A Sailor's Christmas In Islamabad 2013

Christmas thousands of miles from home can be a lonely affair.  In 27 years of naval service I imagine I’ve been deployed 5 or 6 years, counting schools, underway time and mobilizations.  That’s time away from immediate family.  I’ve been far from my mother, father and sister for over 15 of those 27 years.  That’s a lot of birthdays, Christmas’, anniversaries, Thanksgivings, etc. away from family.  It’s my job.  It’s the job of all of us in uniform. 

Today, Christmas 2013, I planned to do some rock climbing.  That was my gift to myself.  The Margalla Hills have been off limits to us for nearly 6 months.  Now they are open again.  I invited a group of guys from work who have an interest in climbing.  Unfortunately none of them made it.  So I figured I’d just go check out the crag I was planning to climb and perhaps scout some other areas as well.  I drove up to the trail head, grabbed my pack and set off to have a look.  As I was standing at the wall, looking at the bolted routes, checking the first few moves, wondering what to check out next, I heard voices.  I ignored them at first figuring some locals were on the main trail.  I don’t speak Pashto or Urdu so I had no idea what was being said.  As I was playing around I realized the voices were getting steadily louder.  I looked down the trail and two local guys were approaching.  Mind you the trail to the crag only leads to the crag, nowhere else.  As it turns out two Pakistani rock climbers were planning to climb at the same spot.  One of them is fluent in English so we spoke for a bit about local climbing, this climb, other small talk.  The one who is fluent is a Fulbright Scholar and mountaineer.  The other works at a local amusement park running at 60 ft high climbing wall and is a very good rock climber.  They invited me to join them, so I did.  I am not the best climber as I’ve very out of practice.  They were fantastic climbing partners.  We made several runs up different lines on the crag.  I ended up bruised with bloody fingers, as usual.  Nothing serious, just good fun.  So, what began as a bit of a disappointing day ended up being a fantastic time.  I now have local friends who climb most weekends.  I have a much better idea what at least one of the local crags has to offer.  It was a very nice Christmas for me. 

So when you have to be far away for holidays, or anniversaries, or birthdays there is no reason to mope about feeling lonely.  It simply doesn’t serve any useful purpose.  It’s much more fun to go out and do something you’ve wanted to accomplish.  For me that was rock climbing and it turned out to be a fantastic experience!  Merry Christmas!!!