What does ...needing a safe space mean to you? ( Archived) (33)

Like only being happy when you're not happy. Wanting to believe in the pandemic so that a general anxiety disorder is normal.

A safe reminder can be, God approves of the path you have choose...

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No, not like that at all.

I was referring to those who find a great love for life from a place that puts them in what others would consider an extremely dangerous situation.
I've found many times in my life I feel most alive when I've just overcome the crux (hardest part of a climb) on a serious route, of even below it when I know retreat is impossible and I have to overcome it.
Or when I'm faced with a steep descent on skis or mountain bike.
Paradoxically these are the times, when facing such danger, that a safe place, a place where total clarity, complete awareness and no fear is to be found and I'm far from alone in that observation.

"It’s the parallels between climbing and life that fascinate me. The chance to explore inwardly, to understand who I am, where my limits lie and how I can live more and become more."

Sophie Radcliffe


"I would say that the need to climb comes from that tough, lonely place of searching for your dignity. You know, that place – where we actually choose to confront our own weaknesses and fears, where we rebel against the terror of death – is really about dignity. That’s why alpinism is not just the act of ascending a mountain, but also inwardly of ascending above your self.”

– Voytek Kurtyka from an interview in Alpinist #43, Summer 2013)

"The pleasure of risk is in the control needed to ride it with assurance so that what appears dangerous to the outsider is, to the participant, simply a matter of intelligence, skill, intuition, coordination… in a word, experience. Climbing in particular, is a paradoxically intellectual pastime, but with this difference: you have to think with your body. Every move has to be worked out in terms of playing chess with your body. If I make a mistake the consequences are immediate, obvious, embarrassing, and possibly painful. For a brief period I am directly responsible for my actions. In that beautiful, silent, world of mountains, it seems to me worth a little risk.”

– A. Alvarez


"What advantages do we hope to gain (from climbing mountains)? Naturally, there is the pleasure we get from the climbing process itself and from our victories, but as well as the delights of exercise in a mountain environment, there is also the process, coming every time as a surprise, of self-discovery deepening a little further with every climb."

Gaston Rebuffat (from The Mont Blanc Massif: The Hundred Finest Routes)