Finding It

We don't always know what we're looking for

I was reminded of this essay recently while I have been preparing to do an interview for a film documentary about Kilian Jornet. I had mentioned it to the producers, of having written it in 2012, saying that even though I had quit climbing by that point I was greatly inspired by what Kilian was doing. Before sending it along to them I had to re-read it to see what I might change, if anything, and whether I still felt the same today.

I identified a problem in the essay that is just as relevant now as it was all those years ago; I had not learned how to communicate the motivation for these (high risk) acts in a way that makes them accessible to those who have never lived them and perhaps never will. And what the value of such experiences may be. I haven’t given up on that and some days I am closer than back then while on other days I am not.

On the other hand, the journey Kilian was on in 2012 keeps growing and changing as he himself has. In a recent email exchange with him I mentioned the enormity of the States of Elevation project and how, back in the day when we figured out how to go nonstop for 30 hours then 48 then eventually 63, we could imagine very big things but nothing like 72 summits over 14,000’ high in 31 days with transitions between them on foot or on a bike. Something that colossal wasn’t within the realm of our imaginations, and far from it. Once again, proof that as we amass experiences and become more capable (with historical precedent to prove it), the map of our potential expands. All we need do then is see it, and make ourselves willing to try.

Before posting here I did some cursory editing of the essay to smooth out my insistence on short sentences back then, which could lead to a choppy, discontinuous feeling.

At the close of the trailer for Kilian Jornet’s film project “Summits Of My Life” the question is posed, “What is it we are looking for?” And follows with, “To be alive?” Preceding this is a statement about searching for happiness, and the uncertainty of finding it.

Coincidentally, my day began with an email from Doug, a pediatric neurosurgeon who was training in my gym. Earlier that summer he climbed the northwest face of Half Dome in a day, fulfilling a dream he had been dreaming since adolescence. His email concluded, “I definitely found what I was looking for,” and that triggered a memory of Kilian’s question.

I have spent some hours lately thinking about what Jornet asks. I know why the people I see in our gym are willing to push themselves so hard. I understand why Andrew Pleavin didn’t begin training and dieting before coming to Bulgaria for the drastic five-week process I can only describe as being torn apart by wolves. He wanted to have the utterly transformative experience of getting off the couch and working himself into the role of the Free Greek soldier, Daxos, he played in the original “300” movie, for this, its sequel. And that is exactly what he got. For the role he lost 30 pounds in five weeks. He dropped from 18% body fat to 10%. His strength and work capacity increased, which one might imagine being the result of increased muscle mass, but he simply learned to use the muscle he was already carrying. He was in his mid-40s at the time, proving it possible to do things that many men, perhaps most men, have already given up on at that age. He found what he was looking for.

I used to back myself against a wall such that I would literally die if I couldn’t climb over it then worked hard to understand why, which I have answered in various ways throughout my life. What I cannot do to my satisfaction is communicate the motivation for these acts in a way that makes them accessible to those who have never lived them. I have answered Jornet’s question with action. Sometimes I found what I was looking for, but often, especially now, I was happier I did not find it because it was not happiness I searched for.

Doug’s dream, triggered by images in National Geographic, took hold at a young age. Not for lack of trying, the dream remained unfulfilled for decades. Life got in the way, as it often does. For all of us.

In the wake of an epiphany he wrote, “one day I woke up and decided I needed something else. I needed to yawp and scream and cry and grunt. I needed to chase a more elemental dream. I needed to feel Yosemite’s wind and Half Dome’s granite. I needed to be scared. I need to be terrified. I needed to push. I needed to fail. I started by committing to a community of people that weren’t afraid to fail. Who weren’t afraid to lay everything on the line. That commitment was critical. So I wrote down, in black and white, ‘Climb Half Dome in a Day’ as a goal. And slowly, over the next few years, I began to lose my fear and gained the focus to necessary to approach my goal. Along the way I started to discover who I was. And who I wasn’t. I grew a healthy respect for suffering. It was about damn time. About damn time I grew the hell up.”

For me, the important part of Doug’s essay had to do with self-discovery and not the action. The dream itself was the means - the thing so necessary that he was willing to change, to train, to reorient and discipline himself, and to discover not only who he is but who he isn’t. We need big goals to push us to this point. This goal and the process of achieving it or giving it everything we have is the outward manifestation of the answer to Jornet’s question.

Up there on that sheer face Doug realized, “… over thirty years ago I chose to be here, very much so … and therein lies the key to my happiness and freedom. I am here by choice, believing in my choice and embracing it. It makes all the difference. I am striving. I am grunting. I am learning. About myself, about my limits …”

“I went to Yosemite and climbed Half Dome in a day. Seven hours for the approach and descent via the Mist Trail, eleven hours on the climb. I climbed my beloved Double Crack pitch. I can remember all the details: I placed my hand in it. I felt the hidden rail. I placed one foot inside the crack. It fit perfectly. Then the other. I slowly moved upward, alternating hand and foot movements, jamming for 30 feet, ecstatic and sweet. The ground a smiling blur, the sky my friend. And then I suddenly latched onto a horizontal crack and it was over. Holy shit. It was over. What now? The coolest pitch ever, the dream of all my dreams was over. I couldn’t climb the crack again, I still had about 100’ to the belay. So I finished the pitch, another wonderful, splitter crack, and scurried over to Big Sandy ledge. I sat down and took a big drink of water. Holy shit that was fun. I looked up. Still a long way to go. Five pitches. A long way off. But wasn’t that sweet? Hell yeah. That was sweet.”

There it was, a dream come true.

A couple of years prior when I was watching Doug, who was 50 at the time, do the Ski/Ride/Row triathlon in the gym I thought, “Man, this is what can be done, this is the meaning of this place, these people. He gets it. He’s living it. There is no excuse to coast. When this level of output is possible how can anyone just roll over?” I was inspired. I understood there and then that when we take care of ourselves and focus, when we guide our energy wisely and let the inner demon out to play (too) we can accomplish wonderful things, in all aspects of life, at any age. And someday I will figure out how to accurately share that with those outside - those who need it, perhaps more than any of us. I know it is a basic message, “Allow yourself to do those things you are capable of doing. Break the chains and go.” I also know that turning words into action that sticks and teaches and revises us is the hardest thing any of us can do.

The saddest thing I read in Doug’s description of the Double Crack pitch was, “What now?” Soaring happiness in the moment of fulfilling the dream is chased by the sadness of having done so. I have been there. I have found what I thought I was looking for only to learn there were horizons beyond it, and an edge of existence I could not see but that drew me inexorably like a magnet. The unidentified force pulling me toward … what? What will I strive toward now? What will motivate me to effort, to discipline? What will keep me up at night, and keep me going?

In those moments when I no longer knew what I was searching for because a dream or an ideal had been fulfilled the only answer I could supply was, “I’ll know it when I see it. And I am absolutely certain that—sooner or later—I will see it.” Until then I keep myself ready to seize the opportunity when that new goal takes shape. If anything, this may be the essence of that old gym space and its community: to meet our true selves within the work, to become, to increase ability so the borders of our world map expand, to prepare for and even to cause opportunity, what ever it may be. It was not simply a gym, it was an idea, maybe even an ideal for living, it is a way of thinking that changes what we are looking for, and changes the way we live.

The trailer for Summits of my Life

Kilian explains his “States of Elevation” project

Kilian’s website