During the past couple of months, I've basically stopped climbing because I felt that climbing might not be morally acceptable: too much risk of dying and dying ruins the lives of everybody who loves you. And I still agree with the basic premise that doing something that is extremely dangerous for hedonistic reasons is not okay. However, I'm now thinking that my idea of what climbing is might be off due to a sampling error.
Whenever I think of climbing, I mostly think of my past objectives rather than the actual experiences I've had. This makes some sense: I've probably spent way more time thinking about mountains than on them. However, my past objectives and the experiences I've had differ a good bit. Most of my objectives were 1) extremely ambitious and 2) high risk. The last two were Fitz Roy and an extremely chossy, partially unclimbed traverse in New Hampshire. So if my idea of climbing comes from past climbing goals, of course, climbing seems pretty fucked up.
However, this contrasts with the experiences I've enjoyed the most. Although there are a few "too risky to be morally acceptable" climbs among the experiences I enjoyed the most, they are the minority: most of my favorite days out didn't carry a significant risk of death. This really shouldn't be that surprising: who enjoys being scared shitless? And I'm not a particularly bold climber: I've had at least three panic attacks in situations that were objectively not that bad. Looking back, the days I've enjoyed the most consist of challenging, long, full-value, exhausting days moving relatively fast over granite: any correlation with risk could be due to the fact that the longer a climb is, the more likely it is to have a scary bit.
I now see it's been ego that has distanced the kind of outdoor activities I enjoy doing and the ones I set myself to do. It's easy for an activity that was originally just for fun to become part of one's identity and a source of validation. It's hard to choose not to play the game, not to feel a need to prove oneself as decent in something you love to do. But letting my ego be in control made my climbing much less than what it could have been. It meant worrying about getting to the summit more than anything else, instead of sitting down and staring at the sunrise for a bit longer. So, I don't think I'm done with climbing but I am done caring about it.