Cold Wars

Oryginał: “Cold Wars: Climbing the Fine Line Between Risk and Reality“ - Andy Kirkpatrick

Polski tytuł: “Zimne wojny. Wspinaczka na krawędzi ryzyka i rzeczywistości“

Kontynuacja “Psychovertical”, rewelacyjna książka, przeczytałem oryginał na kindle pod koniec 2019 roku - okładka w polskiej wersji mnie zniechęciła - choć nawiązuje do zawartości. Książka z gatunku tych, które czyta się chętnie wielokrotnie.

Poniżej zebrałem ciekawe cytaty, niekoniecznie najlepsze, po prostu wpadły mi w oko, akurat rezonowały w moim życiu.

“It was the first day in years when I didn’t think once about climbing.”

“In winter, everything takes twice as long and requires ten times more energy”

“Climbing is not about winning, or reaching the summit. If it were, no one would climb. It’s about having the self-belief to try.”

“They say it’s not worth losing your toes for a climb, but when they’re not your toes it seems worth the risk.”

“I thought about my realisation on the Reticent Wall, that to survive on a hard climb you must treat yourself like someone you love. The Lafaille was proof; with love you could overcome most things. Love for yourself, for your partner, treating him like you must treat yourself; and for the mountain, as something to be loved, not hated.”

“But here, in these faces, I see another truth, one that soothes these feelings: that people suffer and die living safe lives just as much as dangerous ones. When people ask me how I can risk my life, the only answer I can give is: ‘How can you not take risks?’”

“I told myself you have to live your life now, and not wait for some later date. Futures can be easily cancelled.”

“I’d always believed, like my dad, that exposure to some danger is the best way to stay safe. I avoided stair gates and leashes to rein in my children, knowing that one day the stair gate would disappear and the pull of the leash would be gone. Falling down stairs is a right of passage, and anyway, kids are much more bendy and bouncy than we give them credit for.”

“Climbers, like any mildly obsessed clique, can be dismissive of anyone not part of their group. The same happens with Christians, golfers, and real ale drinkers, even people with kids, all dismissing ever so slightly anyone who isn’t following the one true path.”

“… [he] worked as one of the country’s top health-and-safety men, helping to draft legislation to protect the public, then breaking all the rules in the mountains.”

“everything stuffed with mud and moss and grass. It was about the most unappealing rock you could climb,”

“‘The fitter you are, the harder you are to kill,’ was how Marc Twight put it,”

“I don’t want to die of laziness. One day giving up would not be an option. Then it really would be a fight to the death.”

‘You know what it is that changes in them?’ he asked, looking out at the field. ‘Their mothers stop feeding them and they have to stop playing. They have to eat to survive.’”

“But for Jules to die simply walking to a climb, that was something shocking. It made you see that there was no line between extreme risk and safety. “

Przyszedłem dzisiaj pod Freneya, stanąłem 15 metrów od ściany. Furkot, przewrócony plecak, kątem oka dostrzegłem z boku, tak z 5 metrów gasnący ruch dość dużego kamienia. Podniosłem - około 5kg.

Ktoś rzucił z góry. Dla zabawy.

Nie znaleźliśmy winnego. Spadł metr ode mnie, uszkodził plecak, miał jeszcze na tyle energii żeby odbić się i zmienić pozycję o kilka metrów.

Nawet nie ubrałem uprzęży.

“‘What I find works on jobs like this is to break down your pay, so you know how much you make every minute. That way no matter how bad things get, you can always just say: “well, I just made myself thirty-two pence.” If it gets really bad you can do it by the second.’”

Andy o pracy na planie filmu “Charlie i fabryka czekolady”.

“I often wondered how people kept on working themselves so hard, head down, and not just step off when they realised they were selling their life and all its potential riches, even their health, for a wage, a wage you had no time to spend on anything meaningful, just stuff.”

—
Kirkpatrick o dzieciach, i małżeństwie.

“They were growing up but I was too wrapped up to care, my head always full of mountains.”

“How much do I love you? Are you unloved? Are you two just speed bumps in my way? You tie me to this spot. I never wanted kids. I never wanted anybody. … I can ignore almost everything, but you.”

“Most looked like parents should – dumpy, peevish and knackered, as if they had been ready-made for the job, all elements of themselves as independent human beings sacrificed on the altar of childcare.”

“Dad climbed E2s and E3s when I was a kid and to me he was the best climber in the world. Like fathers and sons who share a love of football, we shared climbing. I idolised him. I wonder if he ever knew? I wonder if my kids idolise me?”

“The big mountains were for the single and the selfish, those more selfish than me.”

“One of the biggest factors in the slow demise of British alpinism has been the metamorphosis of climbers who could hardly ski, into skiers who climbed.”