It Is Now, Now That We Must Not Give In
I’ve been reading an English translation of Roger Frison-Roche’s 1942 novel First On The Rope. The French mountaineer, now relatively obscure, was a Chamonix guide, his experience of which makes the book authentic. My fingers almost felt numb, during a long section about a terrible climbing ordeal in extreme cold endured by two of the characters, after a third member of the party was killed by lightning. I had an urge to get up and kick the stairs, imagining my slippers were boots with snow in the treads.
I came across this passage, recounting their state of mind, when it finally looked like they were going to survive and make it down to safety.
“A strange lassitude fell upon them both. Now that the danger was over, they seemed to feel a crushing weight on their shoulders which sapped their willpower and made deadweights of their legs; they trailed their bodies like lumps of lead, laboriously heaving up their feet in the deep snow. Georges had to force himself to take care, for only too often accidents happen just when the difficulties seem to be over, when the misleading safety of the lower slopes imparts a sense of false security.”
That reminded of some statistic about how most traffic accidents happen very close to home.
Turns out an estimated fifty two percent of them occur within five miles of a person’s home and seventy seven percent occur within fifteen miles or less, according to one study. While this statistic may seem shocking, the fact is people often tend to relax and go on auto-pilot when they are on familiar streets and roads. They feel more comfortable with the terrain and often do not maintain the same level of alert as they would in other areas.
We all want to get home, don’t we? We want to put our feet up, have a glass of wine and read or binge watch something and just let down our guard by the hearth around people with whom we don’t need a mask. It’s stressful out there, it’s been a tough year.
We just want this to be over.
Which is when accidents occur.
I had to remind myself of that yesterday, going to work in the cold dark morning, putting on my COVID armor, preparing for another climb. I found myself reciting these lines from Dag Hammarskjöld over and over again, like an incantation. Like a prayer.
Tired
And lonely,
So tired
The heart aches.
Melt water trickles
Down the rocks,
The fingers are numb,
The knees tremble.
It is now,
Now, that you must not give in.
On the path of the others
Are resting places,
Places in the sun
Where they can meet.
But this
Is your path,
And it is now,
Now, that you must not fail.
Weep
If you can,
Weep,
But do not complain.
The way chose you
And you must be thankful.
It’s good to admit we’re tired and that our hearts ache. Good to say it and good to feel it. It’s important to say it over and over again:”It is now, now, that you must not give in,” whether we mean it or not.
Vaccinations are in sight, but maybe normal (“home”) isn’t until next year. We want to just stop all of this, have it be over, to have certainty, to take off our clunky climbing gear.
It goes without saying that this way did choose us, all of us, in this place and time. The only question is whether we can bring it home safely.
