I have been watching a lot of climbing documentaries this week, which is strange as I’ve never climbed, yet for some reason I am hooked on them. Today I watched ‘Touching the Void’ on 4od and was blown away by what one of the survivors said.  This might sound weird but I can’t really explain or pinpoint exactly what it is about what he said that struck me, I just can’t stop thinking about it. Its profundity has touched me to the core in a disturbingly beautiful sense and I can’t get it out my mind as much as I try. I feel the need to understand it and what it means for the dying process that each of us will one day have to go through but my mind cannot grasp it fully enough, I am just  really amazed by it.

To briefly put you in the context of the documentary, the mountaineer was pretty much as close to death as is humanly possible after a turn of disastrous events on the mountain left him in a desperate situation. He had just about resigned himself to the fact his death was imminent and in recalling the situation he described how it felt in the following way…..

‘It was the first night, I think,  it hadn’t stormed. It didn’t snow on me and it didn’t rain. And I could see the stars. I can remember lying on my back for what seemed endless periods of time, staring at the stars.

At one point I had this strange sensation that I had been lain there, conscious, for centuries, for lifetimes. Becoming part of the rocks, and part of where I was never gonna move from.’ (Joe Simpson – Touching the Void)

WOW. Mind blown.