Relationships- or, Looking for That Spatial Someone

(Editor's Note:  This article was penned during a long period of bachelorhood in 2004.  As many of my friends know, the situation in my own life has since changed considerably.  But I think the questions and concepts of the article still apply to modern life and dating.  Replies, critiques and debate welcome.  Cheers!)

 

The shade under the trees is deep and green, the beer achingly cold after twelve hours of hellish dust and noise and heat. It cuts through the yellow dirt and the stench of deisel, filling the back of my throat with cool relief as I look out over the site and settle back in the Cruise master's rear booth seat.

Across the tiny, slanting table sprawls Stan, a tiny, slanting man burned and seamed by years skinning Cats and riding heavy equipment in the sun and wind, the snow and freezing rains that are an operator's lot in this part of the south. A cigarette burns in his gnarled fingers as he raises his own beer in the other hand and finishes half of it at a gulp.

"Hell, Stan... one evening you oughta just crash here when I head out to the hotel."

Stan might be the next owner of the mighty white Cruiser, and it occurred to me that this would let him avoid the commute, drink another beer or four with me after a hard day's work, and allow him to check out his potential new purchase, all in the same throw of the proverbial stone.

He looks first surprised and then horrified, all while slightly bemused. One hand clutches the sweating beer just a bit tighter, and his voice rises slightly as he answers.

"Oh... oh, no way, man..." Stan shakes his head, glances up at me over the rims of his glasses. "Nah, man... the old lady would swear I was out with someone else."

I sit and try to absorb this, but the thought is completely beyond me. Echoes of it come from the ghosts of friends and climbing partners down through the years. Someone who loves you would begrudge you a night spent drinking beer and kicking back with friends, would mistrust you even if you had witnesses who would swear you were doing absolutely nothing out of the way? "What in the Name have you done to this woman to make her think like that, and what in the world did you do with your friends when she met you?" He looks amused and says, "That's why you're still single."

Now THAT one hits home.

And so, an exploration, a fumbling of thoughts that actually holds relevance, I swear, towards a climbing end, in the end, or long before, if I shut up and get busy typing.

I have found endless company along this, for the most part, empty road through Wonderland, loved and been loved with a passion that rocked the stars and raised the bar perhaps higher than most mortals aspire to soar.

That's not just a lot of melodrama... I'm a lot like Calvin's analysis of Hobbs- "Tigers have two speeds- off, and turbo." I live large, I love large... seems logical to me. It also seems far more than most lasses can bear, and far more than most lads are capable of. Perhaps romance and adventure, and the beautiful union of the two are all succumbing to the dumbing down of the planet, we see in most of the rest of daily life.

I admit it, I'm a hopeful romantic, somehow surviving beneath this cynical armor. Despite long absence of true affection, I still continue on, seeing most of the lost horizon and the wonders along its length in the company of my own thoughts, and honestly pretty happy that way.

Save for two notable exceptions, none of the wonderful, intelligent, inspiring, amazing, desirable creatures who have crossed my Path and shared my- er- belays has ever quite gotten the hang of me, I think. People like life to be pleasant, which it is not, mostly, and to be simple, which it daily refuses to be in any conceivable way.

I have rarely had the sense to keep my big mouth shut when asked my opinions. The exceptions to my long run of disaffected goodbyes got it, all right... one got over it and turned away on the threshhold of a dream, and the other had a mountain to climb.

So, lost one to life and one to the high places. The first, though still inexplicable, is common enough- people change and grow, and often brave new facades collapse in the face of an inescapable change; throwing caution to the winds, kissing your hateful job and all the same old places you grew up in good-bye and stuffing your life in a backpack to live on the road and explore yourself and the country and each other and just climb for six months. that is a major leap of faith, and anything short of perfect Zen will fall screaming into the Void, or run pell-mell from its brink.

The second- The One That Got Away- well, as I said, she had to go climb a mountain, Now THIS is definitely something I can understand. That's always been a place of closure for me as well; of solace and, if nothing else, escape from questions. I said it once before- "If there are no answers in the desert, there are no questions, either."

Alone, gripped and cranking high on a big boulder somewhere, or stepping out onto tenuous solo aid moves, or, I imagine, standing on the shoulder of some massif with spindrift hissing around your knees and shoulders and the wind screaming in your ears, there is a peculiar satisfaction with simply being there, in the moment, functioning and moving upwards, and onwards, towards the dream.

