On my fiftieth birthday, a good friend gave me a watch that counted ski runs and vertical toes of descent. My spouse Vivian has by no means forgiven him. From that day on, every time she would say “Let’s name it a day” after a protracted morning on the slopes, I used to be greater than more likely to reply, “Let’s make it an Everest Day – twenty-nine thousand toes!” She would sigh, decide up her poles, and observe me again to the carry. What a beautiful spouse.
I inform that story as a result of it captures one thing important about how I’ve approached bodily exercise for the previous 5 many years: not as a health routine, not as a programme with targets and deadlines, however as a means of being on the planet. I by no means got down to turn out to be an athlete. I’m a chartered amount surveyor from Birmingham who constructed a profession throughout the Caribbean. However someplace alongside the way in which, motion grew to become the thread that held all the pieces collectively – the work, the journey, the relationships, and the sense that life is one thing to be lived along with your boots on.
I discovered to water ski in Jamaica in my twenties. I picked up snow snowboarding in my mid-thirties, when a good friend invited me to Boyne Highlands in Michigan over Christmas. I used to be instantly hooked and sought out an teacher in Colorado named Rob Tiernan, a mountain man from Montana who was a park ranger when he wasn’t educating snowboarding. We skied collectively for a lot of, a few years, to the purpose that the opposite instructors stated we have been clones of one another coming down the mountain. Over the many years, Vivian and I skied throughout Colorado, Montana, Switzerland, France, and British Columbia. Throughout one eight-day journey to Aspen, we logged 100 and fifty thousand vertical toes. Throughout one other week in Méribel, we coated 100 and forty-two thousand. That pesky watch once more.
However it was by no means nearly snowboarding. In our fifties, Vivian and I trekked the Jomolhari route in Bhutan, crossing passes at sixteen thousand toes within the Himalayas. In our sixties, we climbed Blue Mountain peak in Jamaica… twice. In Kauai, we hiked sixteen hundred toes down a path after which climbed all the way in which again up, Vivian nursing a damaged toe your entire means. Again within the lodge that night, she stated, “For a sixty-seven and sixty-eight-year-old couple, we’re not doing too badly!” I couldn’t have agreed extra.
In our seventies, we hiked two thousand vertical toes within the Tramuntana mountains of Mallorca, trekked to a frozen waterfall inside a collapse Azerbaijan, and I scrambled up Camelback Mountain in Phoenix – a path that rises fourteen hundred toes in simply over a mile and is thought domestically as a “actual leg burner.” I made it again to my automotive in good condition.
None of this required distinctive genetics or a private coach. What it required was consistency and a refusal to let age turn out to be an excuse. Vivian and I’ve all the time carried our personal ski tools – no porters, no transfers. We eat nicely after we journey, typically spectacularly nicely, however we earn it. We began doing Tai Chi at Camana Bay on Sunday mornings. We hike wherever we go, whether or not it’s the mountains of Georgia or the Previous City of Baku. We have now by no means belonged to a gymnasium with a month-to-month membership and a locker. Our gymnasium has all the time been the world.
I’ve all the time believed that in life there are gamers and spectators. Theodore Roosevelt stated it way more eloquently, however the core concept is identical. You don’t construct a significant, wholesome life by watching from the sidelines and ready for excellent circumstances. You construct it by getting out the door, placing one foot in entrance of the opposite, and doing it once more tomorrow. At seventy-nine, I can let you know that the view from up right here (actually and figuratively) has been value each step.
For anybody seeking to keep energetic and engaged because the years add up, right here are some things I’ve discovered alongside the way in which:
1. Make motion a part of how you reside, not one thing you schedule.
I by no means had a health programme. I had a life that concerned strolling, mountaineering, snowboarding, swimming, and carrying my very own baggage. The very best train is the type you don’t consider as train, it’s merely how you progress by way of your day.
2. Discover a associate who will hold you sincere.
Vivian has been beside me on each mountain, each path, and each ski slope for many years, together with those she’d slightly have skipped. Having somebody who shares the dedication makes it sustainable. You encourage one another on the times when the couch seems extra interesting than the summit.
3. Don’t let the quantity in your birthday cake set the agenda.
No one advised us we have been too outdated to trek in Bhutan at fifty-five, or too outdated to hike in Azerbaijan at seventy-eight. We merely went. Age is a reality, not a limitation, and the one individual deciding what you’re able to is you.
4. Earn your meals.
Among the best meals of my life have come after the toughest days on a path – home-cooked lamb soup after a mountain hike in Azerbaijan, paella after a cliff stroll in Mallorca, stew and pink wine eaten sitting on our skis within the snow. Meals tastes higher when your physique has labored for it. That’s not a weight loss plan tip. It’s a life tip.
Creator Bio
Martyn Bould is a extremely profitable entrepreneur based mostly within the Cayman Islands. He’s a founding member for the Cayman Nationwide Cultural Basis and the Nationwide Gallery of the Cayman Islands. He was honored by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012 for companies in preserving and growing Caymanian tradition, and by the Cayman Islands Authorities within the 2025 Hero’s Day Awards as a Legacy Builder for laying the groundwork for future financial improvement since 1970. His memoir, Greater than Simply the Climb – Life’s Classes Properly Realized (Unicorn, Nov. 24, 2025), weaves his private journey alongside the transformation of the Cayman Islands. Study extra right here.
