gratitudes and inclusions

Hold on, buckle in. This is messier than I intended. But I’m going for it. See you on the other side…

*

things i learn getting hurt

After not playing hockey all of last season, barely playing at all for the three before that, I pulled out my goalie gear last fall and started playing a few times a week. Three to be exact. I was out of shape, my legs felt like jelly after about 15 minutes that first ice time, but I remembered how much I love playing the first time the puck ended up in my glove.

Shocker., I know. That’s how it is when you love something.

climbing... mostly (at Vie hebdomadaires)

Today was my last guest post at the Vie Hebdomadaires collaborative blogging experience. I wrote about climbing. And stuff. I can't help myself sometimes...

I had a blast blogging there this week. I think that maybe I even got my blog groove back a bit. ;)

almost a manifesto

Let me see if I can crystallize this…[1]

The path is not a competition, with others or self. It’s just a fucking path. Walk it or don’t, but don’t think there’s any kind of winning involved.

Accomplishment should be intensely personal. Those who will know about it by proximity are really the only ones that need to know.

If one listens to sycophants, one must give equal time to critics. Best, if possible, to ignore both (except for required civility).

If it’s hard and level and predictable, it’s not the path; it's a sidewalk. Turn left (metaphorically speaking) now.

Figure out what you’d bleed for and you’re on the way to figuring out your path. Besides, if you bleed, it’s a sport, and everything sporty is more fun.

Scars are tattoos that you earn.[2]

We do not fall so that we can learn how to get up. We fall because we trip, or drink too much, or get hit on the head. If you can learn to get up from falling, good on ya, but that’s not why you fell. Shit just happens sometimes.

Everything’s eventual, so don’t panic. A mountain in the way just means you have to switch to climbing shoes. Think of it as a great thing, like an unbirthday present.

The shortest distance between two points is fucking boring anyway.[3]

Climbing teaches us that falling doesn’t hurt. It’s the landing that does that. You’ll either survive the landing and get to quote Nietzsche for the rest of your life in an intensely personal way, or you won’t survive and, subsequently, won’t give a damn.

The journey means that mile markers are quaint novelties, not something to dance about. Mile markers just say “I’ve come this far”, but the truth is that they also mean there’s farther to go. The only one worth dancing about is the one that says “The End”.

There isn’t a mile marker that says “The End”. Not one we get to see anyway.

If you need a reason to dance, dance about the love you’ve given and received. It’s the best motivation anyway.

One of the best things about the no winning and no ending concepts is that you never lose and you always have more time to learn and grow. And that’s all that matters.[4]

---

[1] Just for me, of course. I’m not referencing anything specifically except the bumper sticker, but chances are I’m plagiarizing something because, frankly, it’s all been said. So I claim nothing as original here, at all. Read at your own risk.

[2] My favorite bumper sticker. Ever. Even more than the one on my laptop: Kill your television

[3] Very sure I read this somewhere. Just can’t remember for the life of me where.

[4] Just, of course, my opinion. What the fuck do I know… J

the comp

They’re congregating in the parking lot by 10:30, even though registration doesn’t start until 11:00. It’s a bit chilly, the earliest of spring days. There’s a hint of late-season snow in the air, like a temptation, but if it’s falling, then it’s falling at elevation, in the clouds that hide the mountains on either side of the valley.

The climbers – of all sizes, all experience levels – are gathering, talking, bullshitting, laughing, getting their caffeine on, reconnecting. Some – the more serious ones – are stretching where there’s room. Once the line starts moving, some move inside right away, scoping the routes. Even the locals are seeing the qualifier climbs for the first time. The gym’s been closed for two days now, everything stripped off the walls and forty new routes put up, fresh for the competition.

Gym routes are designated with colored tape, each hand or foot hold marked to show the path, the one appropriate way to get from ‘A’ at the bottom to ‘B’ somewhere higher up. For a comp, the tape is more than just a guide – it’s the law. Judges will watch as climbers try to complete the routes to make sure that the narrow path is followed, full points accumulated for ‘flashes’ if they complete a climb on the first try, percentages granted for ‘red points’ if they need more than one shot at it, no points if the last hold can’t be reached legally. Each of the climbs is worth a different total score, the higher the climb’s number, the harder the climb, the more points it is worth.

For four hours they climb, each waiting their turn, one climber per wall at a time, queuing for flash attempts and, if required, getting at the back of the line for red point efforts. Each attempt gets marked on their card by the judge, each completed climb noted.