Of course, then you gotta go spew about it to someone. This is why pubs were invented... not all sports enthusiasts had friends. Of course, most climbers and mountaineers only call people "friend" if they need a drink, a partner, or if they owe them money- really the same thing, if you think about it. People need people.. even socially maladjusted misanthropes like myself.

God help you all, its most of the reason I come along here and yammer at you from time to time. Could I find a soul so patient as to endure the other 75% of my life- working out of town, possibly being out of touch for long stretches, relaxing with almost nuclear intensity and then piling gear into a vehicle and filling all remaining space with supplies on Friday afternoon to drive hours into the nearest concentration of public land and/or climbing, there to remain until the last possible second Sunday, when we will drive back already making plans for the next strike, donating part of each and every paycheck to maintaining and expanding The Rack, settling for cheaper cars because the other $2000.00 buys a lot of beer and climbing- could I find a climbing/hiking/outdoors goddess willing to endure that for the substantial rewards said endurance brings, I would likely and have before fallen silent, at least briefly.

With an ear there to hear my farfetched meanderings and introspections at the moment of inception, much drivel be lost to the world. I could continue on my tiny climbing way; burning and cranking and aging silently into the humus without so much noise and fuss. The World and the Internet would be a much more PC place, and you could all go over About.rockcliming or rock.rek and read really interesting and meaningful things.

Alas for you all, so far, as I said, many strikes and two outs.

I have tried my hand at self pity... I am extraordinarily good at it, and it is disgusting in hindsight, which follows by about two seconds if you are honest and two years if you are only mortal. Having wallowed in the Lough of Despond, I decided, after drinking and smoking and snorting my way up to a short-winded, heart-pounding two hundred and thirty pounds, that self pity felt worse than loneliness and that the view from the heights was better. I gave up smoking cigarettes, kicked out most of the inhaled demons, gave up my love affair with bourbon, and got healthy, heading back out on the rock to sweat out the poisons and drive out the demons. I reasoned that, if nothing else, it kept open the option to jump.

So I travel on, alone and yet never alone. Because I honestly do not think about it too much, I do not so much choose this mode of travel as tacitly accept it. Seeing what's beyond the next pass is more important than seeing what's beyond the next pass, get it?

Oh, before anyone asks... No, I am NOT gay. Lord... if there is a more enthusiastic heterosexual on the planet, please let me meet her. PLEASE, Lord. Besides, I'm pretty sure that if potential homosexuals ever smelled a climber who's been bivvied in the same capilene for three days of portaledge burritos and climbing in the sun on scary aid in between, they would never, ever think of going that way.

So I sit in bars and envy lucky couples. I admire beautiful women in libraries and restaurants, and enjoy the presence of young, healthy female bodies at the crag and gym, occasionally on the other end of my rope, usually with someone else's wedding band on their hand. Oddly enough, it rarely during or after these moments that I am more aware of being single. It is after long, long periods of solitude, often followed by intense activity, when I suddenly become aware of myself after a period of almost "not-being."

Man that was a steep hike yesterday. Sure would be nice to be watching this alpine sunrise with someone snuggled up in another bag here beside me… maybe over on that left side… wind’s been giving me a helluva chill over there all night.

Or

Man… what a killer line! That was an awesome approach… fourth class my ass! Boy… sure wish there was someone here to share this with… maybe she’d have some cheap gear we could bail on.

Alright, alright, so maybe I'm being just the tiniest bit facetious. But it is a paradox. Because I am a single male, I have had the time and luxury to travel and explore and pretty much throw myself headlong into the uncertain arms of adventure for most of what has passed for my adult life. Because I have had time to do this, I have experienced a life unlike very many people I know. If things had been different, that might not be so, and I know damned good and well that I wouldn't want to give up any of this.

Because I once succumbed to an unsuccessful attempt to propagate the species, sacrificing all else to kneel before the god of procreation, I sometimes suspect that I have been somehow marked with the sign of Caine. I do not know how much of this is inner perspective and how much is outer manifestation of that stance. I have lost much of my innocence, but oddly gained in faith and hope. I know that I do not know. I understand so much about humans, and still completely fail to comprehend, except in the broadest of general terms, how the same state of mind on my part, with no more outward manifestation than expression, makes some people very nervous-

“What is wrong, man? No… really… you can tell me. Okay, okay… suit yourself!” 

