PREMISE: 

This is a sound article that is meant to be listen while red through. Better listened with headphones or very good speakers for a greater immersion.

01012020. It looks like some sort of code. Almost binary, simple, made out of even numbers. Funny how the four first ones are almost mirroring the 4 last ones. How the 0 jumps to the 1 that jumps back to the 0 that goes back to a 1 which is slightly surprised to be next to an audacious 2; announcing another formula made of 0, 2, 0; breaking up binary logic.

This very New Year’s Day, I was eager to start the spectacular day we planned during the previous eve. The weather conditions were perfect, and even though we hadn’t slept a lot, the 3 of us met precisely at 7:30 am to drive to Chamonix. After arriving at a slightly frozen parking place, we did a final check of our equipment while gathering it in our backpacks. Touring skis and shoes, crampons, ice axes, ropes, harnesses and avalanche transceiver kits for the essentials. Nothing was missing. The sun was already shining on the peaks and the temperature was fresh but not even cold. We were ready to get a bit of height on this special day.

We shared the cable car with other alpinists and some courageous early riser tourists, trying not to impale anyone with our ice axes attached to our bags. Within a few minutes we had gone from around 1000m to 3800m high, seeing the breath-taking mountain ranges all around and the Mont Blanc on our right coming into view before our eyes.

There we were, at L’Aiguille du Midi, at 3842m high. The panorama was a curious mix of serenity, with the blue sky, the airy atmosphere and the silent snow as an invitation to unwind, and the contrasting cautiousness and respect triggered by the sharp mountain summits and edges.

This state of wonder was interrupted by a short yet tricky icy ridge requiring us to strap our crampons on, attach our skis onto our bags, and hold the ice axes ready. After feeling like tightrope walkers while descending it, we put our skis on at the bottom. Around us, there were just fields of white powder covering big glaciers. Only rare ski tracks slightly disturbed the virgin look. The sun had warmed up the snow a bit allowing us to comfortably ride on it which felt like sliding on melted butter. We had 1400 meters to go down, moving away from tourist areas, going deeper into the relative wilderness. My two more experienced friends were opening the way, cautious about me following the tracks they’d made. In fact, the tempting virgin snow on the edges often hid crevasses or seracs. While slaloming through these glacial wounds, holes and recesses, I kept focusing on my trajectory so as not to get swallowed in what appeared to me like the mountain’s bowels, even though controlling the skis became harder as we were heading to an icier part of the valley in the shadows.

We arrived down on the glacier at an impressive place named “the dining room”. It was a sort of curious superposition of ice blocks brought back from the glacier’s depths to the surface, burped up in big sharp light to dark blue chunks. It looked erratic but still like frozen swirls. It seemed as if a big digestion had been stopped abruptly.

No time to get more contemplative. We had to get going, as the time was running out and we still had a while to go. I took a glance to La Brèche de Puiseux, some 1000 meters higher. The last part looked super steep. It was a long and strenuous way to go and I wondered how we could ever reach it. We put our skins on the skis, and began climbing up. The Shhhh – Clac – Shhhh – Clac of my skis sliding on the snow were like a breathing rhythm. Regular, it was a familiar comforting sound in the desert-like surroundings. The mountain echo acknowledged our progression in this rock and ice sanctuary.

The last 200 meters to get to the pass felt like an ultimate test. Mountain vs humans. Crampons on feet, ice axes in hand, skis on the backpack on this 45° slope. Two reckless skiers came down while we were going up, triggering little snow falls. The steepness of the slope made my perspective very narrow, as if I’d been almost laying on the ground. The only thing I could see in this position was this endless snow flow in front of me and underfoot. I thought it was from an avalanche but my experienced friend said it wasn’t and we should keep going. Terrified, I entered into a sort of survival mode. It felt like I was stepping on motion. I couldn’t find something stationary to stare at, so the only thing I could do was to keep going, focusing on the goal, believing I would reach it, trust it. The surface was moving yet I was steadily progressing in the steps made in the ice. How contradictory it felt for me! Like a sensitive and cognitive dissonance. Like everything around you would suggest the contrary of what is happening. I wondered how much snow could fall like this and when it would stop. It was at the same time fascinating and very confusing when you were desperately trying to keep your balance. We went on, concentrating on every step, helping ourselves with our ice axes. We finally managed to get over the snow cascade.

The last ray of sunlight hitting the pass welcomed us at 3400 meters high. On a mountain ridge, we were high enough again to see the peaks around from another perspective, a reachable one. We belayed down on the other side of the pass, leaving the sun behind and entering the shadow, ending up on a glacier in the middle of an impressive mountain cirque. The perspective was totally different now as the mountain’s big walls stood up in front of us. We were at their feet, their height and dark colour imposing a silent respect. Facing us, the mythical north face of the Grandes Jorasses, a 1400 meters high stone wall, proud and unmoving.

