No Barriers by Erik Weihenmayer

Author:Erik Weihenmayer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

15

SOLDIERS TO SUMMITS

Back home, I was elated after achieving my summit with Kyle Maynard, and I shared some of the photos with Arjun. He was fascinated by all the things Kyle could do, immediately picking up Kyle’s memoir and reading it cover to cover. Over dinner, we talked about what compelled people like Kyle to believe they could do something, so bold and so seemingly unattainable, that most would dismiss it outright as impossible.

The question made me think of an experience I’d had on a family trip down the San Juan River earlier that summer. The San Juan, running through Utah into Lake Powell, was known for its massive sandy beach camps. We were stopped at one of them thinking up games we could play as a family, when Ellie suggested we all race across the sand and to the top of a steep fifty-foot dune that served as the finish line. She said it was wide open in front of us, with nothing to stumble over. I knew my big brother Mark would have loved this game, so I channeled his spirit and started gunning for the summit. I’m not known for being quick—more like a steady, reliable mule—and Arjun was light and fit from a season of soccer. Across the flats, I could hear his feet slapping the sand ahead of me, but when we got to the steeper sand dune, my uphill climbing talents kicked in, and we were soon neck and neck. However, I was huffing pretty hard, and Arjun was barely breathing.

“Come on, buddy!” I shouted between gasps. “You’re about to beat your old dad!” I heard his pace slacken a little. I slowed down too, giving him a chance. “You got it, AJ,” but as I came over the top, Ellie told me that he had stopped halfway up the hill and just stood there watching me cross the makeshift finish line.

I tried not to ride him too much, but I thought about it a lot and was convinced he could have beaten me. I had to admit, I was irritated. I had always tried to push my averagely talented body and brain further than they deserved to go by working hard. Arjun, however, was blessed with natural talent. He had speed, coordination, and an incredible sense of balance, so it seemed foreign to me why that talent wasn’t realized. It was almost as if we were speaking from two different places, planets with two different languages, assumptions, and beliefs. I’d encouraged him to speed up, yet he had slowed down. Arjun and I watched all six Rocky movies, and in all of them, Rocky had risen above himself to knock out rival after rival. So Arjun was supposed to glance sidelong at me, see that he could actually pull this off, and with a final burst of energy and willpower, edge me out to win the race. Instead, at the exact moment he’d seen me to his left, the exact moment when he should have poured it on, he had given up.

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