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 Climber by Luke Mehall
And it was fire from a nearby controlled burn that created the sunset that evening as we stood atop El Capitan in Yosemite. Dave and I were celebrating two things: one that we had climbed El Cap, and, equally as important, that we found two packages of tuna in our haul bag, a bag we’d been living out of for the last four days as we inched up the rock.
El Capitan was our Mount Everest, our Mount Analogue, the pinnacle we had to face if we wanted to continue to live as climbers, and to grow as human beings. This was my third attempt; the three-thousand-foot golden-granite monolith had haunted and inspired my existence since I first laid eyes on it over a decade ago.
It became a singular goal I had in the back of my mind and an easy reference when people would ask me what my life goal in climbing was. It is a rock easier to capture in prose than a photograph, more reasonable to ponder over a week than a moment, worthy of a book rather than a paragraph. Technology, coupled with bravery, has allowed human beings to climb it, and, in turn, climbing it offered an alternative viewpoint of life itself, much like the essence of climbing.
I danced and screamed when we found that tuna. Dave rolled it up into a burrito and it was the most delicious meal my mouth had ever tasted. And that sunset, it was delicious as well.
I felt so connected to that sunset. It was fire red, so surreal it made life seem like the ending of an epic movie, and we took it in slowly. Below us was three thousand feet of air, and above us was only sky. In that sunset was everything: our hopes and dreams, our past and our future, our moment in time. We’d accomplished our greatest rock climbing feat, the alluring and intimidating face that is a symbol of Yosemite, and America.
And then when the sunset was over, so was our high, at least for then. The beauty of that red faded, and then smoke from the fire filled the air. It was a restless night of sleep atop The Captain, and, in the morning, we descended from the mountain of our dreams.
