our differences seemed to complement each other. I was short, stocky and abrasive. Tat was tall, gangly and laid-back. I could be argumentative and obdurately pig-headed. Tat hated confrontation. I drank too much and he drank too little. Once after an ice-climbing holiday he laughed and said that it had been the most intensive drinking session he’d had in years and yet I felt we had been verging on abstinence.
I was lazy. Tat was driven, impetuous, always wanting to be doing something, never able to settle if he had time on his hands. I had always regarded myself as an impatient individual but Tat made me seem like serenity incarnate. Sometimes, as on Alea Jacta Est, his driven impatience and my lazy acquiescence led to near disaster, but for most of the time we climbed well together and our differing strengths seemed well matched. His zest for adventure and his infectious enthusiasm for another good day out always prompted me into suggesting yet another trip. Whether it had been saving a dying baby in the Langtang or night-clubbing in Huaraz, succumbing to his own wrong prescriptions on Pumori or trying to kill me in La Grave my overwhelming impressions had been Tat’s irrepressible and unlimited humorous passion for life. For most of the trips I had been on in the last decade those with Tat had always seemed the most fun-filled and memorable.
I wished he was still here with his big enveloping one-armed hugs and his ‘Hiya, kid’ greeting, and the look of delight in his eyes at the prospect of another adventure. Of course I never did express these simple honest thoughts to him; we just don’t do that sort of thing. Who would hug us now, I wondered? There would never be another Tat.
Life didn’t seem cruel at that moment but frighteningly transient. It sometimes seems that we are beyond the grasp of our consciousness, mute witnesses to something we cannot comprehend until death, at last, snuffs out the dilemma. We strive to make death a stranger, to live safe lives, to hope against our reason for immortality, and yet death is the one thing that defines us all. It is never far distant from life and the dead are never far from the living. The problem is that we shut death out of our lives and so our dead become strangers to us instead of the friends they once were.
Was Tat now to become a stranger as we lived on without him? I hoped not. I have always been astonished at how quickly time passes by after a loss and how soon our memories fade even to the point that within a few years we could scarcely remember when that death had occurred. I often wondered why we had chosen to play such risky games with our lives. The nearest explanation that I had for why we climbed was because it let us edge along that fine line between life and death, because for a brief moment it changed our perspectives on life. That chance encounter with the dark side made us realise quite how important it was simply to be alive; it made us live.
We did it because we loved it and for no other reason. We didn’t philosophise our way up frozen waterfalls or ponder the great mysteries of life as we endured storms and hard times on the hills. We just took whatever enjoyment we could glean from the experience.
That was the point; it was a very simple game. We played it because it seemed the best way of living. John Huston, the film director, once wrote, ‘The most important thing about life is to avoid boredom at all costs. If you find that what you are doing is uninteresting, then you had better change your routine. I’m held together by things that fascinate me.’
The hills had always fascinated us, held us in thrall so we went to them. Maybe that was all we had ever tried to do – played games on a dangerous stage to avoid boredom at all costs. I thought that I had no illusions about what we were doing, but I had been forced to realise that the man who says he has no illusions has at least that one.
I didn’t fly for a long time after
I was lazy. Tat was driven, impetuous, always wanting to be doing something, never able to settle if he had time on his hands. I had always regarded myself as an impatient individual but Tat made me seem like serenity incarnate. Sometimes, as on Alea Jacta Est, his driven impatience and my lazy acquiescence led to near disaster, but for most of the time we climbed well together and our differing strengths seemed well matched. His zest for adventure and his infectious enthusiasm for another good day out always prompted me into suggesting yet another trip. Whether it had been saving a dying baby in the Langtang or night-clubbing in Huaraz, succumbing to his own wrong prescriptions on Pumori or trying to kill me in La Grave my overwhelming impressions had been Tat’s irrepressible and unlimited humorous passion for life. For most of the trips I had been on in the last decade those with Tat had always seemed the most fun-filled and memorable.
I wished he was still here with his big enveloping one-armed hugs and his ‘Hiya, kid’ greeting, and the look of delight in his eyes at the prospect of another adventure. Of course I never did express these simple honest thoughts to him; we just don’t do that sort of thing. Who would hug us now, I wondered? There would never be another Tat.
Life didn’t seem cruel at that moment but frighteningly transient. It sometimes seems that we are beyond the grasp of our consciousness, mute witnesses to something we cannot comprehend until death, at last, snuffs out the dilemma. We strive to make death a stranger, to live safe lives, to hope against our reason for immortality, and yet death is the one thing that defines us all. It is never far distant from life and the dead are never far from the living. The problem is that we shut death out of our lives and so our dead become strangers to us instead of the friends they once were.
Was Tat now to become a stranger as we lived on without him? I hoped not. I have always been astonished at how quickly time passes by after a loss and how soon our memories fade even to the point that within a few years we could scarcely remember when that death had occurred. I often wondered why we had chosen to play such risky games with our lives. The nearest explanation that I had for why we climbed was because it let us edge along that fine line between life and death, because for a brief moment it changed our perspectives on life. That chance encounter with the dark side made us realise quite how important it was simply to be alive; it made us live.
We did it because we loved it and for no other reason. We didn’t philosophise our way up frozen waterfalls or ponder the great mysteries of life as we endured storms and hard times on the hills. We just took whatever enjoyment we could glean from the experience.
That was the point; it was a very simple game. We played it because it seemed the best way of living. John Huston, the film director, once wrote, ‘The most important thing about life is to avoid boredom at all costs. If you find that what you are doing is uninteresting, then you had better change your routine. I’m held together by things that fascinate me.’
The hills had always fascinated us, held us in thrall so we went to them. Maybe that was all we had ever tried to do – played games on a dangerous stage to avoid boredom at all costs. I thought that I had no illusions about what we were doing, but I had been forced to realise that the man who says he has no illusions has at least that one.
I didn’t fly for a long time after
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