TMB

July 28, 2025

Greetings from where I pause,

“The mountains are calling, and I must go.”  John Muir

I hesitate to write about this, but I don’t think time will prepare me any better.  I have this ache, which manifests in the muscles of my legs and shoulders, but really is a bruise I feel in every part of my being.  It is a kind of unsettled feeling, one that is paired with a happiness built of gratitude and astonishment.

The ache is caused by this sense of sudden change from one life to another.  It is not a new feeling, this place of transition, of passage.  I recognize it from other times in my history, and with it comes a question which I’ve struggled with for most of my life.

I spent two weeks with a group of friends, which evolved into a much larger collection, hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc.  It was a rare time, one that allowed us all to step out of the world and into creation.  The customs, the habits, the distractions, the petty wranglings, all dissolved in the gleam of incredible beauty captured behind the great effort required to experience it.

Some of the TMB trail was formed before history, some a few hundred years ago, but the shape of today was carved into the mountains by hikers over the last century.  It is a demanding challenge, one that you cannot take lightly, but the effort and reward are inextricable.  You cannot see the top of the world unless you put in the work.

The trail is 110 miles long, weaving through France, Italy and Switzerland.  There are places that allow you to catch your breath, but no day passes that doesn’t have a challenge. It is hard. Thousands of people hike it in the season, starting at different places and times, travelling varying distances and paces, staying in the refugios along the way, or wild camping in other places. 

In spite of all those variables, and the sheer scale of the tour, it is a surprisingly intimate space. Nearly every day we met people we’d met somewhere before, and we created real friendships with many travelers.

No one asks what you do for a living.  They ask where you started that day, or perhaps what country you are from originally.  The conversation might start as you gasp up a steep climb, and continue as you soak your hat in an icy stream, and then again while you sit on wooden benches to eat a meal.  Then, a few days later, perhaps you meet again while shouldering your pack in the first light of morning, and it is like you are greeting a lifelong companion.

We met people from all over the world, some on year-long explorations, others out tramping all over Europe, and many, like us, who simply came to see what the TMB held for us. The bond of the trail was powerful, and that was really just the beginning 

The food was fantastic, usually because it was fresh and made well, but mostly because we were ravenous.  Our appetites changed to what I think we were born to, in many ways.  At the end of every day we fell into our bunks, usually a room shared with dozen other hikers, and slept hard. It was not luxury, it was not always comfortable, but it was the sleep that brackets full days of living.

That’s probably one of the hallmarks of this adventure; every day, every hour, was overflowing with experience.  Our senses were turned all the way up, and there was nothing between us and the beauty around us.  We were in the world.

I want to tell you everything, and it’s not possible, so maybe that’s why it’s hard to start.  I want you to know about the awe that these mountains inspired, to feel the cold, the heat, the burning in our legs as we ground up the steepest rock face. I want you to know about the heroes, about the kindness, the hilarious, the cows and the ibex and the spinach feta cake.

Every day we met new people, we pushed ourselves physically, we basked in the beauty of the Alps.  We finished each day spent and happy.  Every day I thought: this is being alive, it is worth whatever it takes from me to live it.

When we started we decided to give a name to each day.  The second day, one of the hardest, was seventeen miles of brutal work, climbing 7000 ft of elevation gain.  It took all we had, and a little more.  I named the day “Believe.”  I believed in my brother Douglas, in his wife Lee and their daughter Cali, and my sister Dawn, and I believed in myself.  In spite of all that the trail took from us, I believed that we would all find whatever strength was needed to answer it.  At the end of the day, celebrating all we had experienced, I felt in my soul that the belief was right. And now, with the experience of that day and many more with it in my sinew, I feel the possibility of even more.

For ten days we lived out of a backpack.  We drank from streams and wells, we walked under an endless sky, we ate with an appetite that was born of excellent living, we met new people every day and learned what that really means.  We poured ourselves into the hard work of moving through the mountains, of testing the capacity of our bodies and our will. None of us took a single breath for granted.  And we celebrated with the earnest joy of little children.  And now, this week, I feel the absence of all of that.  I don’t resent the life I am living this morning, I simply miss what it meant to be on that trail.

Whenever I have come home from an adventure, I feel some of this ache.  I know it will pass, but even that truth leaves a little pain, because being alive is feeling that too.  The one lesson that has helped me is this; He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

It is easy to share some of the regal beauty of the mountains, of the green places, of the rivers, the glaciers, the old bridges, the lush meadows.  And those images will stay with me forever, I’d venture to say that’s what drew us all to the TMB to begin with.  But what matters, what lasts, what seems to make the difference each day, is the people we met.  What is the most important thing in the world? The Maori say: He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.  It is the people, it is the people, it is the people. 

Who they are to us, and we to them, is what seasons our memory of our weaving through the beauty in this world.  The question I always have struggled to answer is: how can I take what I have experienced, what I have learned, and bring it back into this other life?  How can I keep the feeling with me as I begin to take on whatever these next days bring?

The answer is in the mountains, but it is in the people too.  Their stories, how they changed me, will matter in how I navigate these next days.  And they will remind me to see the people in this life too.  To experience them with the same passion as those friends in the Alps.

Hope this finds you heeding the call,

David

Copyright © 2025 David Smith