I could live without spraying but not without climbing.
Some of the activities I include in what climbing is for me are pretty low-risk, basically hiking. Some of them are high-risk, like free soloing or highball bouldering. I think I like them all equally... certainly I do not prefer the high-risk ones.
I do need to do things other than climb. I know I can't make it as a full time climber. I tried it and I didn't like the eternal poverty or the inability to use my education. But I see my life outside climbing as enabling or supporting my climbing time.
Really, climbing bears a lot of resemblance to other obsessive hobbies. Let's say instead of climbing, this discussion was about model train building, or stamp collecting. As climbers we would all probably think it was dumb to collect stamps if it was that risky. But what are the stamp collectors getting out of it?
This isn't really an essay. It's more of a series of disconnected paragraphs. Basically I see two extreme ends and a lot of people in the middle with responses. At one end is the Dan Osman, (maybe Tobin Sorensen or John Yablonski is a better example) "The risk is all" attitude. At the other end you have the bitter David Roberts or outsider Maria Coffey attitude "Climbing is risking YOUR LIFE and YOUR LIFE is precious and MUST NOT BE RISKED! Climbers are stupid fools or addicts!"
I like living my life. I don't want to die. If I did I could kill myself a lot quicker than by climbing. I don't even smoke tobacco - that stuff is bad for you. I score low on most of those "Are you a risk taker" pop psychology quizzes. So maybe I'm not a typical climber, but for me, climbing is not about risk.
That said I accept that climbing increases my chance of death or injury. I accept that. If I do die or if I am ever seriously injured I will not complain about it. I know the risks, I have evaluated them and I accept them. They are a cost of doing business. They are a rule of the game. If you want to play you have to draw a card and it might be the Queen of Spades.
This discussion always come around to death. I don't worry about death. I worry about permanent injury. I know a guy who fell down at Castle Crags while hiking a class 2 scree slope, hit his head, and is permanently wheelchair bound, mentally impaired, slurs, drools and suffers fits of rage. Personally, and no disrespect to him, I'd rather die than live that disabled - more power to him for choosing to tough it out. But maybe we shouldn't consider death as the worst that can happen to you. Frankly I recently suffered my grandmother's slow decline and eventual death and I do not want to go that way either.
Our society is one of the first EVER in the history of humanity which has not had a significant portion of the populace die young, either from disease, war, or other causes. Maybe we regard an early death as unnatural as a result. I said it earlier differently but it's not about how long you live but what you do and who you are that matters.
If I die climbing I wouldn't want anyone to call me a "risk taker". They could call me a suicide but really I don't think that would be accurate either.
When I look at my life to date I'm mostly happy with it. If I die though, it will seem unfinished and I intend to keep it that way. I don't have any reason to want to check out early. I'll leave that until I reach the Guy Waterman stage.
I miss my friends who have died climbing but not any more than my friends who died not climbing.
