Feb 2023 – Cranking Up the Dread Settings, IRL
There is something magical that happens when I find myself truly immersed in a great open world video game. Particularly in fantasy games like The Witcher or Assassin’s Creed, where the details are so stunningly captivating and the story adventures so seducing. It is true escapism. Immersion doesn’t even quite cover it. Immersion can be a jaded expression that simply implies, “hey cool, i’m here in this world, look at me walking around in it.” What I’m talking about is an emotional immersion or emotional investment. You feel the consequences, you feel beauty in your surroundings, you pause at a digital sunset, you sense the wind whipping through your hair sailing on the open sea. You feel rage at your attackers, glory in the victorious battles against dark forces, and the deepest dread as you round a dark cave’s corner, hoping to hell that eerie noise isn’t coming from the demon boss, whom you’re not prepared to fight.
I love these emotions, I crave this feeling of simulated dread and terror. They feel more poised and poetic than the everyday run of the mill dread we cook up in our own heads as adults. The ones from myth and stories seem more heroic, more inviting, more character defining. And I’m reminded of the emotional investment they’ve given me from childhood onwards, reading the great fantasy thrillers and running into the yard to go act them out afterwards. I have vivid memories reading the Hobbit through the night in the summer before high school, and truly knowing the fear that Bilbo felt, feeling his way around in the dark, totally alone, Gollum in pursuit behind him and goblin armies ahead. Or reading Salem’s Lot, and sensing every creak in the floorboards as you follow your characters into the creepy mansion, off to stake some vampires.
Now imagine recreating that feeling in real life, as you charge your way up an uncertain summit, fumbling through the quiet ghastly fog of an unwelcoming mountain in Wales. This feeling is accessible to all of us, and should come to no surprise in the world of corporate stress and middle class marginalization, that one would crave the more tangible challenges of a good old fashioned heroic quest. This is why we lose ourselves in books, in video games, or in this case, a very daunting mountain. That is where I found myself, seeking a hiking adventure away from my home in Dublin, and getting more than I bargained for.
I took the Irish Ferry across the sea to Holyhead Point, UK and rented a tiny Skoda car for a retreat into the unfamiliar parts of north Wales, deep into the country’s Snowdonia National Park. It was the month of February and I stayed in the quiet off-season historic village of Betws-Y-Coed. Don’t ask me how to pronounce that but the small church at its tiny crossroads endowed the town with her name, translated from Welsh as “prayer house in the woods”.
I had the loosest outline of a plan, lightly packed with hiking socks and layers of merino wool rolled neatly into a rucksack. All I knew was that I wanted to tackle Wales’ tallest mountain peak of Snowdon, and I didn’t want it to be an easy trek. So after the briefest of Google scrolling on the boat ride over and literally a 5 minute conversation with an outdoors shop’s clerk, I had my quest details accepted and was ready to embark the next morning. I chose the Pyg Trail upwards, and the Miner’s Track down, which was listed as about 900m elevation climb and a 7 hour trek (but of course in my brashness, my ambition was to shave at least 2 hours off that). And the challenges did not stop at the course setting.
Never have I been an early riser, so I had to set a reasonable wakeup call that got me a hearty breakfast and to a car park in time to allow for some margin of error. The popularity of the mountain even in the off-season, locals warned, meant car parks filled up quickly. And the sunset was just past 5pm, so now I had a ticking clock and the pressure to get on the trail by a certain time. I was at breakfast just past 8am, measuring every ounce of protein and coffee I was filling up with, hydrating and watching my deadline to hit the road with vigilance. I read the mountain’s daily forecast report over my Full Welsh brekkie and saw the visibility listed as ‘very poor’ and the winds as ‘hazardous’. I also knew there was a fork in the path that I did NOT want to get wrong. The consequence would take me to a trail called the Crib Goch listed as “an extremely serious knife-edged ridge… best left to the highly experienced.”
The sensitive events kept stacking up, and this gauntlet only kindled a deeper wanderlust. I was now out the door with my gear, conscious of the minutes counting down to when I wanted to be on foot. My first sense of dread, although I would call it more frustration, happened when I missed my turn for the prime position carpark I had decided on for my launch point. This added an extra 15 minutes for a turnaround, as I screamed out loud looking for any tiny bend to make my K-turn. Again this wasn’t real fear, just that video game feeling of not being able to find your starting point and almost wanting to give up. All the way past my turn, I drove further down the road’s slope past many hikers walking up from a further away lot. I prayed this did not mean I would have to park where they all did, and kept screaming for a turnaround point. I simply did not have the time they did for that extra leg of walking.
The tension washed away as I made my turnaround, defiant of narrow roads, deep ditches and a few rogue sheep. As I got myself back up in the right lot, I ‘paid and displayed’ my ticket quickly before rushing to get to the trailhead like I was on a racecourse. Gloves and windbreakers on, backpack cinched tight, Strava started, and I began my ascent with not a moment to spare. With all the factors weighing heavy on my mind, I made my way step by rocky step, pinging my body for feedback, adjusting my layers for the right breathability and setting my sights for the far away sharp edged summit of Snowdon mountain. She sat painted impossibly in the distance in high definition, 1085 meters high and god knows how many steps away.
