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a close second.
    I was also becoming disenchanted with the realities of big-mountain expeditions. I had been invited on a few in the Himalayas, but circumstances at the time didn’t allow me to participate. I have no regrets. The price tag for such expeditions sometimes reaches hundreds of thousands of dollars, with little gained other than a few minutes on a summit such as Everest, a mountain that has now been climbed by several thousand people and has turned back many more due to weather or illness. Or if you’re really unlucky, you don’t return alive. And it’s usually all over in less than three months.
    As I began putting together my own archaeological projects for a fraction of the money required for mountaineering expeditions, my enthusiasm for giant peaks waned. More important, I was thrilled to have something to show for my more academic efforts. Scholarship and scientific projects provided something to share, and occasionally inspire, in the form of original contributions to human knowledge rather than just a good feeling and a hook for motivational speaking. (“Pursue your dreams, whatever they may be, one step at a time, just like when I was the 2,467th person to climb Everest,” etc.)
    Finally, the birth of my son, Samuel, also convinced me to tame some of my more reckless activities. My child needs his father, and though I’m still physically capable, I now use a rope and take a climbing partner more often than not. I’ve also replaced some of the physical and mental addiction of mountaineering with other activities that are much safer, like long-distance running on wilderness trails, mountain biking, and the occasional game of croquet.

    The author climbing with his son, Samuel, on a peak near Mount Rainier.
Sherry Ryan
    In retrospect, archaeology probably saved my life. Anyone who has participated seriously in climbing for a decade or more can recite the names of several acquaintances and friends who didn’t survive the experience. I personally quit counting after two dozen. Of eight people I worked with at one climbing school, only half of us are still alive, including one who had a leg nearly torn off by a falling rock. None were killed while working as professional guides, where our attention to client safety is foremost. Each perished pushing his own personal limits, often extreme, all of them doing what they loved to do.
    After I’d completed my undergraduate career and spent a fun summer following graduation, fall arrived with its accompanying poor weather in the Northwest. In short order I found myself increasingly bored and wishing I had applied directly to graduate school. Scrambling in an attempt to make up for lost time, I managed to get admitted to two great schools in Southern California beginning in January, for the beginning of their winter quarters. One was a program in international relations and the other in Egyptology. I attended each for a week and dropped out of both. I learned quickly from the former that I didn’t have the obsession or dedication to pursue a professional career in the very real and often ugly world of Cold War politics. Many of the professors at the school were presidential advisers or other prominent individuals, and the subject matter was immediately current and very, very serious. The career path seemed to be directed toward positions in the State Department, policy institutes, or university-level teaching. It wasn’t political science per se that attracted me as an undergraduate, but the history surrounding it. I was more interested in its fascinating past than in its frightening present.
    I had very different misgivings about the Egyptology program, mostly logistical, but my turning away from it was ultimately forthe best. Somewhat trackless, I spent the rest of the spring climbing, returned to the Northwest, married the ever-patient Sherry, and directed a climbing school for the summer. In the meanwhile I applied to a