I was on vacation in Mexico some months ago. While I was in Puebla I met someone who stayed in the same hostel as we did.
It turns out he was from Toronto too (Mississauga). He told me about his trip to Vancouver last year, which got him started climbing.
While I was there with intentions of diving, he was there to climb (La Malinche)
Despite heading towards, literally, opposite ends of the earth, evidently, he and I have found common ground.
I guess people ask him a lot about why he climbs and he answered with a quote from a book that I loved…
“On ne peut pas toujours rester sur les sommets. Il faut redescendre… Aquoi bon alors ? Voici : le haut connaît le bas, le bas ne connaît pas le haut. En montant, note bien toutes les difficultés de ton chemin ; tant que tu montes, tu peux les voir. A la descente, tu ne les verras plus, mais tu sauras qu’elles sont là, si tu les as bien observées.
Il y a un art de se diriger dans les basses régions, par le souvenir de ce qu’on a vu lorsqu’on était plus haut. Quand on ne peut plus voir, on peut du moins encore savoir.”
“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees, one descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”
– René Daumal
@ La Malinche Summit
Gelene 