Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [1]
Yet we have cut a vital corner. I know it. But I do nothing.
I leap.
I am instantly taken by the speed. Normally I love it. This time I am worried.
I never feel worried in the moment.
I know something is wrong.
I am soon travelling at over 40 m.p.h. Feet first down the mountain. The ice races past only inches from my head. This is my world.
I gain even more speed. The edge of the peak gets closer. Time to arrest the fall.
I flip nimbly on to my front and drive the ice axe into the snow. A cloud of white spray and ice soars into the air. I can feel the rapid deceleration as I grind the axe deep into the mountain with all my power.
It works like it always does. Like clockwork. Total confidence. One of those rare moments of lucidity.
It is fleeting. Then it is gone.
I am now static.
The world hangs still. Then – bang.
Simon, his heavy wooden sledge, plus solid metal camera housing, piles straight into my left thigh. He is doing in excess of 45 m.p.h. There is an instant explosion of pain and noise and white.
It is like a freight train. And I am thrown down the mountain like a doll.
Life stands still. I feel and see it all in slow motion.
Yet in that split second I have only one realization: a one-degree different course and the sledge’s impact would have been with my head. Without doubt, it would have been my last living thought.
Instead, I am in agony, writhing.
I am crying. They are tears of relief.
I am injured, but I am alive.
I see a helicopter but hear no sound. Then the hospital. I have been in a few since Man vs. Wild/Born Survivor: Bear Grylls began. I hate them.
I can see them all through closed eyes.
The dirty, bloodstained emergency room in Vietnam, after I severed half my finger off in the jungle. No bedside graces there.
Then the rockfall in the Yukon. Not to mention the way worse boulder-fall in Costa Rica. The mineshaft collapse in Montana or that saltwater croc in Oz. Or the sixteen-foot tiger that I landed on in the Pacific versus the snake-bite in Borneo.
Countless close shaves.
They all blur. All bad.
Yet all good. I am alive.
There are too many to hold grudges. Life is all about the living.
I am smiling.
The next day, I forget the crash. To me, it is past. Accidents happen, it was no one’s fault.
Lessons learnt.
Listen to the voice.
I move on.
‘Hey, Si, I’m cool. Just buy me a pina colada when we get out of here. Oh, and I’ll be sending you the evac, doc and physio bills.’
He reaches for my hand. I love this man.
We’ve lived some life out there.
I look down to the floor: at my ripped mountain salopettes, bloodstained jacket, smashed mini-cam and broken goggles.
I quietly wonder: when did all this craziness become my world?
PART 1
‘The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible – and achieve it, generation after generation.’
Pearl S. Buck
CHAPTER 1
Walter Smiles, my great-grandfather, had a very clear dream for his life. As he breathed in the fresh salty air of the northern Irish coast that he loved so dearly, he gazed out over the remote Copeland Islands of County Down. He vowed to himself that it would be here, at Portavo Point, on this wild, windswept cove, that one day he would return to live.
He dreamt of making his fortune, marrying his true love and building a house for his bride here, on this small cove overlooking this dramatic Irish coastline. It was a dream that would shape, and ultimately end, his life.
Walter came from a strong line of self-motivated, determined folk: not grand, not high society, but no-nonsense, family minded, go-getters. His grandfather had been Samuel Smiles who, in 1859, authored the original ‘motivational’ book titled Self-Help. It was a landmark work, and an instant best-seller, even outselling Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species when it was first launched.
Samuel’s book Self-Help also made plain the mantra that hard work and perseverance were the keys to personal progress. At a time in Victorian society where, as an Englishman, the world was your oyster if