There’s strategy too. Four hours is a long time to climb, and for those who do well there will be finals in the evening, so energy conservation is crucial. Even for the orangutans among us. A higher-valued climb is worth more points, but flashes are rarer at that difficulty, and red points result in percentage deductions. Like a diving competition or freestyle skiing, the higher the difficulty, the greater the risk, the higher the reward.

A climber's five best scores during the qualifying round will count towards a place in the finals, so smart climbers pick and chose. They look for climbs that suit their style and strengths, reaching for the flash and maximum points. The smart ones pick off five climbs comfortably within their flash ability and get points locked up. Then, fully warmed up, they rest.

Assaults on the really hard climbs begin after around an hour. While climbers rest, they watch, gaining ‘beta’ from other climbers, watching others try to string moves together and fail, learning from every other climber’s attempts. When they finally step to the route they have imagined the climb a hundred times already, visualized the bend of a body, the twist of a knee, the jump for a hold, picking and choosing good moves from the people they’ve watched, filling the gaps with their imagination and experience.

There is sweating in spite of the open doors and chill air. There are shouts and gasps, of pleasure, and pain, and surprise. Everyone tries hard to be good (there are kids competing too), but there’s an occasional choice word of frustration.

And there is cheering. Everyone, aside from those of us volunteering, is a competitor, and yet there is cheering; a preponderance of encouragement. A wave of it fills the room, over the live DJ, filling that space the way the rising chalk dust does. It’s hard to see the other end of the room for all the chalk and cheering.

These are climbers after all. There might a desire to do well, even to win, but that’s not what it’s about. Even for the few that really have a shot, they take time to shout encouragement and cheer for the ones that pose the biggest threat and for the ones struggling on the easiest routes. That’s what climbers do.

We don’t measure success by the failures of our competitors, but on our ability to perform; to be better than another climber doesn’t prove a thing.

To be better than ourselves though, to be our best – that’s everything.

For four hours on a Saturday afternoon in March, ninety climbers crowd into 1400square feet of space, most of which is taken up by landing pads, forcing them even closer together, and they strain and praise and scream and slap backs and smile and smile and smile.

Later, in the evening, it might get a little more serious. The finalists will be sequestered and brought out in front of the assembled spectators (the ‘losers’, as if getting front row seats to the finals isn’t a prize in itself) one at a time to tackle new, unseen problems set during the dinner break. But even then, when one finalist is done, they’ll join the crowds and cheer, even when they’re cheering the climber that surpasses their best effort.

In climbing, you see, it’s all about reaching for the top. Getting there is grand, no doubt, but it’s not the reason. There will always be a climb that’s too tough, too high, too exposed. The best climbers in the world prove it every year, raising the bar one more microscopic increment, doing things that were considered impossible last year. They’ll do it again this year. There is no finish line.

Anyone that thinks so is missing the point.

Last Saturday, at the little gym I hang out at – just to be perfectly clear – nobody was missing the point. 

in the absence of answers

What a great day yesterday was.

Like I said yesterday, it was tear down day at the climbing gym, the day we closed early so as to strip every hold off of every wall so that the route setting geniuses can start putting up comp routes for the weekend. So we twisted bolts and climbed ladders and pealed tape from 8 to 10, 14 of us or so, in a hectic, frenetic, kinetic laugh-a-thon.

Before that, I got to do some #amrevising, working on a chapter that required more than just fixing little things, doing a line by line edit in order to take an emaciated framework and add some flesh to it. The more I revise, the more I understand how writers can have a problem letting go of a WIP, especially a first one: There’s so much learning, evolving, improving involved in the first time that, every time I come back to a chapter I haven’t touched for a month or two, I see entirely different ways to make it better.

At this rate, the manuscript will be finished never. That’s not a tenable position, so I’ve set April 21 as my mail-to-beta-readers day. I can get all picky again after that, but I have to actually set a shipping date, because the learning will never end.

 I also got to carry on my favorite ongoing internet conversation before the gym, and I got in a great (if short) session of climbing before the strip-fest began.

And then, as if all of that wasn’t enough, I was provided the bonus of listening to a repeat of this morning's Q with Jion Ghomeshi on the drive home. The part I listened to was an interview with Canadian musical icon Bruce Cockburn. I’ve never actually been a huge fan, but have always respected him. His music has never moved me miles, but his activism and integrity have.

He was talking about his visit to Afghanistan in 2009. His brother is a Captain and physician in the Canadian Armed Forces (family dinners might be interesting), and he also played a concert for the Canadian troops there. He said that the people he talked to there, members of the medical mission, believed in their role but thought it would take 30 years for it too succeed; that a place like Afghanistan would need that much time just to birth and raise a generation that had a concept of what peace might look like.

