I was told it must’ve been awful for a person like me to spend the large majority of days locked down in a cell. Every “awful” thing is an opportunity for the spirit to rise above. Words and art by Isaac Wright, published in Volume 22, now available The truth is that nature…
by Pat Ament (note the full version of this piece was published in Volume 17, which is now available in print.) Banner photo by the author. Ascetic solitude is difficult. You withdraw from the world to get a clearer glimpse of who you are, what you are doing, and where life is taking you. The…
Me and my higher self, We often would speak Somehow we lost the connection, Might meet at Joshua Tree —Nas, “Nobody” Banner photo of Hobo Greg by Emmie Snead My greatest fear as a climber is becoming crusty. Not the good kind of crusty but the bad kind of crusty. The crust that…
Dear Kurt, This is a letter I don’t want to write. Writing is often difficult to get started, but this one is nearly impossible because you are gone, at least in the physical. It was in the evening of my birthday when I learned that you were presumed dead on Mt. Cook in New Zealand. …
As I listened to my boyfriend make his tenth phone call of the hour, I absentmindedly stirred vegetables and reflected on the events of the past month. Fuck this season, I overheard from the kitchen. Together, we had been stunned by a hero’s suicide and his partner’s avalanche burial, witnessed my mentor’s paralyzing accident, and…
This story starts and ends with a chicken. On a bright morning in a high valley of the Hindu Kush, the doomed bird lay pinned atop a low stone wall that had been built by local goat herders. One sharp birdie eye looked up into the cloudless sky, the heavens a pale blue, the air…
Over hundreds of thousands of years, water has trickled, raged, and poured down cracks and creases, winding and weaving through rock rugosities, and worn paths through weaknesses to form (what is now known as) Canyonlands. by Pete Whittaker note: this piece appears in The Climbing Zine Book 2, now available After another trip there this…
My college years in The Desert were adventurous and crazy, a complete immersion in the unknown. After I graduated, I began to roam from climbing area to climbing area, and The Desert seemed like just another destination on the circuit. It was in that era that the inevitable plateau began for me on that Colorado…