I’d like to post the first piece of writing that I’ve done about the outdoors. This was written in the fall of 2008 and a college essay, and it turned into a piece that I really liked. This is the kind of writing that I’d like to be able to produce: writing which conveys the feelings of being in the outdoors.
To The Tip Top House
Three thousand feet below, the sun was shining. Fleshy tourists were diving into swimming pools, splashing each other as they frolicked in the water. They could relax. Their lives did not depend on the careful placement of their ice axe, on the tenuous grip of their crampon in the snow.
Mine did. I was perched on the side of Mount Washington. I’d left Pinkham Notch at 7:34 A.M., setting my sights on the summit. Two hours of slogging had brought me here, to this outcropping of bare rock. With my back resting against the granite, I watched the wind blast particles of snow off the rock and into space. The summit was still two miles away, and fifteen hundred feet up. At the top I could look forward to more wind, more snow, more ice, and the summit sign. On the way I would be fighting my way through thigh-deep drifts of thick snow, squinting through my goggles, trying to discern the next trail marker. Most people would have turned around and hiked back down to the valley floor, to the hot tub and warm bed that awaited them. Not me.
This was why I was here. Stranded on Cape Cod on all but the winter weekends, I had learned to crave blizzards, wind, and real winter. I had driven all the way to New Hampshire to test myself against exactly these types of conditions. The physical difficulty of what I was doing was why I had traveled from the sunny shores I called home. I had plotted out this weekend months in advance and prayed for a storm, hoping for what the British call “heavy conditions”. I wanted to throw myself against the worst the mountain could offer and come out victorious.
Why? Because I thrive on adversity. I enjoy challenges, enjoy putting myself through hell and back, knowing I’m going to wake up in the morning mentally and physically exhausted. I live my life looking for challenges to throw myself at. Most people call this foolish, but I don’t see it that way. I live for the toughness that comes from being able to master everything life can throw at me. It quite literally feels like I’m on top of the world.
I shouldered my pack, grabbed my axe from its resting place against the rock, and kicked my crampon into the ice. Stepping out from behind the rock, I pushed my way into the wind and the snow. Hundreds of steps later, I made the summit. I stood next to the sign that warned of the “Worlds worst weather” and scraped the caked ice off my goggles. Despite accomplishing my goal, I was only halfway done. The storm was only getting worse, the winds picking up and the temperature dropping. I was covered in ice, and four hours of descent awaited me. After barely five minutes on the summit, I turned around.
I’d never felt so alive.
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