Darkness was slowly closing in as we were going down the glacier. Leaving the cirque surrounded by enormous peaks, we joined a valley flanked by stone giants. It was like skiing down a long and wide corridor with walls filled with legendary figures. The slope was gentle, so I had plenty of time to admire them. Being quiet, just passing through as if I didn’t want to wake up these mythical figures in their own environment. I couldn’t decide if I felt like a guest or a trespasser. It felt unreal, like a pawn in the game of nature. I was in the house of these giants, maybe like a disturbing insect. Then, a question came to my mind, illustrating this very binary logic inherited through the past centuries. A logic that defines what relationship some human societies developed with nature. Are we hosted by nature or do we think we are hosting her?

Some 200 meters lower, joining La mer de Glace, literally ‘the ice sea’, a so-called glacier because of its impressive length and thickness, I gained new insights. While descending, we encountered some rocks and began to pay more attention to the way down. When looking up, a few lighter yet big spots on the dark grey stones caught my attention. Where they were, there used to be a peak; a ridge; a piece of wall. They were sad witnesses of now missing parts, due to the melting permafrost not holding it together anymore. I understood now what my alpinists friends were sadly joking about: ‘Yeah…great wall! You should hurry up though to climb it; it might fall soon’. How come it becomes a regular thing to say, as part of an approved logic matching the feeling of an inexorable future?

The way became trickier to slide on as rocks were scattered across the glacier, directly falling from above. The sides of the glacier looked like decaying flesh, the earth was raw and damp, ready to fall apart, already disintegrating. It was the vision of a desolate land. I felt as if I was entering a disaster zone, being a silent spectator of tormented nature. Ironically visiting it when already in its deathbed.

The glacier was not white anymore but rather greyish and the purity we met on the heights looked now like a fantasy, an illusion. It was emaciated, scrawny, strewed by rocks like metaphorical bones; as if the glacier ice mass recalled human bodies. We were carefully slaloming between the rocks as the amount grew, trying not to ruin the skis and fall over. The atmosphere between us felt heavier, concerned, as if we were carrying a responsibility for what we were going through. We looked at each other, silently progressing in a gradual relentless mess, not knowing what to do, directly impacted by the rock maze. Finally, we had to stop, as the glacier had become impassable, and walk twenty minutes up to a hut that used to be at the bottom of the ice sea a hundred years ago.

I know that global warming is going on. But in this very moment while sliding down, I “felt” it for the first time in my life. I felt it in my gut. I met it. I felt like riding the climate change. Passing through it. Moving in it. Experiencing it. It went through me. This is when I felt that borders between things were dissolving. The environment and myself were one, part of the same whole, built from the same original materials. As if it’s all connected. At the same time, the decaying state of the glacier felt like the materialization of the relationship we, as some human societies, carry with nature. Left out, not taken care of, somehow, suggesting a state of abandonment. How come we could end up so disconnected?

Those embodied intuitions led me to a state of transformation. This 1st January 2020, something changed in me through this experience where a rational reality became a sensitive one, a palpable one. It is not just an exterior reality anymore but an interior one as well. It feels closer to me. A part of my own reality. Taken to task, I re-questioned my own vision of nature. What I see now is coloured by this experience. The prism of my vision evolved. I have concern.

I felt that this very day, I experienced something unique of an era. A microscopic moment in terms of the planet Earth’s existence in which humanity has a big impact. A decisive time. I felt part of a whole in which every part is connected to each other. Every time I think about climate change now, I somehow feel this moment and see the image of this innocent tormented piece of nature. A disintegrating beauty sacrificed on the altar of human ‘progress’, desire, need and greed. This natural piece of wonder and ecological balance, wasted. Ruined. Spoiled. This scrawny vision of the glacier like a decaying body felt like a premonition of the fate awaiting the human race if a global reflexion and change of vision on the relationship between nature and humans doesn’t come.

Of course we won’t change the course of history on our own, but I understood that as small or even microscopic as it is, we all have a role to play regarding our relationship to nature. I believe it begins with questioning the vision we have about her, because visions on things define the role we will play, how we will invest it and our actions then.

While climbing up and down, this day showed me how perspectives can change, how mind-sets can evolve. How impossible things can finally appear possible, can become achievable, step-by-step, even though a cold continuous snow stream sometimes tries to dismount any attempt. How changing the focus can help you to move forward. How this could be worked on with trust and confidence, not only on a personal level, but in a team. You generally don’t climb a mountain on your own. Which leaves to think that a global change of perspective and more collaboration is essential.

And I believe the question would not be so much about who is hosting who, following a binary logic in which nature would be exterior from us, allowing us to exploit her tirelessly. Wouldn’t it rather be a start to come back to the base and to ask ourselves; what is nature ? What does nature mean for us? Aren’t we an integrant and indissociable part of it in the first place?

At the very beginning of this new decade, I wish we will find an harmonious way of cohabitation. A healthy balance between each part that constitutes nature. Stop trying to overtake our place in it, shaping things as we would like them to be, but rather see what possibilities lie within. I wish to really ride this epic adventure all together. Let’s do it!