Chris answered that careers were demeaning twentieth-century inventions, more of a liability than an asset, and that he would do fine without one, thank you.
He found himself woefully unprepared for the flat pitch of life out of uniform. I discovered that I couldn’t really speak to civilians, he continued. My marriage fell apart. All I could see was this l...
You hear that rape victims avoid sex afterwards. But it’s actually just as common for some victims to become promiscuous in self-destructive ways.
We were brought up to be very independent. Our parents taught us that we were given certain talents and we needed to pursue them -- that we shouldn't go through life relying on others when we had all...
We tell ourselves stories in order to live.… We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the mult...
The plain truth is that I knew better but went to Everest anyway. And in doing so I was a party to the death of good people, which is something that is apt to remain on my conscience for a very long t...
The eight-man expedition was pinned down in a ferocious blizzard high on K2, waiting to make an assault on the summit, when a team member named Art Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis, a life-threatenin...
TWO YEARS HE WALKS THE EARTH, NO PHONE, NO POOL, NO PETS, NO CIGARETTES. ULTIMATE FREEDOM. AN EXTREMIST. AN AESTHETIC VOYAGER WHOSE HOME IS THE ROAD….
Still, the last sad memory hovers round, and sometimes drifts across like floating mist, cutting off sunshine and chilling the remembrance of happier times. There have been joys too great to be descri...
Several authors and editors I respect counseled me not to write the book as quickly as I did; they urged me to wait two or three years and put some distance between me and the expedition in order to g...
Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one.
Lisak and Miller examined a random sample of 1,882 men, all of whom were students at the University of Massachusetts Boston between 1991 and 1998. Their average age was twenty-four. Of these 1,882 stu...
I’m going to repeat that: Without the support of our Sherpas none of us has any chance of climbing the mountain.
Invece di raccogliere dei ricordi personali, Viesturs si sedette vicino a Fischer, lungo la discesa, trascorrendo qualche minuto da solo con lui. Ehi, Scott, come te la passi? chiese tristemente Ed al...
In any human endeavor, some fraction of its practitioners will be motivated to pursue that activity with such concentrated focus and unalloyed passion that it will consume them utterly.
I read somewhere... how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong... to measure yourself at least once.
But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind.
But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind. Thomas F. Hornbein
Because it is there
Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in t...