They didn’t expect that the mission there would last that long.

I thought of Greg Mortensen (Three Cups of Tea) and his effort to accomplish the same goal – a generation of Afghanis and Pakistanis that understand the concept of peace – through education. I had a hard time not contrasting the two approaches.

Cockburn talked about his other trips to war zones, both as an activist and performer. He said that he’s never gone to a war zone looking for material for his art. There are people, he said, that have a mandate to do so - journalists, writers, photographers, maybe poets – but that for him, doing so would have felt ‘inappropriate’.

But, he said, he always went with his eyes open. He went open to everything, but not looking for anything in specific. If material presented itself, he was prepared to accept it. And if it came, then it was his responsibility to apply all of his skill and craft to make the most of it.

I thought about the concept of manufactured versus organic, of counterfeit versus authentic. I thought it was a great way to view creativity – being open to the truth, and then applying every possibility of craft to take advantage of that truth. I thought about Elizabeth Taylor and how she might be as remembered for her activism (on behalf of HIV/AIDS going back way before it was fashionable) as she will be for the soap opera of her celebrity. I thought about which one I’d want to be remembered for.

It’s easy, I think, in our plastic world of intentional media confusion, our age of persuasion, to forget that people inhabit the caricatures we watch rise and fall on TV; that real people with sincere motives fight in wars that we detest. Lately, for me, it has seemed crucially important to remember how complicated everything is.

There were no conclusions to reach, none that did service to the issues. The perspective of complexity answers no questions at all, makes finite truths seem very far away, but while I sat here and nursed my sore wrists and stiff hands, the questions seemed more important than the answers anyway.

friction

I didn’t know what to talk about today. I was conflicted, and the friction of dissonance made me feel like I was trying to walk in two different directions at the same time.

I wanted to talk about climbing, partly because the weather is changing that way it does here in the spring – dramatically (I love you, DST) – and outdoors is becoming so doable, and also because it will be dominating my week. My local gym, Beyond the Crux, is hosting a bouldering comp this weekend and I get to help out with tearing the gym apart to set new routes, and with judging the early rounds on Saturday.

I’ve said that climbing isn’t generally competitive, but I also mentioned the caveat regarding comps. I’m not a huge proponent of turning climbing into a competition. And yet, when the comps come around, there is an electric atmosphere full of gymnastic feats of strength and daring-do. Competition, with self and others, will push climbers to stretch and grip like they never have before. There will be skin left on the wall and holds. There will be blood.

And there will be cheering. And competitors cheer for each other. I’ve never seen anything approaching poor sportsmanship among climbers. I’m sure it exists, have even read about it – I’ve just never seen it first hand.

My personal belief is that it’s because climbers are ultimately competing against themselves and the route, not each other. I think that appreciation of the accomplishments of others, both historically and in the now, is so ingrained into climbing culture that being a sore loser is just too embarrassing to contemplate.

Still, to be honest, I kind of wish we wouldn’t put it to the test. I have yet to master defeating myself; why would I want or need to defeat anyone else?

I wanted to talk about Libya too, and coalitions, and no-fly zones. If I’m conflicted about climbing comps, imagine the dissonance that I feel about Libya.

Part of me is very happy that Qaddafi won’t be able to inflict damage on the rebels from the air with impunity any more the way, say, the forces in Afghanistan inflict damage on insurgents from the air – with blatant inaccuracy and a stunning lack of care for the lives of civilians. Part of me cringes at the thought of the West getting involved at all though, mostly because our impulse control is usually so poor when the chance to invade presents itself.

Most of me believes, with the rebels, that this needs to remain an internal Libyan affair as much as possible, and that they need to finish it themselves. Part of me hates that they have to finish anything and wonders what kind of trauma that finishing will inflict on a people, a nation.

Civil wars are horrible things. They tear apart a group of people that are supposed to be unified, and leave scars so deep that healing ends up being measured in centuries. Look at the US. The war might as well have been last week the way they shout at each other across old battle lines. Look at Canada. Quebec is practically a different country in all but the legal ways.

Hawks say that war is just a fact of human existence; that the best way to deal with it is to recognize that fact and get about it in as efficient and ethical way as possible. Doves say that all war is an atrocity and should be abolished; that there’s no way to intentionally kill another human being ethically; that the concept is ludicrous and mad.

