The earths population is estimated to be around 6,876,600,000 people. And of this unfathomable number only 1,000 people from around the globe attempt to climb Denali each year. The further I get in this venture the more I find how small 1,000 really is and what I am doing is odd and to some a mistake. I am also finding how few people out there actually share my dream. Climbing Denali can be viewed from two sides. One is the perspective of the average Joe who lives out his adventures vicariously through Bear Grills, Les Stroud, and whatever else shows up on the Discovery Channel or makes it to a best seller list at Barnes and Nobel all the while taking it in from the comfort of a couch. The second view is from the rare Real McCoy, though sometimes cynical and egotistical it is he who decides to leave the comfort zone and reach for the epic. Now looking back to the number of people in this world at this very moment and then looking at the number of people who share the same goal of climbing this mountain I can now see why people think what they think. Yes we may be a bit crazy but in the end I would rather have done something foolish than wish I did.
Over the past month I have begun developing relationships with those who I plan on climbing with and the more we talk the more I see the likness between us. The energy that each person has, the passion for the climb, the desire to touch the top and the deepseeded reasons to do something epic... its all the same. We may be the same guys you toasted the night away with, sit next to in class, share a stoplight with in this gridlock that is life but its our differences that give light to what we do.
We may not take the path that most would choose but for some of us this is what we must do not because we want to be different but because we know no other way. It is something that flows in our blood that lingers in our soul, we are a tribe of few in the greater scope and it is us A STRANGE BREED, headed NORTH.
