Tom French is the author of the new memoir The Gap Years: Climbing, Skiiing, and the Journey Back. He is a senior partner emeritus of McKinsey & Company, and he lives in Massachusetts.
Q: What inspired you to write The Gap Years?
A: I initially shared my post-retirement return to mountain climbing and ski racing with family and friends via a small blog. The blog “went viral,” and people encouraged me to share my experiences more broadly. I realized I had something meaningful to communicate to a wider audience and that it would be gratifying to do so.
Writing a book became both a beacon and personal challenge: something I very much wanted to do but was not sure I would pull off. An inner voice pushed me to commit to it.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Growing up, I twice took what these days are called “gap years.” After high school, I spent a year living close to the Arctic Circle in Sweden. After college, I spent three years leading expedition trips to remote corners of the world. These were some of the most rewarding experiences of my life and shaped who I became as an adult.
When I retired from a three-decade business career at age 60, I realized I wanted to take “time off” again and return to passions of my youth: mountaineering, ski racing, and adventure travel. What I initially labeled a “gap year” became a “gap three years.”
In writing the book, I wanted to convey how the gap year experiences of my youth informed the gap year experiences of my 60s. The Gap Years is about the value of stepping out the mainstream, and the power of reconnecting with things that provided meaning and joy earlier in life.
Q: The writer Bill McKibben said of the book, “Tom French makes a compelling
case that trying hard things when you're older offers different rewards than in
one's youth...” What do you think of that assessment?
A: I hope he is right that my case is compelling! I also think that trying hard things when you are older, in addition to offering different rewards than in your youth, offers some similar rewards. That is a nice combination.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write this book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: Most profoundly, writing The Gap Years gave me a sharper perspective on the journey in pursuit of meaning that I have been on throughout my life. It also introduced me to the deep satisfaction that writing can provide, and to fascinating details of how the publishing world works.
At a base level, I hope readers come away from The Gap Years with an understanding of what it is like to climb big mountains and ski race at a high level, and an appreciation for the profound beauty and satisfaction associated with it.
More broadly, I hope they take away the realization that past passions and dreams remain available for pursuit later in life, and that stepping out of the mainstream to pursue a “path less travelled” can, at any life stage, pay rich rewards.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: The non-writer part of me is involved with several corporate and nonprofit boards. The writer part of me is contemplating a next book, which may well be based on an upcoming climbing expedition in Tibet. I also have an outline of a short story, drawn from a recent hiking trip in New Zealand, that I would love to see through to completion.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: My proceeds from The Gap Years are being donated to the Himalayan Trust in New Zealand. The Trust does groundbreaking work to improve the health, education, and wellbeing of the Sherpa people of Nepal. I am gratified by the opportunity to support it, and it gives me extra energy as I gear up to share the book with as wide an audience as possible.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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