I don't know how appropriate it is for me to draw attention to an article of my own making, but it has to do with an issue that sooner or later (hopefully the latter!) will affect us all. Life and death, climbing and not climbing, mountains or naught...it'll eventually be all too real. Which it is for me. Now. How does one share this sort of thing? Emotional, tough stuff—quite difficult to set down in words.

So I guess I've decided to post this as an invitation to check it out. And most definitely I don't mean to be presumptuous, but like I say, my time to deal with this is now; I hope yours is far distant. At any rate there are a lot of Montana pictures, mostly—not entirely—mine, and the writing, which you can make of what you will, is entirely mine. If it doesn't come across, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, that's okay, I did the best I was able.

Anyway, it's not any kind of SP Article I've yet seen. Maybe you'll find it of interest. "Enjoy" is probably not the right word.

A Gathering of Mortality

Climb safe....

—Vernon - "saintgrizzly"

(For any of you enjoying Classical music, you want to know what the mountains do to me/mean to me?

Listen to the Schubert 9th, Mahler 2nd, or Brahms 4th. Then you'll know.)

WOW. Thank you for taking the time to write this.

Very eloquent writing. You have a real talent, which I expect is amplified by the emotion of your situation. The meeting of people that you describe, whether real or metaphoric, is very poignant and reflective, as is the contrast of the black and white images.

From my standpoint, I several times faced harbingers that implied or that I felt could bring my demise. A time before a climbing trip where, from multiple sources, I was warned not go, and I hung on a stark rockface in mist and gloom, where at every move I reflected that it could be my last. Yet I took control and I made it through. I was told that I had changed my Karma. Something, which is believed impossible. And in the past and at more recent times, physical attacks on my wellbeing, debilitating openings in my armour that deeply rattled my psyche. But in both of these situations, I simply would not accept the notion of fate.

So along the way and in such troubled times, I have stood fast, albeit that my mental state caused me to feel that the thread on which I hung was now a cotton. From one day to the next and year on year I never gave in to accepting that I would and will not become my former self. By sheer doggedness, this cotton thread became a silken one. Just like the strength of spider's thread, I use my years of mountaineering to climb out of the pit into which I fell - one foot in front of the other, each scratching move a little nearer betterment but oh so heavy a weight to haul. Yet no mental or physical battle can ever be unclimbable when one has trod endlessly in the heights. I do not accept that an external force controls my wellbeing, nor that ill health happens by chance, for it comes from within. Ones body has the ability to heal itself of anything because it made itself sick. The mind must rule, and the body will follow. And whether it is via a road of harmony or brute will and determination, I would choose any path. Indeed, I have applied both.

What we think and believe is what we are and what we become. I write and think what I want to become as I know that one can write ones own story and where it leads is decided by oneself. I utterly believe it.

Keep writing, but in the direction you want to go. Not the direction which appears before you. Believe it, right down to the very core.

Vernon, you are indeed a special guy. Your support has inspired me on more than one occasion. One of the few on this site who I felt could relate to my insatiable appetite for all things natural and most particularly the "wild" in wilderness. March on my brave friend.

Very eloquent, very moving and truly inspirational. As someone else has said, it's not just an article, it's literature.

Thank you, Sir and all the best!

I had to see what all the kudo's were about.

And yes, quite nice.