The mountain is still standing there. It has not moved. It is not hard to get to, and I am not too old to walk up it.
I have not gone back.
On LinkedIn today I wrote about the trek itself, and about what I have decided it means. That version is tidier than this one. Over there I told a room of strangers that a correct decision and a closed matter are two different things. I believe that.
What I did not write over there is the part I keep circling.
If it genuinely bothers me, I could finish it. I could pick a weekend. It is a school trek. Boys of fifteen do it.
I notice that I have not.
And I do not have a clean explanation for you. I have two theories and I distrust both.
The first is that I am keeping it open on purpose. An open account pulls at you and a closed one does not, and some part of me may understand that a finished Mahadev would be worth less to me than an unfinished one. That theory makes me sound wise. I do not trust things that make me sound wise.
The second is less flattering. At fifteen, the mountain was allowed to beat me, because the weather did it. If I went up there now, on a clear day, in good boots, and turned around at the same place because my knees or my nerve said no, there would be no blizzard to hand it to.
The blizzard is a very good story. I have been telling it for close to forty years.
I do not know which theory is true. It may be both. I am telling you because this letter is the place I do not tidy things up, and because I suspect a fair number of you are carrying your own version of a mountain that is four hours away and has stayed four hours away for twenty years.
Now the part that made me want to write this to you rather than to them.
I am coming up on five months into what I have been calling the standing rest. Not sitting down after the first mountain. Standing, breath steadying, studying the next face before starting up it. I still think that is accurate. But writing about a boy who took cover behind a rock has left me with a question I cannot answer.
How would I tell the difference between a standing rest and a retreat I have decided to call wisdom?
They look the same from outside. They look fairly similar from inside too. Both involve stopping. Both come with good reasons. Both get described in the same calm voice. Retreat is sometimes wisdom, not failure is a line from my own book. I meant it. I have also noticed it is exactly the sentence a man would reach for if he wanted to stop and be admired for stopping.
I do not think that is what I am doing. I think the work I am doing now is real preparation and not a long, dignified pause. But I would think that either way, and that is the whole problem with the sentence.
So I have started using a rougher test. I offer it without any confidence that it is right.
A rest has a next step in it that you can name. Not a direction. Not an ambition. An actual step, small and specific and slightly uncomfortable, that you can point at. If I cannot name mine in a given week, I am not resting. I am sheltering in good weather, behind a rock that is not even there.
Most weeks this year I have been able to name it. Some weeks I have not. I have stopped pretending those weeks were the same as the others.
The other half of the standing rest is quieter, and it is going well. I am taking things out of the bag. The reflex to have a view on everything within ninety seconds. The instinct to solve a problem the moment I hear it, when nobody asked me to. Meetings I go to out of an old sense of obligation.
None of that gets you up a mountain. All of it feels like competence. That is what makes it hard to put down.
I will leave you with the question I asked publicly, in the shape it actually takes in my own head.
What is the mountain that is four hours away from you, and has been four hours away for years?
Reply and tell me. I read every reply, and I read the ones about things people have not done far more carefully than the ones about things they have.
Avinash
———
The Mahadev trek and the Kashmir camps behind it are in chapter one of my book, The Next Mountain: Notes on Resilience, Leadership and Purpose, as told to Priya Kumar. It is out now and went into reprint within ten days of release: https://amzn.in/d/00BvTihf
If it has been useful to you, a short review on Amazon helps more than you would think.
You can follow me on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/author/avinashkaul