Sir Edmund Hillary

Modern developments in machinery and equipment have produced major changes in the technique of exploration. Aircraft and vehicles are in many cases replacing the human legs; oxygen bottles are giving new strength to air-starved lungs in the thin air that clothes the giants of the Himalayas; and radio communication has removed the loneliness from the most desolate land. But despite all this I firmly believe that in the end it is the man himself that counts. When the going gets tough and things go wrong the same qualities are needed to win through as they were in the past -- qualities of courage, resourcefulness, the ability to put up with discomfort and hardship, and the enthusiasm to hold tight to an ideal and to see it through with doggedness and determination.

The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit still lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, and not for what he may find.

Sir Edmund Hillary, Prologue to Challenge of the Unknown (1958)

I have spent the evening reading notes and obituaries of Sir Edmund Hillary, the greatest mountaneer of the 20th Century.

With awesome steadiness of will, those two smiling, dirty faces of Edmund Hillary and Tenzin Norgay had conquered the highest mountain on Earth, the Third Pole, the Everest, Chomolungma or Sagarmatha. And with equally praiseworthy humbleness of character, they shrugged off their well-deserved image of heroism leading honourable lives. Their legendary names shall be remembered in the years to come.

Love and freedom.