For Jessica Hepburn, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when she decided to climb to the top of the world, and it is also difficult to listen to all the available episodes. desert island disc.
“They are inseparable in my heart,” says the author, an adventurer and self-proclaimed “unlikely athlete” who successfully climbed Mount Everest in 2022 at the age of 51. says.
Previous accomplishments include swimming the English Channel and completing the London Marathon. desert island disc It was her joy, her fun, her energy. “I'm not a sporty person, I'm an artist. There's nothing more fun than swimming, running, and climbing so I can eat and drink on the couch,” she says.
First broadcast in 1942, this classic BBC radio show has over 3,300 episodes available to watch online. Hepburn has been listening to it all since he started training to climb the world's 8,848-metre peak in 2017, practicing walking uphill with a weighted pack on his back. Hepburn says it was a “life-changing moment” when she realized she could combine intense physical training with her passion, and even better, that her favorite radio show could make it easier.
Before choosing just one song to protect them from the waves, the show's interviewees were asked for eight songs, a book, a luxury item they would take with them if they were stranded on a deserted island, and asked to explain their choices. is a famous story. “This music unravels the stories and truths of castaways who are, in fact, figures in British life over the past 100 years,” Hepburn says. “Each castaway gave me a lot of wisdom and learning.”
In her memoir, save me from the waves, Hepburn tells how, while training for Everest, at one point she was the only one in her group to unsuccessfully attempt to climb Europe's highest peak, Mount Elbrus, from the north side. Lying in her sleeping bag, exhausted but agitated and unable to sleep, she listens to actor Tim Robbins tell Kirsty Young that at the age of 50 he began to think: And in that moment you're like: What the hell am I doing here? He continued: “I asked myself: What makes you happy? What do you regret not doing?”
The next morning, she got up, walked down to base camp, and drove around to the south side (it's slightly warmer on the south side, so it's a little easier to climb). From that perspective, she has successfully risen to the top of Europe. And when she got there, she cried. “But they were tears of joy. Tears of self-love.”
In 2021, she failed to climb Mount Everest for the second time due to the coronavirus, a cyclone, and a chest infection (her first attempt in 2020 was also thwarted by the pandemic). But she was dumped by writer Paulo Coelho, who convinced her the following year that she should try again. “From the moment I dreamed of her,” he said in her book. desert island disc Interview: “At least you can start fighting for your dreams. And from the moment you fight for your dreams, everything becomes meaningful.”
“That's when I realized that the beauty of life is to dream,” Hepburn says. “Sadness happens when you don't know what you want out of life.”
The twist here is that Hepburn knew what she wanted, but no matter how hard she tried to make her dreams a reality, she couldn't get it. Diagnosed with unexplained infertility in her 30s, she spent 10 years and more than £70,000 trying to become a mother, undergoing 11 failed IVF cycles, multiple miscarriages and a near-fatal attempt. It turned out that I had an ectopic pregnancy. And when she was in her mid-40s, after years of repeating that she wasn't pregnant, including the day her father died, she met her “perfect soulmate” and her entire life. Her 16-year relationship with her lover, Peter, has ended. , broke. “Everything we went through was a factor,” Hepburn says. “It became completely clear that our relationship was beyond repair.” The couple sold their house and separated, leaving Hepburn alone in her childhood home in north London. I returned. “If there was an Olympics for mental endurance, I think I would have been on the podium,” she says. “That's my strength.”
Left with a “big hole” in her life where her family should have been, she walks through Ben Nevis and Snowdonia, climbs the hills of the Lake District and Peak Country, and walks to Parliament, constantly feeling Molly's absence. I trekked all over the hill. , her name for the unborn child who had hitherto lived only in her imagination.
While training in the mountains, she often encountered younger, more fit climbers, usually men, who asked her why she was there. “I'm just a middle-aged woman with a dream,” she always said. But sometimes she was cold and harsh and told them her unpleasant truth. It was because she was “in a lot of pain.” “I was in great emotional pain,” she wrote in her memoir. “This hardship gave me something else to focus on, and I think those physical challenges released the pain, which improved my life.” 2020 While training for his first Everest attempt, he discovered that listening to other people's life stories made him feel less alone and helped him understand his own suffering. “One of the things I learned from my friends at Desert Island Disc is that the difficult things we have to go through in life make us human. If we can overcome these difficult challenges, I felt like I could be even stronger – and I am.”
Today, she wants to share her path to inner strength with others. That's why she encourages everyone to ask themselves the following questions: “What gives you energy and leads you to an exciting life?'' Furthermore, “It all starts with the first step.''
It wasn't just the reflections of various castaways that healed Hepburn as she climbed and connected with nature. She finds that the music they choose – she has listened to about 30,000 songs – is motivating and uplifting, especially when walking outdoors. “Movement is very connected to music, and Drifter taught me a lot of music I didn't know.” As she expanded her musical repertoire, she adapted it to every aspect of her life. I realized that I was creating a lot of playlists. “I'd go out to the Lake District in the morning and put on 'Morning Playlist,' 'Rain Playlist,' 'Bird Playlist.'” I used a list. “When I'm sad, I have a playlist that makes me happy, and when I want to cry, I have a playlist that makes me sad.” I also created a playlist for you. The latter includes Beethoven's Ode to Joy. “If you ask parents what they want for their children, most of the time they'll say all they want is for their children to be happy,” she explains.
Nevertheless, when Hepburn finally climbed Mount Everest on May 14, 2022, with Miley Cyrus' song “The Climb” playing in her head, she felt triumphant and exhilarated. I didn't even feel relieved. “I felt numb,” she says. “It took us six days to get from base camp to the top. We were exhausted.”
Then her descent took a deadly turn. When she was still at an altitude of 8,000 meters, a freak accident occurred in which her empty oxygen bottle flew into her leg, fracturing her fibula. “It either fell out of someone's bag, it came loose, or someone threw it off a mountain,” Hepburn said. At that height there was no helicopter rescue and her oxygen was running low. “All the castaways who thought about death and chose death music – Schubert's Adagio for Strings and Mozart's Requiem were the two main choices – spoke to me at that moment. “Because I was facing death,” she says.
She didn't know she had broken her leg. But no matter what her mountain threw at her, she believed in her own ability to get off the mountain alive. “I had to get off,” she says. “I wanted to be alive.”
Although she still feels a deep sense of loss for Molly, she equally recognizes that she experienced a once-in-a-lifetime adventure that she never would have sought had her daughter been born. And this is no coincidence. “If you're facing a personal tragedy in your life that you can't change,” she says. i did it. ”
Save Me from the Waves: An Adventure from the Sea to the Top by Jessica Hepburn (Quarto, £17.99) is available at guardianbookshop.com for £15.83.