It was a day I had been moaning and complaining about the weather, droning predictably like a good Canadian on how we were supposed to get another week of clear, cool, fall-tinged bliss before the rain set in. I had begun training at the gym in earnest, feeling spiteful towards Mother Nature and her quick, emotionless turn around from glorious, sun-baked, splitter blue skies to West Coast water works.聽
That was the day the image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi鈥檚 washed-up body appeared on international news channels, a slice at Syria鈥檚 war torn situation that made visible their vulnerable human core. This image has begun a refocusing of international attention on the refugee plight coming out of Syria.聽
I read about the event, the terrible flight from Syria, the father鈥檚 grief and the world鈥檚 mounting reaction. I read that their small rowboat was headed for Kos, a Greek island that I had flown into in 2010 when on a climbing trip to Kalymnos, a Greek rock-climbing destination. At that moment, remembering back to the fun of 2010, a seeping and spreading guilt took hold, the encompassing shame of knowing that our lives in Canada are truly taken for granted, that those of us privileged enough to climb are, as in the title of French Alpinist Lionel Terray鈥檚 autobiography, Conquistadors of the Useless.
It鈥檚 incredible, really, that in a country of such riches, we choose to inject danger back into our sedentary lives through various means such as climbing. We have food, water, shelter, freedom of thought and speech, health care, education and opportunity for employment enough to provide for our families and ourselves. Are we so wealthy we鈥檝e come to take our very lives for granted, throwing ourselves into endeavours which risk life and limb just to give us some perspective, some distance? While we climb, interacting with nature in this totally unproductive and beautiful way in our free time, this fleeing family tried to find the beginnings of a better life, only to lose everything. The juxtaposition takes my breath away.聽
People have ventured up into the mountains for millennia in search of the sacred, for solace, for beauty, for quiet enough to think and for challenge enough to see just what they are capable of.聽
Historically, the only people lucky enough to climb at all were the wealthy. Nothing has changed. World economies divide people into the haves and the have-nots; the have-nots fight for survival while the haves contemplate existence from the mountaintops.聽
As deeply meaningful as experiences in the mountains can be, they come from a place of recreation, from free time away from jobs, families and daily responsibilities. The people in that boat desired the very things we flee from when we frolic in the mountains. In our lives of ever-increasing convenience, speed and ease, we climb to find unknowns to challenge our perseverance and to feel danger where there is none anymore. Taking for granted our opportunity to climb is part of the human condition as we get lost living in the moment. We schedule, plan and organize to make climbing our daily right while in reality, it鈥檚 a supreme privilege. With this in mind, go out this week and climb so that it bolters and strengthens your already rich life, not so that it takes over and becomes your life. Appreciate how truly useless and impractical it is and how lucky you are to have it at all. 聽
