In Cairn, almost every person Aava meets as she ascends Mount Kami and every loved one who leaves her messages from back home, all continuously ask the same question: “Why are you attempting this climb?” It’s a question I kept asking myself when another slip cost me many minutes of careful progress, when my backpack was bereft of food and drink, and when I couldn’t see a clear path upwards. We shared the same answer, though. Sheer stubbornness and dogged determination to reach the top of the damn thing.
It’s amazing what innate and primal feelings an ultimately pointless challenge to climb a big mountain can draw out from us. It’s the same push that’s driven people into keyboard-smashing and mouse-crushing rage just to complete Bennett Foddy’s ridiculous climbers GIRP and Getting Over It.
