As I was ascending the mountain towards the peak, trudging along, step after step, I felt a cool breeze on my neck that momentarily gave me relief from the weight of my backpack pushing down against my shoulder and neck. I adjusted the bag-strap around my waist. ChatGPT told me that the waist strap should be tight and flush around the waist. And ideally it should be holding 60-70% of the weight of the bag. I loosened the strap a bit to check if it was carrying any weight at all. Nothing changed really. I tightened it hard. Nothing changed. I shrugged my shoulders and moved on. If my neck and shoulders were going to be sore, so be it. The truth was that my hiking backpack was designed for someone with a longer torso than mine, no amount of adjustment would correct that. Hey, at least I never suffer for leg space on long-haul flights.
The breeze made me look around momentarily. I'd moved quite far up above the valley where I began my climb. It felt good to look down into the valley knowing that the entire vertical distance was covered by the strength of my leg muscles. It was silent. I was just a bit higher than the canopy of the woods below. While the altitude was too high for trees to grow here, the undergrowth and shrubbery was still lush. There were many bees, butterflies, birds, flies - an assortment of winged creatures, all fluttering around close by. Maybe there were puzzled and wondering what this legged creature was doing so high up, all alone.
It was a good question to ponder. My first thoughts were about how great it was to be there. In the silence, in the low hum of various forest sounds, breathing in the mountain air. It's the best phase. Taking steps forward felt natural, almost like breathing. Moving forward felt great, purposeful. Then the muscles started to tire, the spring in my step vanished.
That's when the other thoughts start to kick in. Yes, the valley floor is far away, but the top of the mountain is even further. I didn't have to rely on my eyes for this - my phone was connected to the internet and GPS. I had the route saved along with the terrain, the elevation profile, the distance. I knew my exact altitude, how much further I still had to go. It is hard to savour the epic valley views when you have all this information immediately at your disposal. So much for being alone with nature.
These thoughts often plague me while going on long runs. The brain gets chatty. Ummm, why exactly are we doing this? What was wrong with sleeping for two more hours? Are you trying to prove something to someone? Do you expect some great stillness in your mind before all the "answers" come gushing in? What is the question exactly? What do you want? Clarity? Perspective? What do those words even mean? Solitude is just some fake stuff that novelist types like to glorify. Just stop, turn back and go chill in your apartment. Hang out with some friends. Get a life.
I don't have great arguments for this. Sure, health, fitness, lifespan, all that jazz. But there are way easier ways to achieve it. Deadlifts. Yoga. Better diets. I hear these things all the time. I don't know if that's a big motivation. I think about these things occasionally.
The human body is a great machine though. And I really appreciated this three-fourths of the way up, carrying my rather heavy backpack. It's a classic conundrum - the further you want to go, the more time you need. The longer you go, the more food/supplies you need. The more you carry, the heavier your load. The heavier your load, the slower you go. And it's harder to go further if you're going to go slow. Humanity first solved this problem by outsourcing the load-bearing to horses. Then came heavy machinery. Trains, automobiles, aircrafts. (This was a problem on land - on water buoyancy would bear your load and you could go with the wind and currents)
There's something that still makes the human machine amazing in my opinion. Let's come back to the problem of load versus speed. One of the heaviest things a fighter jet carries is its own engine and its fuel. The more powerful the engine, usually the heavier it is and the more fuel it burns. You can of course make a highly efficient engine - one that extracts the maximum amount of energy out of the fuel it burns. But there are hard limits on this. The weight of the engine itself then becomes a bigger challenge. You can use a lighter material, but this material then needs to have the strength and resistance to heat and deformation to carry out its task. Very few nations have this capability - to develop a modern fighter jet engine. India tried with the Kaveri programme and ultimately didn't get very far.
Even then, let's say you have this cutting-edge fighter jet engine ready. Here's the key point - it's going to look and work very very differently from a commercial jet engine. Or a car engine. You could stick this engine on a Boeing 747 and it would not get you very far. And a B747's engine (or all 4 of them) would work terribly on a fighter jet.
