The [ED]it // Edition 007. Endurance

On climbing your mountain, plus one image and endnotes.

It takes endurance to climb your mountain

Last August, we walked up the Watkin Path on Yr Wyddfa / Snowdon with the boys. They love water, but we didn’t tell them about the waterfalls and rock pools beforehand as we wanted to surprise them. At the time they were 8 and 5 years old and found it tough going in the heat. We had to stop several times for rests and water, there was whining and frustration. Even when we relented and told them about the rock pools, they were still resistant about continuing. However, when they rounded the bend and saw the rock pools, all of that was replaced by excitement and joy and we had a great time. The slog had been worth it.

When you are working hard and don’t know your goal, or only have a vague idea of it, getting to the end and completing the project is a release.

We walked up the Watkin Path again this summer, as requested by the boys. They wanted to go to the rock pools again. This time they were focused. The boys knew what was waiting for them and they had tasted the success of getting there last year, despite the difficulty. This time, the walk up was a breeze, even in similar heat to last year. We didn’t stop to rest once. Nothing was stopping them from reaching their goal.

It took us by surprise how easily they managed the uphill walk. That being said, they are a year older, with more football, tennis, PE and other activities under their belts, meaning they were also stronger than last year and had more endurance. Maybe next year we’ll go a little further?

When you have a clear goal, the work to get there can be focused, making the goal easier to reach.

At the start of the year, I attended the London Writers Salon online goal-setting workshop with my wife. They used a quote from Neil Gaiman’s speech to the University of Arts graduates in 2012 where he talked about walking towards his “mountaintop” to attain his goals. Roughly translated, this means to identify what it is you want from your work and life and visualise those goals on a mountaintop. They will look far away, but the point is to make sure that everything you are doing is aligned with reaching them, focused on getting you to your mountaintop. Along the way there will be diversions, valleys and hard slogs, as well as easier times. But as long as you keep focused on the mountaintop, you will keep moving towards it.

Some of the things I’m doing feel like a slog at the moment, and I’m not sure if I’m progressing. I’ve not had success with applications for a few funding opportunities or competitions this year, and it’s getting to me. I’ve been quite selective also, targeting the ones most relevant to my work or judged by people who I would like to get my work in front of. I feel like I’m in a valley, the mountaintop out of sight, but I’m relatively confident my compass is keeping me on the right track. I think I know where I am, on the way to my mountaintop.

Gaiman has a lot more in his speech besides the small part that is the mountaintop analogy, and he writes a lot better than I do, so I really suggest you read the whole speech. It’s a quick, fun read.

I’ve talked to several other ‘mountaineers’ who have felt the same as me lately. I’ve also found comfort talking to a few people who have proved that focus, hard work and perseverance can help you reach – if not the peak – certainly a camp on the way to the summit.

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.”

James Baldwin, interviewed for the Paris Review by Jordan Elgrably in 1984

While I don’t agree with Baldwin’s absolutism about talent, the gist of this quote is spot on. In fact I have it stuck up on our fridge.

Ed Brydon @edbrydon

@abbiets @MaazaMengiste Having it pinned up doesn’t make it any easier.

What’s your mountaintop? It can be a small peak on the way to a larger one, or ‘the ultimate goal’.

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// One image

Yellow Strand, Sligo, Ireland

I was pleased to print and ship this photograph to a client for a birthday present this month. In addition to selling prints of images I’ve already made, I am also available to be commissioned for a specific image, landscape or otherwise. So, if there’s a special place you’ve always wanted a photograph of, please do get in touch via email if you’d like to discuss rates and the photograph you have in mind.

“A good walk blows the cobwebs away…” read more about the making of this photograph on my blog.

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// Endnotes

1. Wales’ slate landscape has been awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status. See an image from the Penrhyn Slate Quarry near Bethesda, North Wales, and read about the making of it on my blog here.

2. Paul Treacy’s Pandemic Constitutional is a visual and written journal of the living through the pandemic and long COVID. You can read and see it on the BBC.

3. Kirsty Mackay’s project The Fish That Never Swam is a vital, personal look at the excess mortality and lower life expectancy in Glasgow as compared to the rest of the UK. It will be published as a book later this year, but you can read about here in this featured in The Guardian and on her website.

4. Ruth Orkin’s modern woman in New York, 1949, in The Guardian’s ‘Big Picture’.

Thank you for reading The [ED]it. I hope you enjoyed it. Please forward this on to anyone else you think might enjoy it, and please do get in touch by leaving your thoughts in the comments or contacting me via email at edbrydon@gmail.com

Take care,

Ed

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About me:

I am a photographer and writer available for commissions based near Farnham, Surrey, in south east England, just 45 minutes from London. I also regularly work in North Wales. 

My more recent work explores personal connections to place, the land and natural environment, how each of those, and the connections between them, are changing. 

In 2017 my ongoing project on people of North Welsh heritage in the northeast US was exhibited at Northern Eye Festival. I was subsequently awarded a commission from the Welsh Parliament in 2019 to make new work for exhibition around Wales in 2019-20. 

You can find out more on my website here.

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