The mountain does not give up every secret.

But the man was there.

Science proved it.

His lineage connects him to millions of people alive today.

His bones tell part of his story.

His torch marks tell part of his story.

And the part of his story that no science has yet told — the part that lives in the unanswerable question of why he crawled so far into the dark — is the part that makes him, across all the distance of nearly nine thousand years, recognizably and completely human.

He had reasons.