For reasons I cannot explain, there are short videos taken on top of Everest on my social media. They show the glut of people in bright parkas lined up to cross a particularly dangerous pass, or standing in a winding queue to reach the summit. I think they may be tied to the same rope. Such captures are quite new of course. The photographs of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay are more sparse, but in 2023 each climber has his or her own camera and is eager to snap the summit. 

Yet, why are they in my news feed? Usually, algorithms more accurately assess my consumer interests, offering fabric and quilting patterns. There is not the remotest chance that I will ever climb a mountain, much less assault it which is the verb Hillary used. Admittedly, thirty years ago I helped our son create a science project about Everest. He built a model out of paper mache, marking the camps that dotted the trail. He wore his own winter coat for effect, even though the fair happened in May. The only reason that I remember it out of the menagerie of school projects that showed up at our house, is that there was a photograph. I enjoy knowing that he and his wife have gone on to ascend an impressive number of fourteeners. (I feel cool even knowing that word)

What Everest reminds me, is that people choose hard things. The decision to spend a fortune, and train for months for the elite opportunity to push your body to the brink of collapse in not one to make capriciously. 

In the absence of such an endurance test, some people have hardship thrust upon them. The variety of perils and predicaments defy explanation, but the exhaustion and despair are real. Many of the people on my prayer list are bone weary. While they did not ask for the circumstances that weigh them down like a lack of oxygen at twenty thousand feet, they are obliged to keep trudging. The rope may be invisible, but it is no less compelling. 

I hope that when they catch their breath at the summit, or at least reach a plateau, they will pull out their own phones, and click. We all need proof that we have survived.