When I Start Any Book, I Have

The Endless, Agonizing Recycling Of What Might Have Been, Soon Followed By A Litany Of Rationalizations And Self-deceptions As You Struggle To Reconcile The Void Between The Person You Want To Be And The Person You Fear You Are.

I Thought Climbing The Devil's Thumb Would Fix All That Was Wrong With My Life. In The End, Of Course, It Changed Almost Nothing. But I Came To Appreciate That Mountains Make Poor Receptacles For Dreams.

At Long Last He Was Unencumbered, Emancipated From The Stifling World Of His Parents And Peers, A World Of Abstraction And Security And Material Excess, A World In Which He Felt Grievously Cut Off From The Raw Throb Of Existence.

When You Forgive, You Love. And When You Love, God’s Light Shines Through You.

Unlike Most Of Life, What You Do Really Matters. Your Actions Have Real Consequences. You Have To Pay Attention And Focus, And That's Very Satisfying. It Forces You To Pay Great Attention And You Lose Yourself In The Task At Hand. Without The Risk, That Wouldn't Happen, So The Risk Is An Essential Part Of Climbing, And That's Hard For Some People To Grasp. You Can't Justify The Risk When Things Go Wrong And People Die. The Greater The Risk, The Greater The Reward In Most Aspects Of Life, And In Climbing That's Certainly True, Too. It's Very Physical, You Use Your Mind And Your Body.