Bear Grylls Quote

It took me quite a while to begin to recover physically from Everest.The thick, rich air of sea level, in comparison to the ultrathin air of Everest, was intoxicating--and at times it felt like too much.Several times I fainted and had quite bad nosebleeds. As if from oxygen overload.Above all, I slept like a baby.For the first time in years, I had no fear, no doubts, no sense of foreboding. It felt amazing.Everest had taken all my heart, soul, energy, and desire, and I was spent. The way I was after SAS Selection.Funny that. Good things rarely come easy.Maybe that is what makes them special.I didn’t feel too guilty about taking a little time off to enjoy the British summer and catch up with my friends. It just felt so great to be safe.I also did my first-ever newspaper interview, which carried the headline: What Makes a Scruffy 23-Year-Old Want to Risk It All for a View of Tibet? Nice.Before I left I would have had a far slicker reply than I did afterward. My reasons for climbing seemed somehow more obscure. Maybe less important. I don’t know.I just knew that it was good to be home.The same journalist also finished up by congratulating me on having conquered Everest. But this instinctively felt so wrong. We never conquer any mountain. Everest allowed us to reach the summit by the skin of our teeth, and let us go with our lives. Not everyone had been so lucky.Everest never has been, and never will be, conquered. This is part of what makes the mountain so special. One of the other questions I often got asked when we returned home was: Did you find God on the mountain? The real answer is you don’t have to climb a big mountain to find faith.It’s simpler than that--thank God.If you asked me did He help me up there, then the answer would be yes.Every faltering step of the way.