Now look at me and my "engine". The muscles and the cardiovascular system that drive me. I'm not a big guy by any means (actually quite tiny), nor would anyone passing by think of me as someone very muscular. But I was able to climb over a 1000 m in altitude carrying a backpack that was ~10% of my own weight. I'm not boasting here, but many people would struggle to do a fraction of that. And many people would do much more arduous stuff very very easily as well. With the same nuts and bolts - muscles, and a beating heart. Of course, the percentage of muscle mass, the metabolic efficiency, etc would vary a lot. But they would look so similar, if you made them stand next to each other, it would even be hard to tell the difference. It's a few kilograms of muscle shifted around that makes all the difference.
A jet engine (or 4) can never do both, carry a large commercial jet across a continent, and power a fighter jet through extreme maneuvers with ferocious acceleration. Heck, even a Boeing 747 engine would be too large to be carried by a small, short-haul aircraft or a private jet. It would be ungainly and inefficient. OP, as the kids say these days. On the other hand, the same person who can achieve extraordinary feats of endurance and strength can also join us for a jolly stroll by the beach and they would function perfectly well. The elite runner Eliud Kipchoge would actually look a bit skinny standing next to me. You could point to the muscles on his legs - but that's exactly my point - you would need to point to them. Because only small additional weight of muscles enables him to run 42.2 km in just over 2 hours.
These marvelous thoughts about human muscles (and those of other creatures) kept me going through a part of the climb. It didn't answer my brain's polite enquiries. What exactly are we doing up these giddy heights? Wouldn't a weekend away to a chill tourist spot have been better? You can afford a small cable-car ride up a mountain to savour the same or even better views. Do novelist types have an impact on me? Am I easily impressionable and swayed by their words, even though I claim to be so mindful and independent in my thoughts?
Good writing does have a way of influencing people. I used to be more willing to believe people who put across a point well. Things have flipped on their head now - if something is too well expressed, I assume it's AI-generated. I more readily believe something with a few lines of clunky text and occasional grammatical misses. (like this blog post lol)
With my head ringing with these thoughts, I pressed on. I was hoping for the grunt and the silence and the natural surroundings to provide me with answers. All I got was questions about what exactly the question is. There was no epiphany. No profound life-changing moment in the silence later, under the clear night-sky. No divine visions - just a sore neck and sore limbs.
And so I began the descent - this time along an easier route. I walked and walked until I reached a bridge over a little river. It was more of a large stream really. The railway track was just across the river, the station just a 5 minute walk downstream. This was where I started the hike the previous morning. I had half an hour until the next train passed this tiny town. I spotted a lawn next to the river. A few people were enjoying a dip in the water. A sign told me it was a public bath.
I was extremely sore. I did the maths - I could make my train with some time to spare even if I invested in a quick dip. It was tempting. I pulled the trigger. I had come prepared with swimwear and a towel. It had weighed heavily on my back the whole time, but now the hike was done and I wasn't complaining. The water was crystal clear. Warm enough to not put my body into shock, cold enough to jolt me awake! Like a post-lunch espresso at work.
I had to be quick. I enjoyed splashing about for a minute before getting out and hurriedly gathering my things. I put on my shoes and looked around. It was a beautiful spot. Ahead in the distance, towering over me were the peaks I had scaled. And somewhere to the side, under the shadow of the highest peak in sight, was the little hut where I spent the night under the stars. Unseen to my eyes from the valley, but I knew it was there.
At that moment within me was a small sense of satisfaction. A sense of pride. Pride without reason? Well yes. It won't register in the annals of mountaineering achievements. It's debatable whether it was mountaineering. Or an achievement. It was just walking. One foot, following the other, then the next, then the next. Over and over and over. With every step you had to make sure your feet were on sound ground. And ignore the swirling thoughts in your head. That is all. That itself is a kind of meditation.
There are some things in this world you are excited to do. You think it would be really cool and fun! It starts well, and then it sucks. But you've already started, so you just keep going. And then when you look back, you forget the part where it sucked. You remember only that you did it. And in the little world in your head, it means something to you. It means something that you can share it with those three friends who think its cool. And you want to do it again!
There are no answers. There are ill-defined questions. But above all, there is our sense of self. Meaning, Reflection. And uninterrupted thoughts that can go into a blog post.
Maybe that was the epiphany. Not on the journey, but looking back on it.