My internal friction is that, as much as I hate to agree with hawks, as much as I love to agree with doves, they’re both right.

I love the idea of not needing war anymore, of abjuring it so completely on a global level that we banish it into the realm of legend. That one day, so far from now that we can’t really imagine it, it would become myth; stories told to children the way we tell them about cannibalism now – to scare and awe, but without current applicability.

If we must have war, intervene in the flow of things by intentionally injecting death and conflict into the current, then I’m glad that the coalition we’re sending is so conflicted itself. There are undeniable reasons to get involved in Libya on humanitarian grounds. Qaddafi would have slaughtered thousands, hundreds of thousands, without the no-fly zone. The rebels wouldn’t have stood a chance in the long run. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, Clarke said. The rebels might not have thought it was magic raining down on them, but it would have been essentially the same thing, something indefensible from either perspective. So I’m glad that somebody is stepping in to stop it, even if stopping it means doing it, only more brutally and with stronger magic.

I like that the coalition is so broad and diverse. That diversity – the friction inherent in it – will help keep all the participants slightly more honest. It will make it less efficient, something that the hawks will hate, but that inefficiency will be a small price to pay in exchange for its instability. Hopefully NATO and the Arab League will hold it together just long enough to prevent Qaddafi’s madness from dominating the story, and then, optimistically, that instability will tear the coalition apart before anyone can get any stupid ideas.

I’d love to put my foot down and say that all war is wrong (which it is), and that there’s never really a good justification for violent aggression (which there isn’t), but I think that I think that this is more complicated than that.

In the Independent they ran an article about the rebels coming out of Benghazi the day after the first coalition strikes against Qaddafi’s armored columns. I quote the article:

‘Some of the Shabaab were shocked by the human cost of what had taken place. “This is a different kind of war. I am sorry that so many people had died in this way. I was fighting against them only yesterday, but I am still sorry…” said … an engineer from Tobruk who had joined the revolution. “But look at him: he is somebody's son, a poor mother, a wife, children would be crying," he added, gently covering the face of the man on the ground with a torn blanket. His companion … murmured: “May Allah give them peace. We all want an end to all this.”’

I wanted to shake the hands of these two men, maybe hug them, and then make them generals. And then, in the next sentence:

‘But there were others who stripped money and watches from corpses. A teenager exultantly cried "Allah hu Akhbar" repeatedly as he stood over the body of a fallen soldier, scarcely older than him, legs blown away.’

I don’t know if I’d have left the adverb, but still – lovely bit of journalism showing the friction, how nothing is simple. Nothing is simple. 

I wish it was.

And just in case you think that I’m suggesting that what NATO is doing is at all admirable, please understand: This is another mess we made.

We’ve been supporting Qaddafi for years, after all, selling him weapons and the planes and anti-aircraft installations that we’re bombing now, propping up his regime to create enough stability that Western petroleum companies could operate with a modicum of safety. If the rebels hadn’t forced the hand, we’d still be shaking Qaddafi’s, quietly, away from the press and the lights. For the sake of commerce and lower gasoline prices.

Bet our ass we would be.

And when this is over, we’ll sell Libya replacement armaments, bet our ass.

A friend mentioned that some general had talked about how much “skin” the US had in this operation. I agree with her that it’s a powerful little image. He said that the US didn’t have as much skin in because of the broad base of support.

But we do have skin in, all of us that vote for our leaders in our developed countries. We have plenty in. Let there be no illusions, please. And when there’s as much friction as there is right now, there will be plenty of skin left behind.

poetry #4 - love at altitude

© mdlockhart 2009

it is not wisps of peony light filtered through

amber-hazed breezes of spring pollen

singing the night into being

nor the swollen burning glow of sun being drowned

in the hissing embrace of a tropical sea

the gasps and shudders

of requited passion

or the sigh of virginal stars

chasing the red, failing light into the west

beneath clouds cavorting in the jet stream

not wind through the pregnant sails of the forest

gloaming’s shadow over the verdant pulp of the earth’s womb

all to a percussion of crickets

and a chorus of flying hums

it is mine though

hard and glaring

cold as the heavy sky

looming and foreboding as granite walls

forced into contrasts of bawdy white and grey

weighty with ice and fertile snow

frigid, insistent

endless crease and frozen undulation

the stare of somnolent silver eyes

a forever-white, ocean deep and unforgiving                        

cracked and wrinkled, dry and glazed over

yes, mine, and beautiful to me

© mdlockhart 2009

climbing (part two)

In climbing, the only person you actually compete against is yourself. 

