I feel bad for people who don’t adventure outside. They will never know the unique joy of Epic.
In the old days it would be long poems or songs, narrating the great deeds of heroes.
These days, it’s social media and the stories we tell the like-minded to get a “cool” and the rest to get a “why?”
This year I taught Adirondack Ice Climbing for Cornell Outdoor Education. Three long days spent outside in the cold. Saturday it was 7 degrees. SEVEN. I spent hours belaying and freezing and thinking that I just wish they would stop. But they plugged along, swinging sharp objects at fragile structures in an attempt to find their way upward.
Let me be honest with you, it’s difficult, it’s painful, and I didn’t even get to do that much climbing.
Also though, there is nothing like the beauty of wild places in winter, or like the harsh meditation of ice climbing. In days gone by they would have written stories of our grand exploits. Today let me just tell you that we had fun, we worked hard, we cheered each other on, and I got them all back home alive and safe and only moderately beat up.
It was epic.
