I’ve been climbing for over 50 years now. I’ve had two knee meniscus repairs and a partial knee replacement. A finger on each hand would stick closed from grizzled tendon sheaths that required surgical release. My crooked back creaks. I’ve lost track of the strained tendons and muscles, scraped knuckles and grated fingertips. But my greatest injury among the mountains was a broken heart.
After two years of intense adventures together, my best friend and climbing partner was diagnosed with a slow-growing, fatal brain tumor. Dendritic, resembling a snarled fishing line, it was inoperable. He was given 12 years to live. With brain seizure medication, he managed. For another 10 years we continued to climb across North and South America and shared adventures.
More than anything else I learned from him about friendship, grace and persistence. His degraded balance ended his climbing, and then hiking, and eventually mountain biking. His brother got him a tandem mountain bike they rode until that was no longer safe. His attitude of “I’ll just plug along and do what I can” was more than admirable. It tugged at your heart. Seventeen years after his initial diagnosis he died, leaving us all with a treasure of shared adventures.
You make a good friend and then they pass too early. It’s not unusual. A sudden health event or a prolonged illness; it doesn’t matter. They were here and now they are gone.
It’s difficult to find a fast friend. Add the layer of complexity of climbing to the mix — with its inherent risk, foul weather, exertion and sometimes downright suffering, and the chance of finding a tolerable, if not compatible, partner significantly dwindles. I got lucky.
Navigating through storms, spending unexpected nights on rock ledges or while slogging a heavy mountaineering pack up a glacier, you get to know a person. Everyone’s a hero on flat ground. When the rock wall steepens and you’re out of your comfort zone, character sharpens. Dick and I were good together in town or in the mountains.
We grew close. It’s why I struggled with his disease and what to do about it. For a long while it was equal measures of easy and arduous, those things we shared in the mountains. Today when I get up high in the Cascades, I glimpse peaks we summited together. It remains both reassuring and disorienting.
What I’ve learned over the decades is you need passion and persistence and most important, you need to find your people. It doesn’t matter what it is — walking, gardening, hiking, cycling, birding, skiing, climbing — it will provide a binding thread that connects you to laughter and adventures and shaves the tops off the bumps you’ll encounter. When those inevitable health issues crop up, your team will offer solace and support. You will aid this knot of friends with common cause as much as they you.
Move as much as you can. Get out there with folks who share your interests. It’ll help both you and them. I promise.
