During my 40 years of sobriety I’ve been engaged in an ongoing conversation with the Creator on all manner of topics. To me it has seemed like a long, extended prayer where, even now, I haven’t yet gotten to the “AMEN” affirmation.
— So I continue to write.
This week I’ve looked back over years of posts and I asked myself — what jumps out?
Two thoughts came to mind:
- We have mountains
- We need Sherpas
Sir Edmund Hillary, who summited Mt. Everest in 1953, had a deep, lifelong connection with his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay.
Here is how their relationship and the summit are described:
High in the thin, freezing air of the Himalayas, the 1953 expedition to Everest was a brutal test of human limits. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay moved like ghosts through the “Death Zone,” their lungs burning and their hearts hammering against their ribs.
Hillary was leading across a treacherous, snow-covered slope when the world suddenly vanished. With a sickening crack, a massive snow cornice collapsed beneath his boots.
In a blur of white and blue, Hillary plummeted toward a jagged, bottomless crevasse.
But Tenzing didn’t blink.
With lightning reflexes, he threw his weight onto his ice axe, burying it deep into the frozen crust and anchoring the rope with a grip of iron.
For a heart-stopping second, Hillary dangled over the abyss, staring into the dark heart of the mountain.
Because Tenzing acted without hesitation, the rope held. Slowly, with Tenzing serving as a human anchor, Hillary kicked his way back to solid ground.
They shared a silent, gasping look of profound gratitude before turning their eyes toward the final obstacle: a forty-foot vertical wall of rock and ice now known as the “Hillary Step.”
They conquered that wall together, step by agonizing step, until they stood where no human had ever stood before.
When they finally stepped onto the small, rounded snow dome of the summit at 11:30 a.m., the air was thick with survival, not speeches. Their goggles were encrusted with ice, and their oxygen masks made breathing a chore.
Hillary, in a characteristically reserved British gesture, reached out to shake Tenzing’s hand. But Tenzing wasn’t having it.
He ignored the hand and instead threw his arms around Hillary’s shoulders, thumping him on the back in a massive, joyous hug.
In that moment, they weren’t a climber and a guide; they were a single irresistible force of nature.
What they did next reveals the soul of the climb.
Tenzing knelt in the snow and buried a small stash of chocolate and biscuits—a Buddhist offering to the Goddess Mother of the world. Hillary reached into his pocket and buried a small crucifix.
How that story illuminates the truth about getting up and down a mountain.
- My life has sometimes felt like ascending and descending difficult mountains.
- And it’s impossible to imagine making it without my Sherpa guides.
I faced one mountain shortly after I quit drinking. It was a “Mt. Everest” of a business challenge, one for which I was wholly unprepared.
Truth be told, during my last year of drinking I made quite a mess of things in my business.
So I decided in facing this Everest-sized challenge to go to my “Sherpa guide,” who, at the time was my AA sponsor.
I laid out all the ugly facts.
He paused for a good long while and then answered me with his own question:
“Pat, if you found a way up this mountain of yours, are you NOW in a position to climb it?”
I thought long and hard, then sputtered out:
- There it was
- I spoke the truth
- No more tall tales
“Well, then,” Gary said, “that’s one mountain you ought not attempt. Better find a way to climb OFF the mountain not On.”
I listened, and I did find a way off the mountain and moved my life in an entirely different direction —
— ultimately to Chicago and Marsha and a new life.
Sometimes the mountains you don’t climb are more important than the mountains you do. And that, too, is a perfect way to pay homage to a mountain.
Just a thought…
Pat
🎵 Mark Pearson, our musical collaborator, was also a Sherpa of mine during my freshman year at the University of Washington when he and and I were Phi Gamma Delta fraternity brothers.
Here he shares a thought and a song on mountains. (Click on each link below.)