Rambles around Chamonix I

It has been already 5 years I have been coming to Cham on and off, for skiing, ice climbing, rock climbing, or what is generally known as mountaineering or alpinism.  This year is no exception, although it has been an anti-climax of a trip, making me wonder if i really want to be in this expensive, posh, and tourist-jammed town over and over, again and again.  Some long-due realizations:

* risk-taking in mountains is a habit; only by doing it over and over does one manage to shut up the instinct and become blind to the dangers of avalanches, crevasse crossings, ridge walkings etc.
* sport climbing does make you stronger in the mountains: after many years of trying i finally feel good and compfy trad climbing 6as...
* mountaineering is very inefficient, and my patience is rather limited, especially given the realization that i could be working on a project somewhere warmer and enjoying the process much more
* partner is the key word, as always, and oh, hard, how hard it is to find someone who could both inspire me to give it my best, and make me feel warm and fuzzy in my own skin
* taking the latter two propositions together, my motivation seems finally to be waning, maybe it is high time to stop wondering and looking always higher to such routes as Digital Crack or American Beauty, and just stay at the sea-level? Maybe Jonathan the Seagull was completely crazed and wrong?

With all of these wonderful and deep realizations so clear, i hope i will not forget them next year and not rush off again to the old dear mountains just because they are there.  This post is just a self-reminder, that maybe, just maybe, a vacation in Kalymnos or Rodellar could be a much better option given my current priorities, capabilities, and interests...speaking to the deaf, i know.  All this makes me think of Escher's dragon, tirelessly biting at its own tail, while hopelessly trying to become three-dimmentional, in a Sysiphe kind of way:

In Escher's own words:

However much this dragon tries to be spatial, he remains completely flat. Two incisions are made in the paper on which he is printed. Then it is folded in such a way as to leave two square openings. But this dragon is an obstinate beast, and in spite of his two dimensions he persists in assuming that he has three; so he sticks his head through one of the holes and his tail through the other.