My ideal climbing world
What would my ideal climbing world look like? Very simple: There are the mountains and the rocks, and there’s my irresistible desire to climb into the unknown. Engagement with the wall is basically an engagement with oneself, with one’s limits, doubts, and fears on the one hand, and on the other hand with one’s virtues, such as courage, determination, and unyielding intention. Being the victor over one’s own weakness is the most worthwhile achievement one can imagine.
The mountains and rocks are still there; they have not changed. Only our perspective has changed, because we’ve chosen to pursue some sort of “artificially” modified climbing. In an era when most people have an other-directed lifestyle, a counterculture, characterized by individual freedom, remains as necessary as it was in the Seventies, when a few outsiders, inspired by hippie culture, brought color into the boring grayness of an antiquated and self-satisfied alpinism.
