Field notes:
A short hike in the Hindu Kush: scaling mountains in Kabul, Afghanistan.
We meet in a quiet corner of Kabul, a neighbourhood that’s largely untouched by the security issues. I know the city moderately well and so this eases my apprehension well. Although I do understand that If I’ve misjudged anything about my plan to get alternative perspectives of the beautiful mountains, the consequences could be severe.
It’s winter and the whole city is covered in a blanket of snow, meaning that movement is much slower, but the city does appear quieter than when I was last here.
Traversing the nadir: 2 years on from catastrophic injury
Ever since I almost died on the Matterhorn two years ago, my approach to physical risk has changed.
As a young man, I had an entirely different risk appetite to what I do now. High risk adventure sports – like mountaineering, climbing, racing mountain bikes down hills, skydiving and riding motorbikes were a regular part of my life before a big fall that also finished me.
Now, my appetite to take the same risks has been sated, but for how long – I don’t know for certain. I still dream of big mountains and that feeling of elation when you’re stood on a summit after months of planning and the hours spent plodding uphill.
1 year on from a complete life reset
I’m lucky for many reasons: Not just because I’m surrounded by people who put their own lives on hold to limit the impact of my near-fatal fall, but also how things turned out for me since my life almost came to an abrupt end some 12 months ago.
Bending and straightening: what life’s like four months after the accident.
It is four months since the accident, and I’ve been out of hospital for a few weeks. Christmas would usually be spent driving hundreds of miles to the north to see my family however I choose not to struggle with the British rail service.
The effort it would take to get across London from the south coast (itself already experiencing difficulties from flooding) and then many more hours on the trains just seems beyond me at this stage – so my girlfriend and I settle for a quiet one at home watching Netflix and drinking too much tea.
It takes me many days to overcome the feeling that I’m letting people down, but I get reassured that I’m not.
On the other side of life
I have been thinking a lot about time recently.
Somehow, I always perceived time as being linear. Everything having its own beginning and ending. Its own past, present and future.
But it was the evening of the accident when I felt the true meaning of time. I have heard it being described before, in books, in films, by other people with remarkable stories - that in certain moments in life, time can stop.
Stand still.
Cease to exist as it did before and change your life forever.
The night I received the message about the accident was the moment when life and time truly stood still. I can still remember some of it, how alien time felt. I remember my knees getting weak and shaky. The outside world disappearing. The truth is, it is a feeling like no other, one that I hope that you would never experience.
And yet, it was once of the rarest moments of my life when I felt time as raw as I ever have.
What 3 months in hospital taught me about isolation (by a former-Royal Marine and ocean rower)
Late last year, I had a big fall whilst trying to climb the Matterhorn mountain – tumbling fifty metres which put me in coma for eight days and hospital for almost three months. After spending a week in a coma, I woke up with a traumatic brain injury. The Italian doctors had found three lesions (damage in the brain) which affected my short-term memory, speech and vision in one eye. At first I didn’t recognise my girlfriend, family or close friends whom had all flown to be with me throughout the coma. But as time went on, I started to become more like the person I was before – but some perspectives had changed.
It was undoubtedly the hardest period of my life, but these basic principles helped me to endure it and come out stronger.
Matterhorned: the home phase of my recovery
Knocking on the door of ‘Rose Cottage’
In September 2019, my tiptoeing the tightrope between life and death went the wrong way. After trying to summit the Matterhorn mountain in Italy, I slipped and tumbled a long way down.
Nearly dying something you love
When I write this article, it doesn’t bring back terrible memories – they were wiped clean in the accident. But the pain comes from hearing your loved ones recounting when they were told that you’ll either die or spend the rest of your life with life-changing injuries or big personality changes; hit me harder than anything else I’ve dealt with in my entire life.