Suffer

From the moment I met Vanessa she told me she hated the cold.

Part of it was simple. Like many people, she didn’t know how to dress for it. Too much on when moving. Nothing dry to change into when stopping. That will make anyone miserable.

But she wasn’t soft. I’d watched her swim across icy lakes in the Sierra. Jump into winter seas. The toughness was there.

Irish people are shaped by bad weather. Thick-skinned. Optimistic and pessimistic in the same breath. In Galway, “the weather’s nice” just means it isn’t raining right now.

So did she really hate the cold? Or was it a story she told herself? Sometimes saying you hate something is easier than learning how to handle it.

The photo above is Vanessa high on Denali, near Motorcycle Hill. Around 8 p.m. Minus forty degrees. She’s smiling.

That smile says more than the old story ever did.

As James Baldwin wrote: “People who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are…”