-makes some people very comfortable-

“Hey, bro… you want some of this? Its from home but its purty good….”

-and produces diametrically opposed reactions from the fairer sex.

I also know that, if I did not have the time alone in the wilderness to think about all this and more, most of it would not occur to me, except as one of those maddeningly brilliant flashes that come an instant before you fall asleep and absolutely refuse to return the next day… or ever, for that matter. Then I'd go mad in my little cubicle and my wife and 3.2 kids would never see me anyways, except on weekend visits.

Damned if you do, damned if you didn’t.

Does it matter? I don’t know? This is a Chautauqua, of sorts, and there is no promise of an answer at the rambling rainbows end. For those of you more in search of my usual brand of action-packed stream-of-consciousness narrative, please bear with me and perhaps learn a bit more about the heart that drives the moving hand (or at least the mental dysfunction that makes it twitch that way).

Or skip over to one of those Ronin-type tales of high adventure, and forget all this rambling crap. I wont blame you. I don’t know if I’d read all of this either, if I was in the mood for some hot-and-heavy climbing and outdoors action.

Its a gamble, just like life, and just like leading. A risk for an intangible goal, just like sitting down on this side of the keyboard and pouring my thoughts and hearts blood out over the net for complete strangers and beloved friends to absorb, take from what they will, and say whatever they like about it. This thing may come down with a helluva bang, not a graceful arc, and there might not be any pot of gold waiting at the end. I promise only honesty, as much of it as I can dredge forth from a rationalizing human mind.

And, honestly, I have no answers...

None.

All I can say is that NOT focusing on the lack and enjoying as much as I can the process of filling the spaces, while still trying to be open to the potential of every moment ot bring happiness or revelation, these things have kept me on the move, meeting inspirational folks, learning invaluable lessons, and seeing amazing things for a very long time now.

I don’t know that most of it was running away, but I would be a fool to deny that some of it wasn’t. I don’t think I was running away from much more than me, and a world in which there seemed very little to do that meant anything of happiness for me. I grew up military, and most military marriages are a series of long absences followed by brief intense reunions. We did not live like other people, and I knew it. Nothing was as it was supposed to be, and even a child could feel it.

Relationships seemed the same. As I understood it from physics, the term relationship referred to the statement defining the position of objects in time and space with regard to each other. I think that does a pretty good job of describing human interaction. It is when we become amateur astrophysicists, and try to anticipate or forward project the relationship of those objects that I think we seriously screw the entire process right off its axis. You can never jump the right way to meet a body in motion… YOU are a body in motion. If the forces that attract you are strong enough, your orbits continue to coincide. If not, parting is natural and unavoidable. Adjusting a perfect parabola is only guaranteeing a destabilization of flight.

Shut up, sit back, and enjoy, in other words- after years of introspective breast beating in the bush and perched on the faces of a thousand nameless cliffs, that nugget alone is what Ive learned about almost every state of being in life. Its life, its just a ride, and you will be let off as soon as it is over… no guarantee on just how long or soon that will be. Sometimes someone sits in the car with you, and sometimes they sit real close. What does she want? I dont know… try some popcorn. Seems to me that the only time I wind up alone on the ride is when Im trying to hard to find a partner… or about to learn something that intimate company would cause me to miss seeing.

So I keep waiting for the Little Red-Haired Girl to look my way, or for Rapunzel to let down her hair. And, as any thinking man would, sooner or later I gotta wonder… what’s life like from the other side of the pick-up line?

What would my hypothetical mate want?

As all men want a lady in the hall and a whore in the bedroom (according to Oprah and Doctor Phil), I suppose that all lasses (with- just like males- the exception of those fallen prey to deviants of the species early on in life) want an adventuresome hero with a touch of bad boy who parties and rocks all night long, lasts in the sack until just before dawn, and with the morning light and cocks crow (no pun intended) somehow magically transforms into Joe Responsibility and heads off to his impressive and high-paying job (gets the hell out of your space).

I also know that some folks (a majority across the nation and planet, a few of them right here among you, tender readers, and thus among my dearest friends) have solved this problem by refusing to limit themselves to a solitary partner, instead picking and choosing from the traits they like among agreeable (or unknowing) members of the opposite sex.

