Sitting here nursing my post op shoulder injury, I find that as well as pondering how long my recovery will take, and whether it will be as good as before when it's fully healed, that I'm also reflecting on nearly half a century of adventures in the mountains.
From that Genesis, shared by so many climbers, on those gorgeous little gritstone outcrops, twinkling like precious jewels amongst the heather and bracken, to the mist draped cliffs of Wales, the Lakes and Scotland. Our feet and fingers following tentatively in the footsteps of the heroes and icons who used those cliffs to shape their ambitions and our aspirations.
Those soaring spires of our dreams often shape much more than the climber in us. They can shape the central core of what we become as humans. Shared adventures, shared dreams, shared fears and shared humility.
Trust is central to climbing. Trust in our own ability, trust in our friends on the other end of the rope. Friendships forged in the crucible of the mountains have an innate and unquestionable trust at their core.
And when we venture into the wider world of the greater ranges, and bigger walls, the adventures invariably increase with the scale.
And so too, do the friendships and the trust.
To me, climbing has always been a languid unpredictable passion. Like that special lover, the memory of which is always there, hard wired in both the concious and subconscious. Both exciting and effortless. And at times, also cruel and unforgiving.
There's a wonderful song by Garth Brooks called 'She's Every Woman', which features these lyrics:-
"She's every lover that I've ever known, and every lover that I've never known".
This, in a rather overly smaltzy way, sums up what climbing means to me. A constant source of not just adventure, but also a harmony and inner peace.
Climbing has been my mistress for a long long time, and I feel both lucky and privileged to have enjoyed a wonderful lifetime, wrapped in the arms of her warm embrace.
Along with Mrs G and my children, climbing is one of the absolutes of my life. And as long as I can keep on dancing in the mountains - even if as the years go by, it's more of a slow Waltz than an Argentinian Tango - I will always have a smile on my old wrinkled face.
