What They Leave

What is it that your heroes leave you?

People you know dying suddenly (but not always unexpectedly) have always been a part of the climbing game, and unfortunately, it's something you become numb to after a while; you brush it off like snow. When you look at a photo that contains a group of your heroes from ten or twenty years ago, young, healthy and bold, it's like looking at a shot of the first Russian cosmonauts, the dead soon outnumbering the living, each lost in pursuit of something beyond mere rational ambition.

Lately, some of my heroes and mentors have begun to pass in ways that are harder to brush off, more shocking, unexpected, not lost to gravity or avalanche or rock fall, or off the end of a rope, but at home. For some, it was probably their time, but for others, it was too soon and unexpected. No long goodbye, just gone. With no word.

I just found out that my hero and friend, John Middendorf, passed away in his sleep a few days ago in Tasmania. I'd only been chatting with John about something a few days ago (haul bag patterns, I think), and we traded emails regularly. A significant strand of our conversations always came down to how John was a terrible businessman, the reason being – not that it was ever expressed - that John, the entrepreneur, had been cursed with integrity and a kind heart, a beautiful mind and generous soul, mostly give and never taking enough that was rightly his, a rare thing, but not conducive to the building of climbing empires.

Nevertheless, despite his excellent character, in a short time, John significantly impacted the climbing world with his vision, drive, and intelligence. It was to climbing's detriment that John walked off into the wildness for so long, but not to his wife and children, that he loved more than climbing, which is to say more than life itself.

John was one of those rare people you find on the path, the path you've taken because of them, because you wanted to be like them, to dream and make those dreams come true like them. You find them there, but not like the God you expected or hoped for, the rock superstar, a Superman to explain away the things they did. Instead, you discover only a humble man, no God at all. That's what true heroes leave you.