The last time I saw Dan Fredinburg, he was heads-down in a tray of food at the cafeteria. I tapped him on the back as I passed by and mumbled some routine hello. A reflexive “Hey we should catch up” caught in my throat when I saw his haggard stare and the robotic shoveling of food into his mouth. He wasn’t really there, and that was very unlike Dan, who was usually so present, so effervescent with pleasure at seeing people and connecting with them in the moment.
I thought I understood: he was about to leave on his second attempt to summit Everest. The first attempt had ended in the most lives lost in a climbing accident on the mountain, when sixteen sherpas died in an avalanche that befell a commercial expedition in April 2014. Dan was acutely aware of the difference in risks for sherpas and expedition customers, and I think he’d been haunted by his contribution to the burden carried by the men who had died trying to help him achieve a dream. I saw the difference in his training this time around, when I’d occasionally spot him in the gym — he moved the heavy weights with a serious sense of purpose, dedicated to raising himself to an even higher level of fitness, without the jokey repartee that we had shared during his training the previous year. This time the journey was about more than just getting to the top because it’s there, more than making the world’s highest StreetView.
Dan died in an avalanche on Everest last Saturday, triggered by the powerful earthquake that now has a death toll of over 4000 people. The cynical will ask why anyone should remark on just one death among these thousands, just the death of a rich, powerful, famous playboy.
Dan wasn’t rich in money. Of course anyone with a good job in Silicon Valley may have wealth in comparison to much of the less fortunate world, but Dan wasn’t a jackpot entrepreneur flaunting his success with expensive hobbies. Instead he was rich in spirit, a wealth far beyond the norm even though it’s accessible to all. He was rich in vision, seeing a way to make his job into his passion, pursuing personal enrichment that’s not about money at all.
Dan wasn’t powerful in the org chart. A talent like Dan could never be a mere cog in a giant machine, but he wasn’t an executive commanding thousands of peons to do his bidding. Instead he was powerful in his presence, in his sheer joy at living, in the force of his will to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.
Dan wasn’t famous in the media. He happened to date an actress, but he never saw people as what they did for a living; he responded only to who they are inside. The memory of Dan will live like a star in all who knew him, surviving well beyond the transitory and dull illumination of the names and faces of the merely famous.
Pablo Neruda often told an anecdote about a hole in the fence of his childhood backyard. It was just a hole in a fence, a tiny view into the landscape beyond, until one day there suddenly appeared a boy’s hand. When he got closer to the fence the hand had disappeared, but in its place was a gift of a marvelous little toy, and this toy touched his heart so much that he left his own in return. The chance view, the momentary and partial encounter with another emerging spirit, the exchange of common but magical gifts — the great poet marks this as the beginning of his understanding that there is a bond between strangers that is greater in its way than the bond between intimates.
I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvellous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses — -that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.
That exchange brought home to me for the first time a precious idea: that all humanity is somehow together… This is the great lesson I learned in my childhood, in the backyard of a lonely house. Maybe it was nothing but a game two boys played who didn’t know each other and wanted to pass to the other some good things of life. Yet maybe this small and mysterious exchange of gifts remained inside me also, deep and indestructible, giving my poetry light.
People say “I’m sorry for your loss” when they hear that someone you know has died. It was really something to know Dan, but I’m not among his closest friends, family and loved ones, so I cannot truly grieve as they do, I have not lost as they have. For me, Dan was a gift spotted through a small hole in the fence that separates us from each other as we wander through our own life paths. I came close enough to see the joy he made of life, and to understand that we are united by something deep and indestructible inside of all of us. I’m grateful for the gift, lucky to have it, and determined to give it to all who pass by and see that these fences are truly no barrier at all.