Again, the stakes kept stacking up, but the closer I got to that peak, the more confidence I felt. Whether these stakes were real or imagined, I couldn’t say. Perhaps I was manufacturing them to elicit this sense of challenge and conquest that I so longed for. Perhaps they were true survival functions serving me from some primitive part of my brain. Either way, I was in it now, fully immersed in this adventure. The contentious conditions, the ticking clock – these were all the plot elements. And instead of stress, I only found that which I was seeking – a sense of presence, my own unsimulated emotional investment. A blast of something visceral to shock my senses, the surge of true belonging in a moment of time, in a desolate spot on this wild planet where my feet had never wandered.
Now I have managed all manners of hikes, climates and terrains. I have done a guided climb to summit Kilimanjaro, I’ve planned out day trips to the high peaks in Scotland, Ireland and Norway. And to be honest, there’s always been a sense of controlled chaos. In other words, a little wild but plenty of moments to take stock, look around and still feel safe. That’s why it startled me a little when some of my prior worries about parking lots slowly waned to more tangible threats. First there was the wind. When it started to pick up, there was mild unpleasantness that only made me rethink my gear and hood position. As it built though, my mind really started to wander. How strong can this get before it affects my balance? And, is there such a thing as a ‘rogue wind gust’? Like a rogue tidal wave in the middle of the ocean, something chaotic roving down the mountainside with 5 times the magnitude of the rest. Something that could blow your feet right off the ground and clear into the downward abyss? I tried to shrug it off and trudged on.
Then a new wave of terror gripped me. There was the isolation, followed by an uncertainty of my bearings along an unmarked trail. When I started to notice that the very sparse hiking companions had disappeared into the mist, down alternate paths, I found myself constantly paranoid that I had missed a turn. There were plenty of moments to reinforce this paranoia as I found myself on unsure footing along a sharp ridge’s edge, only to look above me and spot a safer path I had meant to be on. Each course correction had me shaking my fists and damning my own stubbornness, inviting myself to breathe deeply and keep my wits sharp. Panic was the enemy in these moments. An invitation to harness some common sense was my friend.
Even after my own mini intervention, quite literally talking myself off a ledge (thank you, thank you), I found the dread still creeping. And nothing was more vivid, not in books or games, or from the roof of Africa, then the fear I felt when I looked at the GPS, glanced at my watch, and saw nothing but an impossible endless summit now looming straight over me. This peak seemed to have appeared in front of me like a stone troll wearing a cloud for a hat, walking straight up to me peering down and asking, “can I help you, fool?” I looked straight up at the illusion of what felt like a sheer face to scramble up. And for the first time asked myself whether the juice was worth the squeeze.
There’s something that takes over you in these moments that is completely unique, something primal and deep seeded, beckoning the familiar endorphins as endurance hunters and inviting true feeling of belonging in an otherwise hostile terrain. And there it was, the same feeling I’ve simulated so many times in games but in full panoramic 360 degree supreme resolution. The same neck hairs and goosebumps rising as I would have marching into some dingy den of succubuses. It shouldn’t surprise me, it’s all the same biochemicals. It’s like when you see a snake in the wild, and you say to yourself, ‘hey, why does this feel like I felt in my last performance review?” It’s all just brain function. And yet, we crave it secretly, the full range of human feelings. Those little reminders of impermanence and fleeting moments to keep us from getting too sure of ourselves.
Life imitating art, imitating life. You can no longer make the mistake of calling this immersion, it’s life, of course you’re immersed in it. You may want to call it escapism, hiking in the wilderness, retreating from the world. But then you have to ask, what are you escaping from, a reality that’s more real than the one in front of you? Nonsense.
So I kept my head down, and wading through the dread like an inconvenient marshland – soggy and dispiriting but not insurmountable. Embracing the truth of this moment meant turning my attention to the quest at hand and ensuring a safe return. I stopped asking the worse case scenario “what ifs” and started backing my own ability to take each challenge as it was presented. As it turned out, the mountain in front of me was not a vertical climb, and was quite manageable, but I had to gain that confidence one stairway step at a time.
My chief focus was landing each step on comfortable rocks, avoiding the compounding agony of sharp rocks repeatedly striking my foot arch. As I pushed to the final summit stretch, I found myself in a cloud. Not a brain fog, a literal cloud. I was getting water logged not because I was being rained on, but because I was the rain, inseparably engulfed in its bubble. I grabbed my selfie, slammed half my water bottle, and checked my watch. 2.5 hours up, and less than 2 hours likely down, so long as I minded my knees and my footing. Pro tip, everyone, 80% of mountaineering accidents happen on the descent. So stay vigilant, fellow hikers, remain patient and never race for the finish line.
I mostly took that advice, but couldn’t help bounding down a few steep slopes, knees buckling, thighs on fire, socks soaking wet, and smiles stretching ear to ear. I managed this little project plan, my own little quest, in 4 hours 15 minutes on the forecasted 7, and was delighted to get back in my car well before sunset. Eyes on the real prize, stretching out my wet clothes by a warm heath fire back at my lodge, sipping on Welsh whiskey and writing the words before you now.
On reflection, It’s no wonder to me anymore why some of the most high power business leaders I know play video games. Taking a break from false senses of stress and high stakes to simulate this feeling of the primitive. And it’s no wonder why I seek these adventures in my real life. I know that my life will never be at risk of stagnation, so long as I continue to charge up those mountains, real and false, with the bloodthirsty rage against the naysayers and demons of dread.
“Do not go gentle into that good night. Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” – Dylan Thomas
Paul Carreo 