33. Íkaros

Phase I: Reentry R+35 | Serengeti, Africa

June 27, 2024 | Reentry R+35 days | Serengeti, Africa

Bouncing along the ruts of this dusty dirt road, I can barely scribble a word down before the letters start swerving across the margins. Writing has a way of clarifying but here in this tumble-dry scrub land, my thoughts, tracing my words, have shaken themselves free of any structure, dovetailing into logjams of participles hung out to dry by a head still headed elsewhere.

Adrian, on break from his search for dueling giraffes, starts riffing on the words Ricter-scaling across my notebook. My tentmate from the mountain, he’s seen me jotting down words for weeks now and assumes I’m writing some kind of memoir. But memoirs suggest finality and if there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that this can’t be the end of my story. Even after the highest mountains, the hunger to find the finer line—free of margin, clear of buffer—remains all but insatiable. Everest was hard—the hardest thing I’ve ever done—but if someone like me could make it to the top, it couldn’t have been hard enough.

And for that admission, I feel a spiraling sense of shame: for making it to the summit; for coming down alive; for being lucky enough to never truly be tested. How low must I be to seek more after all that, especially when so many have so much less? My Sherpas and my porters couldn’t afford a day of my last expeditions and here I am already scheming up the next, Icarus chasing the sun while the world burns below. Can’t I settle for more than more with what’s left of my precious life?