by Ben Fogle
The End
I feel like I’ve been spat out from the eye of a tornado. Chaos has turned to stunned silence. It is like I am living in a fog. I can still picture the moment of burning bright light on the summit. The lucidity and epiphany. It is there within touching distance, and yet I can’t quite reach it.
I have been a little lost since my return. It’s not uncommon for people after a long expedition to suffer a form of depression. The excitement and adrenaline of the adventure is brought back to earth with the comparative mundanity of everyday life.
I have experienced it often. Post-expedition blues as I call it. The return to civilian life. It’s no surprise that many soldiers experience the same thing after a life of institutionalised warfare and discipline, returning to civvy street with a bump. Many struggle to adapt to the comparative normality of life again.
Expeditions demand resourcefulness and resilience. They keep you on your toes as you are forced to become more creative. Hunger, thirst, tiredness, exhaustion and discomfort become the norm; everything else is a relief.
Back in the normal world, it’s the suffering that is abnormal. Normal life gets flipped on its head and expectations change.
The first time I suffered post-journey blues was when I returned from a year in South America. For a year, I had stimulated my mind with new colours, smells, tastes, sounds, cultures and experiences. For 12 months, my life had burned brightly, like a Bunsen burner, and suddenly I was back to my old life.
I remember vividly sitting in the pub with my friends. Everything was the same. Nothing had changed. Internally, I felt like I had lived a lifetime of experiences. I had found my inner being, and yet all around me was the same. It was discombobulating and confusing. I found it difficult to re-adapt to life. Which was the real life? Which was normal? In my mind, I had experienced such riches, but all around me was sameness.
It was that sameness that felt intolerable. So many people become slaves to normality. They follow society’s expectations. Study hard. Get a good job. Get a mortgage and a house. Have a family. Retire. Die. Every part of me wanted to turn my back on this, to set off again and to return to those intoxicating experiences where my mind was constantly stimulated. I wanted to feed my mind.
‘But you can’t just travel for your whole life,’ said a friend, ‘you’ll have to get a job and earn a living.’
It has always surprised me how man has become a slave to conformity. I don’t know if it is instinct or habit. Nature or nurture. Society instils a culture that creates a herd-like mentality in which we are all chasing the same dream.
For the last couple of years, I have travelled the globe for a TV series called Where the Wild Men Are in which I’ve spent time with people, couples and families who have shunned society’s ‘norms’ and gone on to pursue their dreams. Living off the grid in the wilderness, they have decided to search for a simpler, happier life. Let’s be honest, life is pretty complicated now. Technology has evolved supposedly to make our lives easier, but in fact it has only made it harder.
Connected to the world 24 hours a day, we have become slaves to technology and information. Our brains work overtime to process information we don’t really need. The result is that we move further and further from our natural roots. The wilderness becomes a relic, something to marvel at in a museum.
Expeditions have the same powerful effect. After an intense period of sacrifice and abstinence, it can be a shock to return to gluttony and comfort.
I have often thought that expeditions are like a mirror to the natural world in which care and resourcefulness become a daily part of life. Rationing of resources and respect for your environment become the norm. In urbanised society, we are often so disconnected with the reality of life beyond the cityscape that it can be hard to care. Priorities become warped as we find ourselves driven by cold, hard materialism. The wilderness and natural world become abstract, a place to visit as one would a theme park. Is it any wonder we are so screwed as a species?
It is between these two worlds, gluttony and greed, abstinence and suffering, that I have straddled a lifetime of experiences. I used to find the return overwhelming. I struggled to re-adjust, but the more I experienced, the better accustomed I became. I have always wondered which one was normality.
Coming back from travels to far and distant places is one thing. Returning from a long expedition is another. The first time I had this was when I returned from rowing the Atlantic. For two long months, I had suffered and endured with minimal sleep on the high seas. Life had revolved around a whole new routine of two hours on, two hours off, 24 hours a day.
Water, food and sleep were all luxuries. Solitude and danger had become constant companions. And suddenly I was back in central London. It was overwhelming and the first time I had experienced a real ‘low’. Everything felt a little mundane. No one really understood what I had been through.
Although I had learned to deal with these lows, Everest was different. I had walked the narrow line between life and death. I had stared the grim reaper in the eyes. Mortality and immortality. I had lived the fine line between life and death.
Everest had burned so brightly, with such intensity. It had been like a blood transfusion. I felt like my soul had been replaced.
Perhaps it was the spirituality of the experience. I felt like I had been closer to something else. Despite a lifetime of experiences, I felt I had connected on another level. Not in a god-like way but with nature itself. For a short period of time, I had stood where so few had been before me. I had risked my life to walk through a little portal into a parallel world.