Somehow, society and the advent of a wide range of nasty diseases has convinced us that the latter is a less desirable way of finding happiness than the former. If you intend to involve your significant other in your outdoor adventures, the process becomes even more roulette-like.

I’ve tried my hand at it, and decided that it just wasnt my style- somehow I felt like I should have had Blondie playing Call Me whenever I headed out on a date, a tune as inescapable as Gilligans Island once thought of (I bet youre thinking of it right now… try and stop). The result was a mindset that was distracted and slightly ludicrous, which is hard on a dinner date, and DEADLY on a climbing date. I had the debate re: "multiple partners" with a good friend about it, a discussion that ended with him feeling he had carried his point quite nicely.

An hour later, his date for the evening dropped him about 25 feet in the climbing gym (yes, even with a Gri-gri), for "shouting at her".

Darwin says I won the discussion.

I have friends who are entirely comfortable and successful at this kind of interaction and do so routinely. What can I say? Having taken a long hard look at my feelings and reactions in the years (yes, YEARS) since that long ago discussion, all I can say to this day is that if it works for you, God Bless you… enjoy. Guess Im just insecure or unimaginative… I need a lot more continuity than that between the Great Beyond and Back Here in Reality.

I have plenty of examples from which to choose; climbing friends who have made sacrifices and concessions to meet and be with someone, and others who have changed almost completely into non-climbers as they have entered the family phase of their lives. The latter is sheer pragmatism. For all but a tiny elite few of the population of the entire planet, climbing and adventure are counterproductive to the earning of an income or stability of home life. For those who have reproduced, I feel nothing but respect and the occasional twinge of guilty or pity. For those who manage to combine a life of climbing and travel and adventure with a steady income and raising a family, I can only say you approach deity… or are in very close contact with yours.

But, to address the former situation, I have climbing friends who are in relationships that range from fantastic to unsatisfying to downright demented, as well. The One that got Away has somehow found an amazing man who can argue, climb, love, and endure her without giving her good reason to kill him, or vice versa (not sure I'd have been quick enough... likely wound up standing somewhere in Patagonia with an ice tool buried in my head.)

Such balance is admirable, and as rare as a fine brandy. Far more climbers are like one of my best friends, for years far too seldom seen, who once was one of the best example of the extreme opposite of the Dream Team. I watched this poor lad come to a weekend like a dying man to water; watched him revive, and watched his tremendous heart open to the incredible sights and sounds and experiences of the natural world, absorbing the energy of good friends having fun… only to watch the shadow fall as the weekend ended and he approached his return to Purgatory.

I've been there, and I understand the clouded knot of emotion and rationalization that can keep you tied to a hellish no-win situation, when every moment in the forest tells you that you are wasting your life. Compassion and nobility are commendable, but given in unmeasured doses, they can and will drain you and kill you. Is it worth it, just for someone to wake up to?

Absolutely, positively no freaking way. Not ever. Not for Cleopatra or a the Queen of Sheba.

As I said, his case is an extreme, but whenever I smell a faint whiff of self-pity, it is one of the scenarios that makes me think that being alone is not necessarily loneliness.

The final case, I know more people, good people, who have lived together for years, who started out in the adventure madly, passionately, bedbreaking and wall-knockingly in love and lust, breaking all the rules, daring anything for and with each other. I have seen them, or met them after they have become sad people, angry people, distant and confused people. Almost always, it is because they are people who have tried, one or the other or both, to gently but firmly (and failingly) Change, either their partner or themselves, into less of an independent creature.

As long as I live, I will never understand the human propensity for trying to turn a wolf into a lapdog. I suppose until I find someone who feels the same way and can put up with my fits of madness, my unrealistic idealism and romanticism and oddly paradoxical cynicism, I can keep my opinions between myself and, occasionally, you, my constant readers.

And so, before I truly beat this dead beast into dog food, I will drag the curtain down; dredge a point from this sea of soliloquy. After searching and solitude, debate and divination, I can come to only one answer, if answer it is.

The road has been long, and stretches on to an unknown horizon. What was loneliness has become, with years and miles, a time of indwelling centeredness and introspection. Having at least once drunk so deeply from the wine of Heaven, I can live an finally die with the satisfaction of knowing that the cup did not pass me by entirely.

