It's Got Its Ups And Downs

Landry has an answer of sorts: "It's very selfish. I do these things for the sake of the doing. People tend to fall into a lot of Zen lingo over that kind of remark. I don't know doodly about Buddhism. These experiences have an integrity of their own. In the long run, I guess I don't want to know too much about the drive that makes me do what I do in the mountains. All I can say is that this desire to do extreme skiing seems to be something natural for me, something evolutionary in myself.

"Too often people—especially the press—deal with extreme sport, so-called, as if it has some intrinsic significance beyond the act itself. They try to find value to mankind in the fact that a guy sticks his neck on the line. I'd be the last to say that what I'm doing has any importance to anyone but myself. People talk about 'conquering' a mountain or 'beating' a steep slope. That's exactly wrong. It's not conflict, it's not aggression or warfare. To do these things, you have to force yourself into a kind of passive state where you blend in as part of the mountain, part of the snow, part of the skis, part of the environment. It is totally symbiotic."