垂暮之年的登山客

Mortality and its Discontents

垂暮之年的登山客

ESTES PARK, Colo. — On the first day of the new year, as on the last day of the old year, I slip outside at dusk and try to run away from my problems. There is no better way to make sense of the daily clutter of inchoate thoughts than bouncing along a trail, immortality in every stride.

科罗拉多州埃斯特斯公园——新年的第一天，和去年的最后一天一样，我在黄昏时分抽身来到户外，试图逃避自身所面临的问题。每天都会有一些混沌的思维在头脑中横冲直撞，要把它们理清楚，最好的办法莫过于沿着一条小径蹦蹦跳跳地前行，每一步仿佛都是不老的宣言。

Of course, everything hurts — joints, calf muscles, a toe that refuses to warm. When someone with more spring to the step passes by, I feel a pang of loss: I’ll never be that fast again. And then, loathing at having that thought. It’s a bad day when the most creative thing you do is come up with an unoriginal form of self-pity.

当然了，哪儿都很疼，不管是关节，还是小腿肌肉，另外就是一个脚趾无法暖和起来。看到有人足下生风般从旁边经过，一阵失落之感来袭：我再也无法那么快了。随即又厌恶于自己会有这样的想法。如果你一天中做的最有创意的事情，竟是缺乏新意的自怜自艾，那这一天过得也太糟糕了。

It helps to have smarter people musing on the same subject. “There is no escaping the tragedy of life, which is that we are all aging from the day we are born.” So writes Atul Gawande, surgeon, author and courier of common sense, in his book “Being Mortal.” He goes on to show that the real tragedy is not every click of the postpartum clock, but how we have come to see aging as a disease.

起到帮助作用的是，一些更聪明的人们思考了同样的问题。“一个无可回避的人生悲剧是，我们从出生那天就开始变老。”充斥着理性思维的外科医生、作家阿图尔·加万德(Atul Gawande)在他的著作《终有一死》(Being Mortal)中这样写道。他随即指出，真正的悲剧不在于我们出生后时钟一直滴滴答答地往前走，而在于我们一直都把衰老看作一种疾病。

I came to Dr. Gawande’s book after meeting a most remarkable man in this alpine town set against the overly ambitious geology of Rocky Mountain National Park — Tom Hornbein. He’s also a doctor, elfin and energetic, bearded and balding, who will defy gravity on many a day by clipping himself into a climber’s bolt on a vertical flank of said Rocky Mountains. He’s 84.

对加万德医生这本书的阅读，是在跟汤姆·霍恩宾(Tom Hornbein)碰面之后。我们的会面地点是这里的高山小镇——背靠地貌雄奇的洛基山国家公园 (Rocky Mountain National Park)。霍恩宾相当杰出，他也是一位医生，精灵古怪而又充满活力，大胡子，秃头，常常借助登山扣在落基山脉陡峭的山崖上对抗地心引力。他今年84岁。

Climbers know Dr. Hornbein for his historic accomplishment in 1963: ascending the West Ridge of Mount Everest, with Willi Unsoeld, and surviving a night at 28,000 feet without tent or sleeping bag. If not the most extraordinary achievement in mountaineering, it is very high on the all-time list. “The night was overpoweringly empty,” he wrote. “Mostly there was nothing. We hung suspended in a timeless void.”

霍恩宾医生曾经取得的历史性成就，让登山者们知道了他的大名：1963年，他跟威利·安锁德 (Willi Unsoeld)一起登上了珠峰西脊(West Ridge of Mount Everest)，并在海拔2.8万英尺的高度捱过了一个漫漫长夜，没有帐篷，也没有睡袋。这即便不是登山史上最非凡的成就，也足以在排行榜上位列前茅。 “那个夜晚空虚得令人无法忍受，”他写道，“那里几乎一无所有，我们悬身于无尽的虚空之中。”

He got lucky, as there was no jet stream wind on that night. But luck, as they say, is the residue of design, and Tom Hornbein is nothing if not methodical. His book, “Everest: The West Ridge,” is widely recognized as a classic. It’s aging well, in part, because so many contemporary books on mountain climbing are all about score settling and product placement.

