Round 973; Pursuit of consciousness through sufferings

Round 973; Pursuit of consciousness through sufferings

The wind blew sideways that morning—sharp, serrated. It didn’t howl or scream. It pressed. A steady, silent pressure that got into your bones, under your skin, through the seams of your gloves. It wasn’t personal. Nature never is.

No tracks behind him anymore. The snow ate them in minutes. Ahead, the ridge sloped higher, the rocks jagged like broken teeth, jutting out of a white jaw. He leaned into the incline, boots crunching, breath a white ghost that came and went.

This was round 973.

He’d stopped counting at 400. But he started again after the avalanche. The one that buried two tents and everything in them—gear, food, friends. All that remained was him, and the mountain, and the understanding that this wasn’t a climb. This was a fight. Not even that—this was being fought. By the wind. By the cold. By the terrain that shifted beneath him without warning, like a beast that got bored with silence and wanted to move.

His name didn’t matter here. Names were for passports, warm conversations, mailboxes. Up here, there were no addresses. Just coordinates on maps that got rewritten every storm.

The mountain had no summit. Not really. Just a shifting line where the air thinned into knives and the ice crusted over even thought. He wasn’t climbing it to reach anything. That idea was gone by round 500. He climbed because stopping meant freezing in place, becoming a fixture—another weather-smoothed statue people saw and said, that must have been a climber once.

At night, when he wasn’t too cold to sleep, he dreamt of bells. Not church bells. Boxing bells. The kind that signals the end of a round. But they never rang. Not once.

This wasn’t a fight with an end. There was no referee to call it. No corner to retreat to between rounds. No one saying just a little longer, champ. Just the wind, the weight, and him.

Each step was a negotiation. Not with himself. With existence. As if gravity had to approve every footfall. As if time were watching, arms crossed, waiting for him to make a mistake so it could erase him.

He adjusted the strap on his pack. His left shoulder had gone numb days ago. Or was it hours? Time stopped making sense when the sun circled but didn’t warm.

Below, the valley was a smear of grey. No path back. Not really. And forward? Forward was the ridge, then the next, then a plateau where the snow blew sideways forever.

He fell once—today or yesterday—and slid twenty feet. That’s when he heard it: the mountain laughing. Not out loud. But deep in the ice. A creak, a groan, like something ancient enjoying the slow game of wearing him down.

And it was wearing him down. Not all at once. Not dramatic. Just slow, methodical erosion. Cold in the fingers. Ache in the knees. Sleep that never refreshed. Calories that didn’t add back up. You don’t feel yourself being ground into dust. But you know it’s happening.

He pressed on.

Round 973 had no fanfare. No cheering. No banner in the sky. Just the slow climb, the breath that hurt to make, and the beautiful bleakness of being utterly alone.

But not lonely. Not really. The mountain was company. Hostile, sure. But present. Unchanging. Honest. It didn’t pretend to be anything else.

By noon, the wind picked up. He dropped to a crouch, anchored himself, rode it out. It passed like a judgment.

The metaphor, if anyone ever asked—not that anyone would—wasn’t about glory. It wasn’t about man versus nature, or conquering, or triumph. It was this: a grind. A merciless, unremarkable grind. Beautiful only in its purity. No lies, no illusions, just effort.

And that’s what he came for.

Because back down there—in cities and screens and buzz and noise—life had rules that bent and people who broke them. But here? Here, the rules didn’t budge. Nature didn’t negotiate. The wind didn’t take bribes. The cold didn’t care what you believed.

You either moved or you didn’t.

And every round you lasted, you earned.

He crested the ridge as the light began to fade. Just more snow ahead. More wind. A new round.

He smiled.

Not because he was winning.

There was no winning.

But because he was still standing.

Still swinging.

And the bell?

Still hadn’t rung.