Fight or Flight

I have a ridiculous survival instinct. My goal, at any given moment, is to stay alive. It's a genetic gift handed down from prehistoric man. Our genes have one purpose....to pass on our genetic material. In order to do that, you need to stay alive. (I have no actual desire to have kids, but in theory my genes do.)

While my main goal is to stay alive, there are others whose goal is to live. Do you see the difference there? I'm trying to stay alive, but they're living.

I'll call them thrillseekers.

Mountain climbers are among those who I would have to classify as thrillseekers, or livers.

There's no evolutionary reason to climb a mountain. It makes absolutely no sense from a genetic standpoint. Sure, you could argue that a potential mate might see you as strong and therefore a viable candidate for mating, but that seems like a bit of a stretch.

Recently, Rod was watching a movie about people climbing K2, and I got sucked in. I'm no thrillseeker, but I do love reading about people who climb mountains. I do not understand why people climb (because it's there isn't really a valid reason for me) but I love watching them do it.

Last year, we did some hiking on the Eiger Trail. It's hiking, not climbing in any way. But there's a bit of a vertical gain and it's not exactly a walk in the park. About 30 minutes into our hike, I pretty much had a meltdown. It was really hard, and even though I had been training for the hike, nothing had really prepared me for the exhaustion that your muscles feel when you are doing this kind of hiking. (Like, you're looking straight up at where you have to go. It's not a fun sight.) I didn't really know how much further it was, or how much harder it was going to get. I figured if 30 minutes had mentally and physically drained me, I'd probably be better off cutting my losses and just turning around. Better safe than sorry, better to stay alive than risk the unknown. That is how my brain works. At all times.

Buuuuuuuuuut........I was in Switzerland. At the foot of the world-famous Eiger. On a hike with Rod. And I had been planning this for a few months. So I turned off my instinct to stay alive and decided to live instead. We hiked the 5 miles, ate a quick sandwich and then ran down the mountainside to catch the last train back to Grindelwald. It's one of my favorite memories ever but I still would prefer to read about climbing than do it.

(For a great read on mountain climbing, check out Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. I could not put it down...finished it in a night, which is pretty unusual for me....)