Everest 2021 Update – Elia Saikaly – 3rd May
An update from Elia Saikaly, who is documenting her journey for a Canadian production company.
“Room with a view at Camp 2.
.
“Mountaineers are known to have terrible memory. We remember the good, the euphoria, the joy, the indescribable feeling of alive, where your soul is on fire and you step into the boots of the best version of who you are. And you become.
.
“What you tend to forget is the suffering. The ups and downs, the food you can’t digest, the lack of appetite and the beating your body takes in the thin air as it attempts to adapt through its confusion and reliance on its hard coded survival mechanism to do what it must to transport oxygen.
.
“We forget the futile effort of sucking on air with an expectation that the oxygen within it will enable the body to do what it normally does – but it doesn’t. It slips and trips as your mind attempts to trick itself into thinking it’s ready to do what you’re asking of it. It hurts. It’s painful. And it can be excruciating. But that’s just the noise that must be tuned out.
.
“The key is to forget and believe. Eq out the frequencies that do not serve you. Believe that it’s possible. Believe that all is fine. Believe that the exercise of enduring the madness of adapting to the environment is going to lead you to a prize that is unimaginable. What you’re searching for doesn’t reside on the summit, it’s within every moment, in every exchange, in every seemingly excruciating step that’s really just put in place to foster a greater appreciation of the beauty of the world around you – and within you.
.
“It’s ironic that having your breath taken away makes you appreciate the depth of the miracle of being here in the first place.
.
“We forget to remember so we can live it all again.”
View this post on Instagram