Heaven, For Me, Is One Focused Project

The Desert Sharpened The Sweet Ache Of His Longing, Amplified It, Gave Shape To It In Sere Geology And Clean Slant Of Light.

When A Young Person Is Moved By A Passion And Feels Compelled To Go On This Sort Of Quest, I Think You Have To Let Him. You Can't Stop Him. In Our Culture We Don't Have Formal Rights Of Passage Like In Some Ancient Cultures. Subjecting Yourself To Risk... May Be Something You Have To Go Through To Be A Man Or A Woman.

Unlike Most Of Life, What You Do Really Matters. Your Actions Have Real Consequences. You Have To Pay Attention And Focus, And That's Very Satisfying. It Forces You To Pay Great Attention And You Lose Yourself In The Task At Hand. Without The Risk, That Wouldn't Happen, So The Risk Is An Essential Part Of Climbing, And That's Hard For Some People To Grasp. You Can't Justify The Risk When Things Go Wrong And People Die. The Greater The Risk, The Greater The Reward In Most Aspects Of Life, And In Climbing That's Certainly True, Too. It's Very Physical, You Use Your Mind And Your Body.

Although The Far Territory Of The Extreme Can Exert An Intoxicating Pull On Susceptible Individuals Of All Bents, Extremism Seems To Be Especially Prevalent Among Those Inclined By Temperament Or Upbringing Toward Religious Pursuits. Faith Is The Very Antithesis Of Reason, Injudiciousness A Crucial Component Of Spiritual Devotion. And When Religious Fanaticism Supplants Ratiocination, All Bets Are Suddenly Off.

He Read A Lot. He Used A Lot Of Big Words. I Think Maybe Part Of What Got Him Into Trouble Was That He Did Too Much Thinking. Sometimes He Tried Too Hard To Make Sense Of The World, To Figure Out Why People Were Bad To Each Other So Often. A Couple Of Times I Tried To Tell Him It Was A Mistake To Get Too Deep Into That Kind Of Stuff, But Alex Got Stuck On Things. He Always Had To Know The Absolute Right Answer Before He Could Go On To The Next Thing.