How I postponed my dream

Even though I think that there are really a few things impossible for me, sometimes I have to give up. Or, as it is written above, postpone a dream until somewhere in the future.

The Earth couldn’t develop anything more beautiful than mountains. When I am in mountains my feelings are so intense and inexplicable that I can hardly write how it is for me to be there. It is like flying – if you happened to be a bird in your last incarnation then you know what I mean. There are small ones, big ones, ones that are unexplored, some that killed many insolents, many that murdered their lovers.
If you were born near mountains, you’re hell of a lucky.

Last may, on a Scrabble tournament, Andrzej asked me straight if I wanted to go with him to Himalaya and climb Imja Tse. My heart started to yell “yeeeeeeaaahh” but my brain had to give it a kick and think about the university which I was about to start in October. So I said that I’d do everything within my power to go.

After talking with people who are wiser than me I was ready to, so to speak, sacrifice myself (because I’d have to study very hard before and after the journey). I would also have to spend all my savings but hey, you don’t usually go to Nepal for a holiday, do you? I bought a plane ticket, I payed advance for Sherpas, I started to work a bit harder on my physical condition and step-by-step I collected necessary equipment. The rest of the team live in or near Bydgoszcz and I visited them a few times – I won’t forget that atmosphere of excitement, making plans and telling each other what we’d prepared already. Thanks to Kuba I even bought a decent sausage and put it on a radiator to dry it out.

They seemed to be happy there. Tired all the time, surrounded by foreign people and marvelous nature, with no place to take a shower and funny places to do other things. I envy them every single step they took and the feeling of being on the very top. I’d love to feel the thrill while looking at Lhotse. And yes, I’d even prefer the AMS than an ordinary flu here.

Two months before the planned departure I was diagnosed. It’s nothing lethal, but the essential problem with it is that I cannot use my backbone with such intensity and frequency that I’d like to use it (because there’s a probability that it will say “oh, I’ve had enough, I’m going to have some holiday” someday and the surgery will be the only choice). I could go anyway and I would do that if I was to go alone. I didn’t want to put responsibility on others though. Considering my plans for the future, this disease makes things a bit more difficult. Mais… voloir c’est povoir, n’est-ce pas?

Thank you lads for understanding me giving up and for having great time together planning. As long as you feel it was the journey of your lives, I am thankful that I could be a small episode in it.

Edit: It may sound weird, but this post is outdated and my back is perfectly fine. But this is another story…