Dagger and Book

“As long as you can still grab a breath, you fight. You breathe. Keep breathing.” —Hugh Glass, “The Revenant”

When you try to breathe in the air at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, you fill your lungs with roughly half as much oxygen as you would at sea level. This can lead to altitude sickness, which is a friendly way of saying that your brain and all other vital organs begin to malfunction, simulating — and sometimes actually precipitating — suffocation.

“I didn’t feel like I was in my body,” Nicholas C. Ige ’25 recalled from the summit push.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” —Winnifred Crane Wygal, “Serenity Prayer”

In the spring of my freshman year, I was diagnosed with anorexia. The story of college for me, at its core, has been about asking where Charlie went and finding him again.

I can confidently say that my relationship with my body is healthier now than it has been in a long time. This does not mean, however, that the obsessive thoughts are completely gone, that the wounds aren’t still raw, or that questions remain unanswered. I am continuing to climb and suspect that, to some degree, I always will be.

“Glory before death, adventure before all.” —Nicholas C. Ige ’25

In need of questions answered, Nick and I approached a lone photographer who sat perched overlooking a trail down to Blue Lake’s edge. A small, untouched oasis nestled within the mountains, and one of just four glacial lakes in continental Australia, Blue Lake certainly commands the gaze of every camera lens in its vicinity. But while the main trail was well populated, Nick and I had ventured far off on an obscure side path — two specks just as secluded among the grassy peaks as Blue Lake itself, joined by another hiker for the first time in some miles.

“Can we swim in that?” Nick asked, pointing across the alpine vista to the turquoise waters. The photographer squinted back, clearly off-put by such a juvenile question.

“Most of us are forgetting that from the beginning of our life, we are approaching death. Life is absurd. But you can fill it with ideas, with enthusiasm. You can fill your life with joy.” —Reinhold Messner, “14 Peaks”

Wednesday nights at the Bondi Beach Backpackers hostel in Sydney, Australia, tend to be a little slow. Nicholas C. Ige ’25 and I opted to spend the warm evening outside, lounging in the courtyard alongside other guests similarly worn out from a full day of surfing. Despite the lack of commotion, I was treated to a now familiar but nevertheless delightful sight when a few of our recent acquaintances in the hostel asked Nick about his life, unsuspecting of the mythic stories awaiting them.

The spectacle began when Nick offered our companions a swig from his bottle of Konyagi. They are first surprised to learn that Konyagi is a local liquor of Tanzania, but they’re even more surprised when Nick explains he was there only the week prior to summit Mount Kilimanjaro. Their bewilderment and wonder only increases when they find out Nick is a Harvard student studying Neuroscience and an army veteran road-tripping along Australia’s coast after climbing the country’s tallest mountain. Not to mention Nick is also a psychedelic enthusiast, savant of consciousness and spirituality, and the meanest surfer Bondi Beach has ever seen.

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.” —Joseph Campbell

The recording of my interview with Nick Ige ’25 and Kevin Fischetto ’26 begins with boisterous laughs and ends the same way, my questions broken by the occasional joke and always met with smiles. But those close to Nick and Kevin are familiar with the unmistakable seriousness about them — a sobriety betraying their lengthy journeys to find peace, as well as their unfathomable ambition.

The two met during Kevin’s stay at Harvard during Visitas last April, yet it wasn’t until this semester that the pair — both avid surfers and hikers — discovered their shared passion for taking on adventures in the outdoors.