At That Stage Of My Youth, Death

The Only Person You Are Fighting Is Yourself And Your Stubbornness To Engage In New Circumstances.

Early On A Difficult Climb, Especially A Solo Climb, You’re Hyper-aware Of The Abyss Pulling At Your Back, Constantly Feeling Its Call, Its Immense Hunger. To Resist Takes Tremendous Conscious Effort, You Don’t Dare Let Your Guard Down For An Instant. The Void Puts You On Edge, Makes Your Movements Tentative And Clumsy. But As The Climb Continues, You Grow Accustomed To The Exposure, You Get Used To Rubbing Shoulders With Doom, You Come To Believe In The Reliability Of Your Hands And Feet And Head. You Learn To Trust Your Self-control.

An Extended Stay In The Wilderness Inevitably Directs One's Attention Outward As Much As Inward, And It Is Impossible To Live Off The Land Without Developing Both A Subtle Understanding Of, And A Strong Emotional Bond With, That Land And All It Holds.

I Understood What He Was Doing, That He Had Spent Four Years Fulfilling The Absurd And Tedious Duty Of Graduating From College And Now He Was Emancipated From That World Of Abstraction, False Security, Parents, And Material Excess.

It Is Easy, When You Are Young, To Believe That What You Desire Is No Less Than What You Deserve, To Assume That If You Want Something Badly Enough, It Is Your God-given Right To Have It.