I have lived a life of contradictions and parallels, but Everest had been one of the most profound examples of that. On one level, it had been life affirming and brilliantly illuminating and yet I find myself in a perpetual fog.
Perhaps it is the starvation of my brain. For far too many days in the death zone, I restricted the oxygen flowing to my brain. Studies suggest that 12 out of 13 summiteers suffer brain damage to some degree.
My mind has definitely been altered. I am slower. I am more forgetful. I feel calmer and more at peace. Somewhere in the distant corners of my mind I feel is ‘me’, the person I have been looking for all my life. I feel such pride and contentment at what I have achieved and yet I still feel a little numb, like I am someone else. I sometimes wonder if I left a little of myself on Everest.
Shortly after returning home, I called Victoria to see how she was doing. I hadn’t wanted to sound to intense or to gloat, so I had left it a couple of days to allow myself time to re-acclimatise before speaking to her.
‘Hey Vic, how are you doing?’ I chirped breezily down the phone.
‘Not good,’ she replied before bursting into tears.
I was shocked. I hadn’t realised the profound impact the journey would have on her. Not for once did I ever consider her a failure. Her journey simply had a different ending. Vic had put in more of an effort than any of us, but it was her genetic code that had let her down.
To hear her suffering was heart-breaking. She had come back with a chest infection and the combination of her altitude sickness with ill health and the disappointment of not reaching the summit had colluded to form a perfect storm. She had been diagnosed with clinical depression.
‘I feel like I left a part of me on the mountain,’ she admitted when I went to see her.
The experience had been as profound for Vic as it had for me. The solitude and power of the mountains had affected her deeply and she was struggling to adapt. Of course, hers was a cocktail of disappointment and regret. For the first time in her life, her body, something she had been able to mould, adapt and control more than almost anyone else on the planet, had let her down. Her experience was nothing to do with her mental or physical aptitude. It was a physiological one.
I felt guilt and remorse. It felt like it was partly my fault that she felt this way. If I hadn’t invited her to join me on this expedition, then she wouldn’t have crash
ed.
But then life isn’t all about the Hollywood ending. That’s probably why I love that Churchill quote, ‘Success is stumbling from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’
Life is about light and shade. It is contrasts and colour. Sameness and monotony make us all sheep in a field. What are we if we simply conform to normality? What is normal anyway?
Victoria had shown such resilience and fortitude on Everest. I find her strength and determination inspiring.
The reality is that Victoria hadn’t failed. Hers was just a different ending. Of course, it was tinged with disappointment, but the experience for Victoria had been life altering nonetheless.
For Victoria and for me, the journey had been the destination. Together we had climbed endless, soaring peaks across the world. We had been privileged to enter the unique world of mountaineering; to learn new skills and to experience a high-altitude wilderness that few people in the world are lucky enough to see. The expedition was always about teamwork and I learned a great deal from Vic. It was a unique, life-changing experience that will bond us forever.
We are already planning another adventure, only this one a little closer to sea-level.
As for me, despite a lifetime of experiences I am still at a loss, but I feel like I’m closer than I have ever been to an answer.
Life is about the pursuit of your own dream. You must follow your heart and your soul. There will always be an excuse and reason why you shouldn’t. It is so easy to become a slave to the norms, the expectations of society.
The key is to be true to yourself. To be who you are, not what other people want you to be. Individuality is the spice of life. This heady mix can build the spirit and cement the foundations of confidence, and believe me, with confidence you can achieve anything. The confidence of belief and trust in yourself is half the battle. Together they help build an armour to approach life with zest and energy.
When we lost our little boy Willem, I made a promise to live my life brightly. I wanted to embrace opportunity and live it as intensely as I could. As a father, I want to inspire my children to be whoever they want to be, to never be told they can’t, won’t and shouldn’t, and to live a life of dos, cans and will. I have tried to flip a world of negatives into one of positives. I have tried to turn frowns into smiles. Pessimism into optimism.
There is a general assumption that money is the key to happiness. Most people aspire to accumulate finances as a sign of wealth. Society puts a price tag on everything and we often attribute success to wealth.
The material world is built around mankind’s desire to accumulate money and to then buy things we don’t really need. Materialism and commercialism propagate a kind of one-upmanship. The bigger house, the faster car, the more exotic holiday. You only need to read the newspapers or follow social media to see society’s obsession.
Greed and jealousy are the inevitable symptoms whereby we become slaves to the pound or the dollar. Money is king. We worship it. We are blinded to it. We pursue it to the detriment of all else.
For me, the pursuit of experiences is the real wealth of life. I could die having amassed a great fortune, with a huge mansion and an expensive car, but what good is that? Some would argue that you are building your wealth as a legacy to leave your children and their children, but what is the good in that?
Some of the unhappiest people I know are those who have been born into great wealth. Great fortune inhibits ambition and breeds lethargy. If you have everything already, where is the drive and desire?
