We are happy to inform you that we are publishing the book "Path" in the Macedonian language by the Slovenian mountaineer-poet, Nejc Zaplotnik. ❤️
The editions of Echo pass one by one, the films and presentations teach us and inspire us, imagine us - and then they leave, but the books we publish are meant to stay with us forever. Because of that, the selection of releases that we struggle to release are very carefully selected.
"Path" is a book that shocks with its simplicity. It is here to ignite the ardor of all those who are starting to explore the mountains, but also of the most experienced ones. But also for a reader who has never made contact with the mountain! Written in such simple and pure language, but with so much love. That's why Vicky Groshelj also writes: "I read it line by line, and then between the lines."
Path" is full of paragraphs through which Nejc reveals himself - as a pure lover of the mountains. At the very beginning, he writes:
"...Alpinism is like art: you bring all your strength, all your soul into the work, you forget everything, you live only for the meter in front of you and when you stand tired on the snow peak and the sun warms you, you feel a beauty inside you that does not you know how to describe her.
You feel the world, you feel the Earth, the Sun, the wind, everything breathes with you and intoxicates you. The friend next to you is silent, only his eyes shine in the middle of sunken cheeks and without asking him you know that he is experiencing the same thing. That he experiences life itself! Without desires, without thoughts, you experience your own existence and the existence of all nature around you..."
"Path" is full of paragraphs through which Nejc reveals his hunger and thirst for constant discovery of the whole world and its every secret, so in one of them he writes:
"...I can't decide what to study, I'm interested in too many things: psychology, physical culture, geography, literature... What? I fear time because I know how desperately little time I have. How many more things I have to know, read, do, write, how much more I have to love, fight, rejoice, cry. One would give up! All that in the few decades that are at our disposal. I'd like to scoop everything up with a big spoon..."
"Path" is filled with paragraphs through which Nejc openly shares the wide range of emotions and personal, inner-human battles he faces while participating in the expeditions:
“...I am afraid of India. As we walked in the midst of her terrible misery, I was ashamed that I was young and healthy, that I was clothed and full. I was so alone in the crowd of hungry people, so desperately lonely, overwhelmed, without excuse to myself, without excuse, without compromise, powerless and sick. And sick I set out for the mountain I dreamed of and spent a lot of money to be able to stand on its top, and there far below, in the moonlight, people are still dying of hunger on the roads, dressed only in torn shameful rags. And now I want to go back, I want to the plain, among the people, among the noise and the eastern bustle. I want to disappear among naked brown bodies, I want to cancel myself and forget about human insensitivity and selfishness. However, I cannot do anything, because I am a prisoner of the path I am on, because I am selfish, conceited and pretentious...”
And this is how we can finish: to quote paragraph by paragraph, because the whole book is too rich with simplicity, love, sincerity, humanity... And poetry and philosophy. "Path" could not be a more appropriate name. Because "reading it line by line, and then between the lines", we realize that its author found his way and lived it so strongly, but also modestly.
The Path is a book in which, essentially, an accomplished climber, who is probably the envy of the strongest climbers in the world for accomplished projects in the highest mountains - at no point does he describe the projects through technical difficulties passed. There are no lengths, steepnesses, grades... There is movement and discovery, and when the top is reached, as reported by Nejc Base when climbing the west ridge of Everest: "...(we are at the top and) We don't know what to do we do..."
Because it's not about the goal. Just for the way. Because:
"...He who seeks the goal will remain empty when he reaches it, and the one who finds the way, will always carry the goal within himself..."
And as we wrote above: we can still copy from the book - because it is "magical". Wiki writes in the foreword:
“…I was mesmerized. He wrote it for himself, for me, for all of us. He wrote it for those who feel and live the same way they experience. Of course, none of us directly showed admiration for the book, everyone had some kind of fake anger, in the sense of why he wrote that, now there's no point in trying, because it doesn't get any better than this..." ❤️
This is a book that we simply cannot recommend enough: the best thing that will happen to you in terms of mountain literature.
