When you first start this mountaineering business you'll either love it or hate it. It's like dating and for those who love it, the challenge is not any different than what you encounter with your love life. At the point in life when you find your true love the die of your destiny is cast. Destiny is not something you can entirely define, but neither are you able to deny it is what you have to do. And so with mountaineering you see us coming back to the well to drink in some more.
Aconcagua 2011, If At First You Don't Succeed, Torture Yourself Again!, by Scott Zannini
Ernest Hemingway while seated in a bar was challenged to write a book in six words. He bragged he could do it. All bets were on the bar and on a napkin he wrote, "Baby shoes, for sale, never worn." He’s such an amazing writer. Interesting story, brief but too the point and well written. I too can write a story in six words. But first the Hemingway twists to all of this story of true love.
In 2004 I bought, The Snows of Kilimanjaro that Hemingway authored in 1936. Until recently I'd never read it or seen the movie. Recently I bought the movie and just last Thursday as I was working out and getting ready to climb Mt. Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe, I watched the movie for the first time. In the story the uncle tells the writer, Harry Street, a riddle. The riddle has to do with the snow Leopard that died near the summit of Kilimanjaro. There is nothing to eat at that elevation and there are few clues to help him guess why a leopard would be at such an elevation. And so the uncle tells Harry Street that if he can solve the riddle as to why the Leopard was there he will have the direction to his own life. He can't solve that riddle but another character in the movie says to Harry that perhaps the Leopard was on the wrong scent, became lost and died alone on the Snows of Kilimanjaro.
I played that scene over and over six or eight times. I find the parallels ironic to say the least. The Snows of Kilimanjaro have more significance to me than anyone will be able to explain. The epiphany I had on Kilimanjaro was that I had traveled down the wrong path, had become lost in life and needed to go back and find my true love, Barbara. I'm not telling you this for any reason other than it's an amazing story that starts in Bristol and has to end in Bristol. Bristol is to us what we are to each other. It's in our blood, our memories, and our past and in our hearts. It's where this story began and it's where we needed to marry.
I've never heard of a story like this one. I could not have dreamed this up. So let me end it with writing my story that is six words long. The story is titled True Love. And like Hemingway’s it is just six words long. Our story is “A love that can't be denied.”
Like the love of our life (Barbara), mountaineering isn't a love we can turn on and turn off. It calls our hearts and our minds back to the mountains for a drink of what feels like eternal grace.
Aconcagua 2011, If At First You Don't Succeed, Torture Yourself Again!, by Scott Zannini
Ernest Hemingway while seated in a bar was challenged to write a book in six words. He bragged he could do it. All bets were on the bar and on a napkin he wrote, "Baby shoes, for sale, never worn." He’s such an amazing writer. Interesting story, brief but too the point and well written. I too can write a story in six words. But first the Hemingway twists to all of this story of true love.
In 2004 I bought, The Snows of Kilimanjaro that Hemingway authored in 1936. Until recently I'd never read it or seen the movie. Recently I bought the movie and just last Thursday as I was working out and getting ready to climb Mt. Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe, I watched the movie for the first time. In the story the uncle tells the writer, Harry Street, a riddle. The riddle has to do with the snow Leopard that died near the summit of Kilimanjaro. There is nothing to eat at that elevation and there are few clues to help him guess why a leopard would be at such an elevation. And so the uncle tells Harry Street that if he can solve the riddle as to why the Leopard was there he will have the direction to his own life. He can't solve that riddle but another character in the movie says to Harry that perhaps the Leopard was on the wrong scent, became lost and died alone on the Snows of Kilimanjaro.
I played that scene over and over six or eight times. I find the parallels ironic to say the least. The Snows of Kilimanjaro have more significance to me than anyone will be able to explain. The epiphany I had on Kilimanjaro was that I had traveled down the wrong path, had become lost in life and needed to go back and find my true love, Barbara. I'm not telling you this for any reason other than it's an amazing story that starts in Bristol and has to end in Bristol. Bristol is to us what we are to each other. It's in our blood, our memories, and our past and in our hearts. It's where this story began and it's where we needed to marry.
I've never heard of a story like this one. I could not have dreamed this up. So let me end it with writing my story that is six words long. The story is titled True Love. And like Hemingway’s it is just six words long. Our story is “A love that can't be denied.”
Like the love of our life (Barbara), mountaineering isn't a love we can turn on and turn off. It calls our hearts and our minds back to the mountains for a drink of what feels like eternal grace.
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Are you mentally preparing for Elbrus or going back for some more?!
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