I was laughing. Laughing, as I brushed out the bits of sharp stone that had punctured my down suit, insulating feathers immediately cast into the void, ripped away by jetstream gales. Laughing as I blotted bits of blood from my cheek where my face hit a jag of rock. It was a silly thing to do, that laughing; humor had no place in this maelstrom of wind and cold and snow. And the absurdity of it all made me laugh even harder.

Up until then, I was beaten, worn down to the core by the unrelenting ferocity swirling about. I was inching upward, carrying a heavy load of oxygen and rope to Camp V on Everest’s North Ridge. It was my first time there, my first time on the mountain, and I was alone, determined to push on, to make the carry, to do the job I set out that morning to do.

And I was miserable. Cold. Tired. Running on empty mentally and physically. And that fucking wind. It was relentless, pounding me incessantly, a 45-mph gust from the southwest peppering my face with bits of ice only to be followed immediately by a sucker-punch gust of 40 coming from behind, shoving me face first into the dirt. I’d been fighting it for hours, angry at it, swearing at it, yelling and crying and cussing and, ultimately, losing. And it, the wind? It just seemed to laugh, laugh at the futility of my plight, me but a Lilliputian intruder in this land. The wind’s power, its determination, was sapping my own, whittling away and breaking me down.

And then the big one hit, a 70-mph guffawing blast from the side. I went airborne for a second and then down, hard.

And I started laughing. Not because it was funny: it was anything but, the situation was rapidly approaching desperation. As I dusted myself off, wind whipping about, I could see the absurdity of it all, the impossibility of continuing to move forward in such conditions, the wind tossing me like a puffy ragdoll high on the North Ridge.

I laughed again, harder this time, laughing back, into the wind, at the wind, cackling hysterically.

“This is insanity,” I said aloud to no one, to the wind. Giggling harder, I glanced to the southwest where more blasts were coming my way: “That was a good one, but not enough!” I yelled into the gale. “Whatchya got next?”

A lot, as it turned out. But this time I was ready; not stronger per se, but lightened, more fluid, flexible, resilient. As the gusts hammered, I flowed with them, counterbalancing forces with equal-but-opposite reactions, a smile on my face as I revelled in the challenge, accepted the possibility.

It was quite funny, and would’ve been more so had someone caught it on tape. I’d take a couple steps up and get hit by a gust, stagger and totter, maybe pirouette awkwardly, crampons scratching stone, then laugh aloud and gesticulate at the ether before taking a couple more labored steps upward. Rinse and repeat. I’ve no idea how many times I hit the ground that day, or how many times I managed to stay upright, but I know those last couple hours were full of me smiling on the Ridge, my laughter about my predicament inspiring a sense of determination, of possibility, of joy, of hope.

That, I think, was the key that day: my laughter allowed me to stop wallowing in fear and despair, to take a step back from the brink just long enough to see that all was not lost, all was not bleak. I could see magnificence of the Himalaya stretched far below, the beauty of ice crystals sunlit and aloft, the peace offered by a slight pause in the gale, tents up ahead showing the short distance yet to go, a glance downward showing the long progress I had made. With each step up I laughed, little wins marked in the history of my footprints. I found pleasure in the potential of winning, the possibility of making the carry, getting to Camp V, besting that invisible, omnipotent adversary.

That day 26 years ago is long gone, but the wind has never stopped blowing. Daily it buffets me, chaotic chinooks aiming to tip me over, cyclonic cacophonies making the path ahead seem dubious at best, pointless perhaps. And then, I remember to smile, to laugh, to conjure the grit and determination afforded by that simple action, an act of humorlessly humorous defiance in the face of great odds. I laugh not because it’s funny, but because of the determination inspired by recognizing the laughable tragedy of giving up without a fight.

We’re in bleak and challenging times right now, discordant wind blasting in all directions, dogged and fierce. Perhaps like you, I’ve been feeling defeated, whipsawed by ferocious power running amok, dark and humorless, seemingly aimed solely at tearing down rather than building up, moving forward. It’s hard at times to find joy, to find hope.

But then sometimes, out of the blue, we get a reminder. I was randomly listening to the radio the other day and heard Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) on Latino USA talking about hope and joy and laughter in her Puerto Rican culture:

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Puerto Ricans are very funny, and we’re very loud, and we dance a lot…it’s a conscious choice to be happy [that] is a form of resistance. [W]hen you actually look at people who are enduring some of the deepest, most brutal regimes, they are sometimes the most conscientious about cultivating happiness, joy, gathering, music, dancing…And so I want people to know is like, you’re allowed to be happy. You are allowed to cultivate joy. In fact, you need to, because our job is to build the world that we want. We cannot be joyless people. We will not sustain ourselves. We will not last long.

If you, like me, are finding the wind unbearable, the path ahead desolate and dreary, stand up and laugh. Laugh not because it’s funny, laugh because a little humor, a little joy, brings with it perspective - the perspective to see beauty in the chaos, sunlight through the cloud, success in our past, possibility in our present, and hope in our future. Laugh because it feels good, it inspires focus and determination and resilience and an embrace of possibility and opportunity.

And then, keep on laughing, and climb on.

Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.
- Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (library or Archive.org)