There are plenty of stories of people who have won the lottery, whose lives have got worse rather than better. Many people find it intolerable to reach the pinnacle of aspirations. When, all your life, you have aspired to become a millionaire, and suddenly, overnight, your ambition is achieved, the only way is down.
A little like the post-expedition blues, life loses a sense of purpose and direction. What do you work towards? Of course there are plenty of examples of those who have turned to philanthropy with their great fortune. Bill Gates doesn’t strike me as someone who has lost his ambitious mojo, but for many, the achievement and fruition of their goal can often result in a bit of a let-down.
In my case, it was when you climb the highest mountain and realise the only way is down. But here’s the point. It isn’t. It’s merely the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. Life isn’t about the pursuit of a single dream. It isn’t about the achievement of one goal. Life is a mixture of so many things.
My life is not about acquiring financial wealth but acquiring experiential wealth. I will not leave my children a vast fortune, but I will leave them a great sum of life experiences, and the attitude that they too should pursue their dreams.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the sum of life is not what we have but who we are. The most interesting people I have met are those who have broken from the shackles of society to pursue their own dreams.
Everest in some ways was the pinnacle of my own aspirations. Nothing about my climb was particularly unique: many others have achieved what I did and the mountain is a far safer and busier place than it was 50 years ago when the likes of Mallory and Irvine sacrificed their lives in the pursuit of ambition and inspiration for a nation coming out of the horrors of war.
But Everest was the culmination of my own romantic dreams. Each individual who stands atop that mountain has their own profound epiphany. For many it is fleeting. For all it is dangerous. For some it is enriching and empowering, and for me it was profoundly life affirming.
My life has never conformed. It has been as unstructured as it has been uncontemporary. Individual and unique, I have always tried to follow my own path, rather than stick to the most well-trodden one.
Uniqueness and individuality can come at a cost. Risk and failure. Sacrifice and discomfort. But with it, come the riches of experience and fulfilment.
I want to live a life full of the riches of happiness and satisfaction. I want to live a life with no regrets. My legacy to my children is to be true to who you are, not what society expects you to be. I want them to know that there will always be more in them. To never give up or give in.
Everest brought me riches beyond my wildest dreams. It was like discovering a treasure chest, the contents of which I am still unpacking. For my family, I hope I will be able to translate and transfer my experience. I hope that it will make me a better father and husband.
Life is so precious. The fragility of our mortality is hidden behind the camouflage of society. In man’s effort to harness and tame the wilderness, we have endeavoured to control our very existential being. We have tried to hold back the unstoppable march of time.
Through health and wellbeing, medicine and surgery we have tried to halt the slow march to old age. Through health and safety and risk management we have tried to shield ourselves from the reality of mortality. We do not speak of death. It is the last taboo.
Loss is spoken of in hushed tones. We are frightened to confront it. To admit it. The problem is that denying our own mortality is to forfeit the true engagement of life. By kidding ourselves, we fail to grasp life and make the most of it.
By no means should we live each day in fear of the end, but we are all heading that way, Up.
There’s that word again, Up. Upwards. We bury people in the ground, yet I can’t help but believe that our souls soar upwards, to somewhere higher.
Man has increasingly become a downward-looking species. Through technological innovation, we have become more inward thinking and downward looking.
Everest reminded me to look Up. To admire life. To confront it. To behold it and to seize it.
On Everest, everything was illuminating. For a fleeting moment, everything made sense. It was like I was given privileged insight behind the scenes of life. For an hour on top of that mountain, I lived in a unique world that is now gone.
As I stood on the roof of the world, I peered down at the world beneath me and I looked Up towards that above me.<
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Despite the solitude and isolation of that lonely, remote place where so few have stood, I didn’t feel alone. I had never been alone. The spirit of my little boy lost was there. Willem had always been there. Watching. Caring. Protecting.
I had never been given the chance to care for him. I had failed to protect him. But he had been my guide and my guardian. I felt his presence. We had done this together. I had fulfilled my own promise to him to live my life and pursue my dreams.
Below was a landscape that reminded me of our relative inconsequentiality on this planet, while above me was the seemingly barren nothingness of what lay ahead.
But through that dark sky shone the bright stars of hope.
Although I had reached the physical finality of the summit, from now on the only way was Up.
Epilogue
‘Daddy came back! It was so exciting to see him! He smelt of rotten cheese. Storm even knew where we were going! Ludo said, “I almost cried with happiness.” I said, “I almost said Yippee!”’
This was Iona’s entry in her weekend news diary for school after my return.
As the Irish novelist George A. Moore once said, ‘A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.’
I have been overwhelmed by the tide of warmth and goodwill since coming home. Everest still holds a fascination for millions of people.
