It’s been about a week now since Sir Edmund Hillary passed.  While I took note of it at the time, I’ve found the past couple days I’ve been thinking, not so much about him, but about the call of the mountains.  While I admired Hillary, he wasn’t a personal hero of mine.  Being the “first” at something just doesn’t matter that much to me.  I’m not that competitive.

But lately I’ve been reading books about mountain climbing.  First I read Savage Summit by Jennifer Jordan about the first five women who climbed K2 in Pakistan.  Then I read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer about surviving Mount Everest’s deadliest climbing season.  I was completely absorbed by both books.  I would wake up at night and find myself reading at 2 a.m.  Neither book made me want to turn to mountain climbing–I hate being cold. But I could relate to the drive these people felt for the need to have something in their lives that was so compelling it took precedence over nearly everything else in their lives.

I can relate although I don’t desire it.  There have been times in my life that I’ve been absorbed by something else–a lover, blues music, my writing.  For a while I might have lost myself in it but eventually I realized that such complete absorption was self-indulgent.  I lost sight of the way my actions affected the people around me.

I don’t know if that’s the kind of man Sir Edmund Hillary was.  The fact that he lived to an old age and didn’t die on the side of a mountain seems to indicate that other things were important to him as well as the mountains.  The obsessed often become so involved with their obsession that it kills them.

I don’t think it’s the same as living passionately.  Passion is a good thing.  It’s the spark that keeps you interested in life–in all the many shades and forms that life and love manifests itself.