unique and pedestrian. On my walks to collegiate football games (in this case for the University of Pittsburgh, which may be an additional source for my panic disorder), I enjoy the foot trek over one of many of the city’s longstanding bridges, and especially at night, with the lights from the bridges, buildings, and automobiles dotting colored lights on the water.
If I get myself tickets to a concert or a sporting event, I sometimes pretend that I want to get as close as possible; still, my dedication to premium seating is flimsy. While I have had the benefits of close proximity to the stage (which, incidentally, tends to come with decreased sound quality), I never mind buying the very last seat, in the very last corner, of the highest venue in town. I find the thought exhilarating, and I have been known to move from the lower sections and up with the pigeons in the middle of an event, just to feel a little bit higher than everyone else.
I took this preference to a new level this year, skydiving twice in the span of a week (the first jump left me with crippling nausea, while the second jump was much closer to the ‘glory’ I had imagined). My dislike for my lack of control in an airplane is such that I will gladly strap myself to an instructor and jump out the hatch. The 170 mile an hour free fall is, for my two hundred + dollars, worth it.
Feelings of life are never quite as punctuated as when death is terribly near. If you would like to forget about all of your problems for roughly 60-90 seconds, find yourself a qualified tandem instructor and have at it. You’ll love the ride and be very glad to not be dead at the end of it. There are problems in the sky, for sure, but the problems on the ground stay on the ground.
Jumping from roughly 11,000 and 14,000 feet respectively, I can say this: there is something unquestionably life-changing about being halfway to the top of the world, with nothing but a vinyl backpack, some carabiners, and a carefully packed piece of cloth.
Halfway to the top of the world is a good time, and it’s only halfway.
The rest of the way to the top is a little tricker. I have been at such altitudes in commercial airplanes, which I have already established as one of my least favorite ways to travel. The other option would be to climb to that altitude on foot; there are places on planet earth to do this, but not an excess of places. The one that sits in the public imagination the most is, of course, Mt. Everest, where no human can possibly stand at a higher elevation and still be on terrain.
After one of my streaming services decided that I should watch the 2015 film Everest (an often stunning piece of storytelling about the 1996 disaster on the mountain, where 8 climbers lost their lives), I have been rather obsessive about watching and reading as much as I can about this Goliath among the high mountains, as well as the sport required to tackle the summit.
One of the most striking things about the sport, and what many people do not realize, is that the principle danger of high elevation climbing is not the risk of falling or being crushed to death; these are real and unfortunate perils in the mountain, but the challenge at high elevations is mostly rooted in the severe lack of oxygen. The higher one goes, the less air pressure there is, which (for 8,000 meter peaks or higher) results in much less breathable air.
Or about 33 percent of the oxygen that our lungs are used to.
At this elevation, climbers unanimously report levels of exhaustion beyond that of other experiences. With each step to the top of the world, oxygen becomes scarce, blood thickens, thoughts become muddied, and movement slows to a crawl. Those who climb without supplemental oxygen do so at severe risk (and sometimes death).
If you were to go from sea level to the top of Everest teleportation style, with William Shatner and the gang in tow, you’d be dead of altitude sickness in minutes.
The grand trek to Mt. Everest is a decidedly non-linear path. For one, it’s not usually the mountain that people start with. Training for high altitude environments is a practical requirement, and that takes time, along with excursions to a number of other peaks, all increasing in difficulty. Expensive life-sustaining equipment must be procured. Climbing permits from the Nepali government must be secured. The journey involves days of hiking, camping, and helicopter rides. Once at basecamp, new arrivals must set up shop and begin to acclimate to the elevation, which sits at 17,598 feet, well below the summit, which towers at 29,031 feet above sea level. This time is spent briefing, resting, and participating in acclimatizing exercises, or drills that simulate oxygen levels at higher elevations.
To get to the top, you cannot usually climb straight up and straight back down, and buy ‘usually’ I mean: don’t try it, because you probably won’t be one of the few exceptions (such as Kami Rita Sherpa, who summited and returned in 20 hours and 24 minutes in 2019) to the rule. The higher you go, the less oxygen you have access to; climbing too quickly doesn’t give the vast majority of people enough time to do what is needed: develop enough red blood cells to oxygenate the body. As such, climbers basically never go up and down in one shot unless they fancy their skull and lungs filling with fatal amounts of fluid.
To survive Mt. Everest, you must take a definitionally non-linear trek. From basecamp, you will first cross one of the more technically challenging and geographically volatile portions of the mountain, a slow moving glacier known as the Khumbu Icefall. Imagine a place with chunks of ice as tall as skyscrapers, sliced up with bottomless crevices. Now imagine that this place shifts about 3-4 feet a day. Every day. All the time. The path through the icefall changes so much that it’s hard to call it linear at all. Ladders, ropes, and riggings must be monitored and changed by sherpas on the regular. There is not static path through it.
There are three additional camps beyond the icefall and on the mountain, and this is were the rest of the zig-zagging occurs. Without getting into more technical babble, here’s what happens: Climbers will go from basecamp to another camp and then acclimate; periods for this vary. They then climb down and return to basecamp. The next time they ascend, they go to a higher camp and acclimate. I am very much not an expert on the subject, but I’m comfortable in saying this:
You have to zig-zag your way to the top of the mountain if you want to survive. Due to poor weather, avalanches, falling rocks, and other dangers, climbers must often make modifications to their routes laterally as well. The mountain is not a living thing, but it is very much a moving thing. If you want to make an assault on the summit and stand on top of the world, you’d better be prepared for your best ‘side to side and front to back.’ Here, the boogie is about survival.
I could have used this advice last January.
After months of juggling therapists, switching medications, and trying to learn about myself as I never understood myself before, I really thought that 2023 was going to be my year. I bought a t-shirt with a cute little devil on it that stated as such: THIS IS GONNA BE MY YEAR.
Translation? 2023 was going to be that straight shot to the top! Look at me go everyone! I found therapy and SSRI’s, and nothing can go wrong!
And in the spring and early summer, everything that could go wrong did just that, culminating in a BPD crisis, a severe meltdown, and an inpatient stay mentioned many blog posts ago. While expecting to have conquered whatever all this was by then, I suddenly found myself not just back at square one, but back to nothing but shards of broken squares. I hated myself. I hated my emotions. I hated the idea of therapy and therapists. I wanted none of things that I thought were wasting my time.
And then I went to outpatient therapy (which I will, I promise, get to in more depth in a future blog), where I met the one to one therapist there; I will forever refer to this therapist as my IOP angel. For a time, things got a little better and continued to do so.
Until, of course, things didn’t go better, right before they got better, until they weren’t better again, and so on. At this juncture I have no more stories to share. I simply mean to say this: my frustration is coming from the notion that my progress should somehow be linear, without interruptions or delays. But that isn’t how it works.
I learn tools in therapy. I’m on medication to help that. But like any other tool, I’m not going to be a professional immediately. I am going to do well, and then step in it, and then do well, and then step in it, and so on. This will happen apart form my preferences as to how growth should happen. I don’t have to like the rules, but I do have to play by the rules. In this case, the rules say that I will apply my tools with varying degrees of success until I get better over time.
Turns out I have to climb up and down A LOT, and then repeat it all over again.
For me, this is the only way to the summit. I hope to see you when I get there, and I hope that we are all as far away from 2023 as possible.
Yours Mentally,
Nathan
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