In my long, silent passage through the cities of the night, bound again for that nameless horizon of unknowns that calls and wounds, cradles and renews me, I have known love that crossed the globe, love that shook the stars, love that could almost light the dark spaces within me. Between wonders and innuendo, amid catastrophes and dancing lessons from God, I will again know its touch, if God or Gaea is willing and the spirit moves me.

In the flying, endlessly fleeting moments between, the memory of laughter, of silent waters and falling stars, of hard times shared and victories celebrated, and the reflections faces loved and lost or left behind- no matter what the price or distance, it all still moves a beating heart to believe in tomorrow, and maybe.

Michael Gray
Goochland, Virginia
May 11, 2004

Pavane- A Requiem for Shady

 3/7/2001 11:54 pm

I stuffed the jacket and duffel into the hatch, and secured the rear of the Dakota pickup.  My body felt off-balance, reflexes slowed or too quick, my center still somewhere 30,000 feet above the earth between Arizona and Virginia, my mind wandering across a handful of years, my feet crunching snow in the clear 20 degree air as I climbed into the truck‘s warm interior.

I smiled as the first strains of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" album danced through the speakers, the slowly-building opening of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" setting the mood perfectly as I headed West on Route 33, towards the blue mountains of the Alleghenies.  The harmonica in my pocket was cool, through the thin capilene, and shadows raced across the hood of the truck as I gained the foothills, notes swelling to carry me through the trees and along the winding river road, while memories of a departed friend and times together danced across my mind.

"Remember when you were young?
You shone like the sun.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes
Like black holes in the sky.
Shine on, you crazy diamond."

Barry "Shady" Wade was a Southern boy born and bred, a biker and a rocker and a bud of truest blue who had climbed Seneca Rocks on ancient Goldline, in the years of the Viet Nam conflict.  Those years had long gone before we met in the trenches; he a rod-buster and laborer and I a steel walker and concrete finisher, doin' what it takes to get through the storms and bitter cold of the miserable winter of '93 with body and mind intact.  A small but powerful fireplug of a man, Shady nicknamed me "Tiny" for my advantage in size, and  through the tests of danger and tedium we became fast friends, as men in combat, prison and other hard places often will.

As winter slowly made way for spring and summer, we spent evenings drinking and shooting pool, turning wrenches and rolling smokes.  It was here that I came to understand Shady’s great love and encyclopedic knowledge of old Delta Blues players and their work. Drunk and slightly stoned, with his shock of red hair flying free, dressed in worn bib overalls and shitkickers, he would stagger around the clubhouse of The Scavengers, a small motorcycle club comprised mostly of Nam-era vets to which he belonged as sergeant-at-arms. In one hand a Miller Genuine draft, a smoldering roach, or a pool cue, in the other a harmonica; wailing with Pinetop Perkins, and Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Thelonius Monk, Buddy Guy and Big Mamma.

He shared a child's love of all the wild places, most of which he had only ridden through on his ailing scooter, or hiked in during the Army's preparation of his mind and body for the horrors of "police action" in Southeast Asia.  Shady delighted in my tales of the vertical world, and always swore that, "someday, Mah-cul, you'n'me's gonna have us a real big time, out thar on them rocks! Give me a chance to break out some o' thishere Army trainin'!" His eyes, mild and blue behind incredibly thick lenses, would shine with excitement, and he would look away towards the distant mountains and laugh. "Yessir, one day real soon."

Sometimes, even all these long years later, I can still see him like that.

Well, time... yessir, now, time, it is a funny thing, and it rolls away like an endless River that knows no return, carrying good intentions and bad to the distant sea of Regret, opportunity fled forever from our fingertips.

The job ended, and despite the bonds of brotherhood, we simply lived too far apart, in more ways than one, for the link to last.  I lost my lady love, lost my way and moved away to the Southwest to find a new dream and regain my Vision.  Shady stayed in Fishersville, where he started making his money in slightly less licit ways than simple construction, still carrying his harmonica every day, still playing a snatch or two of them good old Delta Blues whenever things looked dark or he was just trying to stir up a laugh. We called across the country, and even sent a postcard or two, but things just seem to get in the way of well-meant resolutions- kids and school, court hearings and contract deadlines, airline schedules and concert rigs and the thousand details of a life on the move. The River just kept on rolling, far and away, down to the Sea.

