Ken C Findlay

A journey among giants Volume II Ken C Findlay

This is the second volume of my poetry and the title refers to my ongoing quest of my adventures in the mountains. At this stage of my climbing career I was a regular visitor to the Alps in the summer and by the end of this volume I had been on two expeditions to the higher mountain ranges of the world (Pakistan in 1991 and Bolivia in 1993). The poems were written between 1980 and 1994, many on my journeys to the European Alps and to far away places such as Pakistan and Bolivia. Most of the poems are quite short (one page in length) so a little longer.'You can never go home' was inspired by a visit to Napoleons tomb in Les Invalides in Paris. I am a frequent visitor to that wonderful city as my sister lives there so as a ritual I always try to go to Pere Lachaise to visit Jim Morrison's grave, previously I have written poems about these experiences. On a trip to the Lake District with a friend during the early nineties, we walked from Windermere to Coniston to look at the lake where Donald Campbell died while trying to break his water speed record in January 1967. Shortly after this I wrote 'Donald' as a tribute to him. In the early nineties, Greenpeace put a promotional video together to highlight the plight of the Whales and the slaughter caused by the Japanese Whaling ships, along with a soundtrack by Supertramp, it was a really moving piece of film, 'killers of life' was my response. In 1994 I was involved in an alpine accident in which a good friend fell 200ft and smashed his pelvis and broke his femur. He managed to survive as I had to go and get help across an unmarked glacier for over two hours. Phil recovered from his ordeal and we did go into the mountains again after that, 'lonely apple on a tree' was written at this time.