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Outside Magazine December 2001

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Seismic Shift (Cont.)

WHERE DOES ADVENTURE lie in the range of human endeavor? Somewhere between sport and war.

Any great adventure is a physical challenge. A marathon may last three and a half hours; a Himalayan expedition is seldom shorter than three weeks. And yet it's not simply stamina that is required, but technique developed through years of practice—the gymnastic ability to pull through a difficult move on rock, the uncoiling precision of a kayaker's Eskimo roll. But adventure moves beyond the realm of pure sport at the point where sport moves into the realm of mortal consequence.

In most sports, if you make the wrong decision you probably won't pay for it with your life. You may twist an ankle or break bones, but you won't die. Make the wrong call climbing a big mountain or kayaking a big river, and it could be your last.

Adventures have objective hazards. The jaws of an icefall, boat-swallowing holes, flesh-freezing cold. The secret of getting good at adventure is to develop the skills to accurately assess and circumvent these deadly traps. Some of us are still randomly picked off by rockfall, lightning, and storms, but most deaths can be attributed to bad judgment.

Not so in war. The risk of death, along with the crucial relevance of teamwork, esprit de corps, and trust, are where war and adventure overlap, but there are at least three fundamental distinctions.

First, obstacles in war are other humans (and their manufactured hazards—booby traps, bombs, bullets) who are incomparably more clever and unpredictable than water or rock or weather.

Second, in war, innocent people always die along with the soldiers. When adventure goes wrong, innocent people are not killed. Adventurers usually risk their own lives, not those of others.

Third, in war, participants are not allowed the freedom to make consequential decisions; they must face danger without holding authority over their fate. To maintain discipline amid the terror of war, the chain of command must be rigidly hierarchical. In adventure, the onus is almost always on the individual. This freedom of will is the embodiment of adventure.

Three days later Greg called again. He had just hitched a ride around K2 in a Pakistani military chopper, on the way back from visiting one of CAI's schools.

"It was gorgeous!" he said, his voice sounding faint from the distance. "I don't think there is a more beautiful place on the planet. I wish everyone could trek into this part of the Karakoram. But maybe right now's not the time."

I told Greg I'd been concerned about the prospect of reporting in a war zone after months of preparing to write about the adventure we'd organized, and that I was wrestling over the distinction between war and adventure.

"They're poles apart," he responded. "Adventure is a building-up process. It's about appreciating beauty, nature, and people. War is a tearing-down process."

He launched into all he'd learned about himself and the world through adventure, from climbing Kilimanjaro in 1969 at the age of 11 to his life-changing attempt on K2 in 1993. Like the rest of us, he still has a list of hoped-for journeys: to follow in the footsteps of 19th-century British Great Game spies across the Himalayas; to ascend a number of unclimbed peaks north of the Hindu Kush; to walk across northeastern Afghanistan as we had planned.

"Adventure is touching the fringes of your own physical, mental, and spiritual dreams. Adventure is connecting with other people. You know who are the best ambassadors for America? Not diplomats. Adventurers. Many villagers over here have seen the Rambo movies. But the the ones who actually meet Americans suddenly see us as humans, not villains. And these same travelers return home capable of seeing 'the enemy' as human. It sounds so trivial, so simple..."

The line started popping, his voice grew faint. "Mark, I'll call you back. We have to make a decision."

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