I hadn't even thought of Shady in a couple years, beyond momentary determinations to call him that faded with the drinks of the evening.

Then I heard the harmonica.

Part II

The strumming guitar of "Wish You Were Here" backdropped David Gilmore's plaintive, untrained voice as I crested Shenandoah Mountain, snow gleaming along the river in the distant valley below as I thought back to the harmonica.

I had been sitting quietly at home, going over expense reports, and plans for the next two months on the road. I tossed my trusty hardhat, covered with stickers and graffiti from a dozen years and a score of major projects, into the toolbox with my rigging gear. Folded in it was a felt liner, lumpier than it should be, a momentary distraction at best.

From somewhere in the distance, I heard a harmonica, faintly playing a snatch of ragtime that danced on the late afternoon air of October.  I reached for another page of hardcopy and paused.

Harmonica- ?

I rose fom my chair, crossed the carpeted floor to pull back the drapes and survey the street outside my Scottsdale apartment.  A few birds flew at the motion of the curtain, but aside from them, the cul-de-sac was empty.   I frowned, puzzled, as, unbidden, one thought linked to another and I thought of Shady. 

(Somber notes of the Pavane slide through the interior of the truck as I drop down the curving mountain road, winding along through forests of oak and elm, hickory and blazing maple still clinging to a few crimson leaves. A deer stamps and freezes at the verge as I flash by, smiling as I drift back again to memory.)

After a bit of digging, I found the number, on a tattered business card engraved with the Club's name and colors, Shady's bookkeeper block print still legible on the faded surface.

The woman that answered was older, but I knew her voice.

"Howdy, Mrs. Wade, This is Mike Gray, worked with Shady building the Medical Center, back in ninety-four… used to come over and eat with y’all at lunch.  Is Shady there?" 

There was a long silence. Finally, with a slight trembling, she asked "Who is this?"

I repeated my name.

"Michael," she said, "you haven't been home in a few years, have you?"

Something coiled coldly in the pit of my stomach, a door opening on some truth I had known in my heart, but had refused to face.  Suddenly short of breathe, I answered that, aside from brief visits, that I had not in fact been home in almost three years.

Ma Wade's voice was awkward with the burden of emotion, and she was almost formal as she went on.

"Michael, Barry- Shady, I guess y'all called him... Do you know… no, I s’pose you didn’t, an’ that’s why…”  She trailed away for a minute, and I heard a sob of breath, indrawn.

“My boy is gone, son… he died on this very day-” a creak as she twisted in her chair, anfd a muffled exclamation- “exactly five minutes before this, last year.”  I could tell she was crying, now, but she struggled on. “A year to the day, Michael, and not an hour before the Lord took him, he was holding an old photo of the two of you, laughing as best he could with his lungs full of pneumonia and wondering where you were and how you were doin‘."

I looked into the tool chest, where the hardhat lay, with the soft liner folded inside. Something poked gleaming from one corner. A memory tugged at me as I answered, giving my condolences in a kind of quiet shock, promising to visit on my next trip through the area, then hung up the phone, fumbling with numb fingers. I reached down, and slid the harmonica from the old helmet liner.

Barry Wade, the Shady Man, gone.  Somehow, despite knowing the life we both led, he was someone I had been convinced just wouldn‘t die.  He was just that kind of guy; ugly as sin, tough as nails, irreverent as hell and somehow just a bit larger than life.  The last time we had spent together was four years before, an afternoon and evening spent drinking and playing music. Billiard balls gleamed under the green-shaded lamp above the table in another of our endless games of nine ball as Shady pulled his oldest harmonica from the front of his bibs.

"Mah-cul, I wan' you t' have this mouthharp. Sumpin' t' remember yer ol' bro Shady, out there in the big wide world." He fixed me in his mild gaze, and pointed one work-gnarled finger, tattoos bulging on his bicep. "Reckon as our roads are partin', and that ain't a bad thing, just kinda aggravatin', as Life will be. Shady Man done had a big ol’ bag o’ dreams. And he’s lived a many of ‘em and pissed away more than a few more.  Shit, I ain’t got no regrets, much… what the hell is regret gonna do for an ol’ piece o’ scooter trash like me anyhow?“ 

He paused, dug out his can of Skoal and dipped a mighty pinch to stuff into his lip.  Chewing for a moment, he leaned aside and spat, then grinned at me, before resuming a serious face.

