Say No To This

How does a broken toed, bad knees, repetitive strained, thoracic outlet, klutzy bastard climb a mountain at night? Not very well it turns out. busted left foot for the next week due to a turned ankle. Not to mention too many cuts and bruises to mention.

So the most important thing I forgot about climbing mountains is that you need to go down once you get up.

Also that you must bring food and instant coffee.

Yes I know, I win the prize for deductive reasoning with this insight. What next brilliant insight will we learn from Matthew, don’t drink the water in Bali else you’ll get sick… Oh wait.

So as most of you know I like pushing myself. The last two months before this trip I was spending on average 2 hours at the gym daily. I will constantly find myself exhausted during HIIT sucking down air, wanting to die and then push myself for another ten minutes, and do it again and again and again and then take a yoga class.

I understand my body pretty well. I honestly thought with my regime of cardio that this would be a bit difficult but nothing to much….. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA we were the last one down the mountain. Though we were the first of our group on top I believe.

Since I was trapped in a fever dream at that point and so sweat slicked that you could ring my shirt into a water bottle and fill it up to the top, maybe you shouldn’t trust my memory. I could blame the food poising but honestly this hike was brutal. Incredibly vertical, loose rocks everywhere and nothing to fashion into a walking stick to help with climbing the inclines. The guide had to help me a lot going down and at the very top by just being a supporting rod. Which is so embarrassing, especially since I’ve been working so hard on being strong and being able to work with my own body weight. But I was way too gone near the end even to feel embarrassed, just this deep ache of wanting it all to be over and to take a shower.

Will Matthew attempt this every again, unequivocally no. For myself this was way too dangerous and straining with not enough upside. At a certain point you can’t push yourself further without risking major injury. On a trek you can’t pull the plug you are stuck there. I won’t put myself in a position again. Oh and I rolled my ankle 100 meters from the end. Boom tish

So what was up this mountain anyway.

CLOUUUUUUUUUDS

&

MONKEYS!!!!

&

HOLY SHIT A LOT OF CLIMBERS

You could see them as an unbroken line of stars climbing the mountain as we went up around 4AM. I counted around 400 all working towards the same goal. Get to the summit for sunrise and take your selfi amongst the clouds.

Then feel too tired to move for at least two hours before heading down again while you drink your coffee and look at the sunrise.

It’s a long way down.

Even me perpetual selfi hater had to take one. Hey it’ll work well for tinder.

This situation plays to the heart of what I struggle daily with as a photographer. WHY AND HOW DO I PHOTOGRAPH SOMETHING. I’m not special. I’m not so smart or so A-E-S-T-H-E-T-I-C that what I capture is new. What do I have say that is going to be greater then all these people around me taking similar or identical photos. This mountain gets hundreds of thousands of people yearly, all equipped with smart phones or cameras. Any angle, any focal length, any time of day has been shot, uploaded and commented about long before this moment.

But not by me.

Photography is time, place, and the person shooting. We tend to erase the person shooting outside of the selfi. The photograph just exists as a object of truth. This happened here and now. But the more I think about what I shoot, the more I think about why I shoot what I shoot, and what it says about me that I choose this, here, now. Beauty is not fleeting but it’s not my main concern. I ❤ documenting and showing people as people. It’s not glamorous and it’ll probably never make me famous in the art circles. But it’s what I want to do. So here’s a bunch of photos on how a large group of mostly Indonesians celebrate climbing a mountain. Because I can’t take a new photo of the mountains but I can take the only photos of these people on this day and hopefully do it interesting to boot.

And now adieu because my legs might fall off any minutes. Iphone logged 8 miles and 150 steps climbed.

❤

Bergman