Not that there isn’t plenty of competition: against gravity, balance, time, weakness, fear. But against other people? Pretty much never. In a climbing gym or at a crag you won’t hear anyone say a negative thing to anyone else unless it’s about their hat. I’ve heard climbers chastise themselves for not completing a move or a climb, but criticism of others is non-existent. Support? Encouragement? Even help and information (we call it beta)? We have those in spades. It’s just the way we roll.

I work part time at my local climbing gym. It doesn’t pay tons, but it’s fun as hell, mostly because the atmosphere is just so positive. People come in by themselves or in groups of two or three, but once inside, it’s all one mess of people, all of us united in a love of the movement, the strain, the challenge.

Waiting for your turn on a wall or a route? Chances are somebody beside you has tried it or climbed it, and chances are you’ll get some awesome beta if you ask. New to climbing? Somebody will probably offer some humble and helpful advice when you struggle on the easiest climb. They might point out one that’s easier to start on. They might show you how to manipulate your balance to make a move easier so that you too can defy gravity a bit and glide up the vertical.

And if you stick a move or finish that climb, somebody, even if you’re alone and know nobody, will probably say, “Nice climb”, or share your grin of accomplishment.

"What about the best climbers?" you ask. "Aren't they egotistical and self-absorbed?" Some might be, but I haven't met them. They’re often the most helpful, cheering on the newer climbers, or the weaker ones, urging them on to be better and reinforcing every success.

Sitting at the counter the other day, a couple ladies around my age (which is to say, not young) were getting ready to leave after their bouldering session. I asked how it was and they beamed. “Awesome!” one of them said. “We just started a few weeks ago and, every time I come in, someone offers some new little piece of advice that makes it make more sense.”

I nodded. “It’s one of my favorite things about climbing.”

“Is it like this everywhere?”

I smile, proud of it. “Everywhere I’ve been, yeah. Climbers are just happy folk. We like to see the people around us happy.”

In the gym or out at the crags, it’s the same way. I’ve shown up at crags alone and been climbing with a group or some other single in no time. It takes a bit of trust to climb with people you don’t know, and it’s important to watch them a bit before you trust them to belay you, but that’s part of the thrill; trusting is a rush.

Even when I show up with friends, I don’t think I’ve gone a day in the presence of climbers I don’t know without making a new friend. Maybe it’s the outdoors, or the adrenalin, or the endorphins. Who cares? 


It's possible, to be fair, that there are even climbing gyms or crags where it isn’t like this. Maybe some climbers are just as consumed with shoring up their egos by undermining the self-esteem of those around them as the world seems to be. I’m pleased to say I haven’t met those climbers or seen those places either.

Yes, there are climbing competitions (demonstration sport in the 2012 Olympics as I understand it), and by definition, in a climbing comp one climber is trying to do better than others. But I’ve been to few sporting events where the competitors cheer each other on as much and as sincerely as at a climbing comp.

I know it sure doesn’t happen like that playing hockey. Team sports seem to embolden people to place too much importance on things like final scores. I understand final scores, and I enjoy winning, but it’s tainted for me when that winning requires me to actively dislike my opposition and wish them ill, even for the hour it takes to play the game. There’s something about watching grown men come to blows over a recreational game of hockey that takes the fun right out of it for me.

There’s too much of that in the world, that win at all costs mentality. In sport, business, politics, academics, science, and our schools the emphasis is too often placed on winning as the only goal. Profits are valued over people, bonuses over safety, money over truth, power over integrity. It baffles me. It baffled me in business, where owners and executives only gave lip service to giving a damn about their employees or clientele. It baffles me in politics where those we elect to serve us so blatantly serve the big money that paid for their advertising instead. It baffles me in professional sport, where athletes will destroy themselves and betray their own integrity using drugs to try to get an extra edge. 


I fully and happily admit to not 'getting' that.

I remember watching “A Beautiful Mind” and loving the film as a film. But the part that stayed with me was John Nash’s theorem: That a group of vying agents can achieve greater aggregate success by seeking a cooperative solution rather than competing for one highest-value outcome that excludes success for all but the winner. Nash was American and won the Nobel for his economic theories based on that principle, but the concept seems to have caught on better in other parts of the world than it has in the competitive free-market atmosphere of North America.


This also - baffling.

I volunteer at my gym too, for school groups and birthdays. We volunteers strap on a harness and act as belay slaves for the kids, leading them around the gym to different climbs, making sure it's safe, offering basic climbing tips, encouraging the others to cheer the climber up the wall. Those groups are fun, more than I can explain, but the best moments are with the kids that hate heights or find the prospect intimidating.

