At some point in my early to midtwenties, I came to the conclusion that life is not about rock climbing. There’s just too much other crazy shit happening every day on this beautiful clump of space dust. The older I get, however, the more I realize that climbing is most certainly about life. At the…
I see it being used all around me to describe women, often by other women: badass. I have always considered it to have a good connotation, as it implies confidence with a splash of style. Diverse, strong-willed women deserve an empowering word that delivers a heavy compliment—one that says, “She’s got things under control.” The…
I remember arguing with my partner about wearing his helmet before starting a climb for the day. “It’s only 5.9,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” I insisted that wearing a helmet on a multipitch trad climb shouldn’t be up for discussion. After a few more tries at explaining my discomfort, he started up the climb.…
The beauty is in the simplicity. A hunger fed by nature, a modern way of experiencing nature. We were driven out there for different reasons—some of us introduced to rock climbing at a young age, in a responsible manner. For others, including myself, it was trial by fire. note: this is an excerpt from American…
I won’t say that I’m afraid of heights, but to be standing on the edge of anything looking down more than 50 feet or so gives me a funny feeling in the abdomen from just below the sternum all the way down to where the feeling translates into a moderate concern about bladder control. It’s…
Think back over your climbing career. I bet you’ll find a climb—or two—that define you. These won’t be your hardest sends necessarily. They will be the beautiful ones, the scary ones, the ones that came into your life at just the right time. The ones that tested you, that possessed you, that shaped your character…
Milton had overgrowth knots, the greasy kind, matting his beard to his wooly secondhand pullover, which sagged without shape over his sulking frame. As he sat in the passenger seat beside me, looking a bit like Schulz’s Pig-Pen, I almost admired it. His was a special form of dereliction. Speckled as much by bourbon as…
Curled into the bench seat like astronauts they hurtled through the dark, stars hanging low outside the dust-dimmed beam of her headlights, his eyes twinned planets in her mirror. This poem is published in Volume 23. Art by Rhiannon Williams Rambling conversation, comfortable strangers, that strange intimacy of predawn, those trickling hours that bathe any…