他是幸运的。那天晚上没有出现高速气流。但常言道，好运随谋划不期而至，汤姆·霍恩宾做事一直都很讲究方法和策略。他的书《珠峰：西脊》 (Everest: The West Ridge)是公认的经典之作。它之所以经久不衰，在某种程度上是因为当代很多关于登山的书籍通篇都有挟怨报复和植入广告之嫌。

I was whining, in as diplomatic a way as possible, about reaching an age when the high summits no longer have quite the pull they did for me, when a beer and a brat on the 40-yard line can be just as enticing as looking down at cloud cover from Mount Rainier’s apex. After listening to Hornbein describe a routine that includes regular rock climbing with Jon Krakauer, another Colorado author and mountaineer, I asked him about his secret to aging.

我原本正尽可能地以得体的方式抱怨老年的来临，步入这一年龄段后，我发觉高高的山峰没了以往的吸引力。我宁愿喝喝啤酒，看看球赛，在雷尼尔山( Mount Rainier)的顶峰看云起云落也不过如此。听完霍恩宾介绍完他的日常活动——包括定期跟科罗拉多州的另一位作家兼登山者乔恩·克拉考尔(Jon Krakauer)结伴攀岩——我问他，不老的秘诀是什么。

It may be true, as George Orwell said, that “at 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” Orwell died at 46, so his observation was purely speculative. But what about the body we deserve? Hornbein clearly takes care of his, though he doesn’t make any of the annoying claims of the aging-well proselytizer.

乔治·奥威尔(George Orwell)曾说过，“每个人到了50岁，都会有张他应得的面孔”，这说不定是真的。不过，奥威尔去世时年仅46岁，所以他的评论只是一种推测。那我们应得的身体呢?霍恩宾显然非常注意身体，但他没有像那些老年健康问题的说教者一样，发表一些令人厌烦的言论。

He said he experienced very little physical loss in his 50s and 60s. In his 70s, body parts started to creak and pop, and he noticed gradual decline with every year. In his 80s, he’s slower, much more cautious, and cognizant of his limitations. The will is there, if not always the way. But he shows up, proof again of the adage about success.

他称自己50、60多岁时，身体没怎么衰老。70多岁时，身体器官开始变得脆弱，出现问题，他注意到自己的身体每况愈下。到了80多岁时，他的行动变慢，也更加小心，他认识到自己的局限性。意志还在，即便不是所有时间都是如此。他展现了这种意志，再次证明了有关成功的格言。

During a recent warm weather spell, “I got out with a young friend to do some bolt-clipping sport route he’d prepared for me to lead,” he said. “Not difficult, but quite enough.”

最近，在温暖的天气中，“我与一名年轻朋友外出运动，按照他为我准备的领攀路线，借助登山扣攀爬，”他说。“不难，但足够了。”

Hornbein brought up Gawande’s book. He laughed at himself, noting that he was at an age when death is a regular topic of conversation. Hornbein goes to a lot of funerals. Friends, including some who touched the roof of the world, are dead or dying. He said all of this with a twinkle in his eye. Or at least it seemed that way to me.

霍恩宾提到了加万德的书。他开始自嘲，称在他这样的年纪，死亡已经成为一个经常讨论的话题。霍恩宾参加了很多葬礼。朋友们要么已经去世，要么是病入膏肓，其中包括那些攀上世界屋脊的朋友。他说这些时，眼中闪烁着光芒。或者，至少在我看来是这样的。

Gawande makes the point that we’ve got to get over the idea that aging is a disease. “People live longer and better than any time in history,” Gawande writes. “But scientific advances have turned the process of aging and dying into medical experiences.” And he concludes, “Death of course is not failure. Death is normal.”

加万德指出，我们应该放弃衰老是一种疾病的想法。“人们现在比历史上任何时候的寿命都更长，生活得也更好，” 加万德写道。“但是科学上的进步把衰老和死亡的过程变成了医疗经历。”他总结道，“死亡当然不是失败。死亡是正常现象。”