Every time I find one of those kids, I try hard to encourage them up the wall, They stop when they want to, and I never push hard, but I tell them they’re doing great, assure them the I’ve got them – that they’re safe – and then ask if they want to try for one more hold before I let them down.

Sometimes they don’t, and that’s okay. I let them down and tell them they did great. They tried, stretched themselves, risked. That’s more than most people ever do.

But often, more often than not, over the course of their hour in the gym they find it within themselves, bolstered by the cheers of their friends, to be courageous and reach for that one extra hold, and then reach for another. It’s rare that they don’t touch the roof by the end of their session.

Maybe it’s clichéd, but I have to say; there is nothing – no thing – better than the look on their face when they get back down and know that they’ve just accomplished something that they were positive they could not do only forty-five minutes earlier. Their friends cheer for them, parents and teachers beam, and their smiles get (somehow) bigger. Wide, surprised eyes squint as the smile spreads upwards and transforms their face. That look is equal parts disbelief and conquering hero. It’s a look that says, in some small way, that their world just had to grow, to swell a bit to accommodate their new selves.

I see that same look on the faces of climbers that have just pulled off a new route, that made them stretch and train and practice hard so they could realize it. They don’t give much of a shit whether the climbers standing around are better or worse. It’s not a competition, after all. It’s just them and the moment and the thrill of growing.

And those standing around? We understand. That’s why we smile too. We might only wish we could climb that well, or maybe we remember what it was like to crack that plateau the first time, but chances are, we’re smiling with the person walking away from the wall because we understand. We are full to overflowing with empathy. So, yeah, we smile too.

But not for too long.

Our turn is next you see, our chance to grow a little bit, to compete against nothing but our hearts and minds and bodies and gravity. Our own smile, one that says “I just grew a notch”, is on the other side of the climb. We have ourselves to be better than, and nobody else.

climbing (part one)

I love to climb. I will never be really good at it, but that’s fine. I don’t climb to be great: I climb to be better. I climb to be.

Ultimately, climbing is about the movement, the dance and magic of will versus gravity. It is touching a vertical wall with as little of you as possible, making it beautiful and powerful and rhythmic. And not falling. But more than not falling; it is tenacity, trust and autonomy, love and fear and courage.

At its best, climbing is a meditation. Attached to the wall, fingers stuffed into cracks or clinging to pockets and nubs that make golf balls seem enormous, and standing on edges the width of coins, the size of pimples, there is nothing else in the world. It all drifts away and what's left is the six square feet in front of you, and that beautiful dance.

Climbing is an impregnable bubble that holds the world at bay. There’s a reverse magnetism in it, an ineffable pushing away of everything that crowds and bumps and forces. When it’s good, there is no sound but the breath, no sensation but the touch of rough and soft surfaces and the internal sway and pitch of balance and counter-balance.

There isn’t any room for the world, crawling up a wall. If the world is there, you aren’t – you’re falling. And there are days like that, days when life can't be closed out and the simplest moves leave you panting or pealing off. But those days are rare. Mostly, just staring at the rock is enough to quicken the heart and stir the wind that clears away the riff-raff, the kipple.

What’s left are clean angularities; natural geometries and puzzles carved into rock and stone, muscles and bone and blood. On a good day it’s ballet. The pivot and sway, pull and friction – it’s effortless, or it looks that way, feels that way.

When it’s done, make no mistake, there is exhaustion and shuddering breaths and hands shaking on the steering wheel driving home.

But it doesn’t feel like it on the wall, the wind blowing softly and the ground receding by inches. On the wall it’s just you and the ageless stone, a connection formed between fingers and toes and something indescribable. Like being plugged into a timeless energy, as stuck to it as it is to you. Welded to the earth and yet fluid. Climbing is like scaling a Telsa coil.

Climbing is submission and assertion, a giving and taking with the stone that is – must be – equal and complete. It is kinetic poetry, the wheel of thought and action flowing so quickly that it blurs. If success is measured by completion, then that completion only comes through symbiosis. It cannot be conquered, the rock. But it can be shared – it can share. And in the afterglow of that conjoining everything smells stronger, tastes better, feels more pure. Everything takes on a clarity that is heartbreaking and affirming.

It is impossible to not smile at the top of a climb. And often, there are tears. They are in honor of the effort and the grace, the fear and courage, and the sheer beauty of being present, truly present, if only for the time it takes to touch the stone and then walk away.