Back from the edge

The overwhelming feeling on returning from a climbing trip is initially dogged tiredness, sending you crawling into bed on all fours, this then melts as you regain some outward function and in my case gels more into a mild feeling of emptiness.

The return from the necessarily heightened state you inhabit whilst you are away leaves you empty of Endorphins, a twitching nervous system, cringing, needing another hit.

Its not that I specifically miss anything/anybody, rather that there is a crossing from one state of mind to another.

So when I write about the individual aspects of a trip, the drunk Italian swearing competition, the "who has he killed anyway ?" throwaway comment, the wooded sandy micro deserts, the acorn van bombs, in themselves they are merely closely packed pieces of an experience which was larger and more vibrant than the norm.

I suspect that even the climbing was peripheral, in that it served to stick the group together, but was only one in a cast of thousands.

I reflect that this heightened shared experience is the point of trips/expeditions and to some extent the "objective" is secondary.

I can also see the addiction, the need to be other than the norm, the trance.

So the only question which really remains is....

WHAT NEXT?