“Now, if'n anything should happen that we don't git to them hills, well, you take that old harp someplace pretty, and you blow a few notes for old Shady, and then you toss 'er as far as you can heave. Least that ways, some part of this ol’ boy will be out there in them hills, and you’ll be free to git on down your own road.“ 

He held up one hand as I opened my mouth in protest, paused to take a deep swig of his beer, belched, and continued. 

“I know, I know, you prob’ly gonna tell me sumpin’ bout a keepsake or some other shit… but I’ve buried more’n a few brothers and I c’n tell ya, mem’ries are the only keepsakes ya need.”  A shake of his wooly heady.  “Ain't no good holdin' on to the past…“ 

His grin flickered again, impish. 

“Besides, you can‘t play for shit anyways."

Then he laughed, tapped his beer against mine and hugged me hard, like a brother will.  Blew a fistful of notes to relieve the somber tone the day had taken and proceeded to run the table on me, again.

Part III- Pavane

Franklin was a-glitter with Christmas and bustling with last-minute shoppers as I made my way through town, towards the high blue folds of North Fork Mountain, now lit in the last glow of evening. In my pocket, Shady's harmonica was cool, an angular link to memory.

I thought of all the plans, the drunken imaginings, hell-yeah shindigs, and quiet afternoons following brutal days on the site, when we had simply looked off across the distance to the silent promise of the Blue Ridge, and beyond. Thought of hardships and danger faced every day with determination, sarcasm, laughter and gallows humor; of heartbreaks and triumphs shared and celebrated, as we lost girls and jobs, hide and motivation, only to begin again every Monday morning in the cold hours before dawn.

Upper Tract passed in a blur of aging houses and residents, the tiny store parking lot crowded with huge trucks, tractors and coverall-clad hunters.  A mile further on,  I turned left, the angular iron bridge throwing long shadows across the frozen cornfields as Wonderland opened before me.

The entrance walls rose on either side of the car, ice floating on the slow currents of the South Branch of the Potomac and I drove the last eight miles into the canyon's heart in silent thought, a lump tight in my throat as I recalled Ma Wade‘s face, crumpled and tear-streaked, her soft, arthritis-gnarled hand holding mine the day before as she had cried, silently, the meal of brown beans and cornbread forgotten on the table as the sorrow she had held in for a year spilled out in the dusty afternoon sunlight slanting through her kitchen windows.  After an hour of laughter and tears, she heaved a deep sigh, wiped her face on her apron, then stood and hugged my neck good-bye and kept me a moment more as she prayed for God to watch over her son‘s last returning friend.

Parking, I sat listening to the cooling engine tick down, then drew a deep breath and pushed myself into motion.  Digging into the duffel in the back seat, I pulled on gators and gloves, settled the knit cap snugly against the cold, and headed upstream, away from the road. Water moved in silent darkness beneath the snow, and ice on the smooth stones left every crossing treacherous.  Deer watched from the ridges above, dusted in white, their breath pluming in the air as they chewed winter’s meager forage.

Finally, two hundred yards away from the car and two hundred feet above the River, I stopped.

This was the place I had always meant to bring my brother, the place he had never seen. A natural amphitheater formed by a widening of the streambed, the water falling twenty feet above, then flowing past the odd chair-shaped boulder and over a broad landing to cascade gently down six-inch steps, past soaring walls and columns of stone, draped vines and huge old trees lending the place the air of a throne room of the gods. Sunset light splashed the walls, streaming through the gap above the falls like a bridge across forever.

I pulled the harp from my pocket, and slapped it against my palm as Shady had a thousand times, morning noon and night, years before. A handful of hesitant, unfocused notes, and I drew a deep breath, swinging into a stuttering, off-key version of "Amazing Grace", wishing for his gift, for any musical talent, wishing there were drums, and a bagpipe, harpers and a golden chorus. Tears blurred the world as I listened to the echoes die, but a laugh swelled my chest, and I let it go, let it all go as I held the harmonica high to catch the last glow of evening, as a twilight came down and owls hooted softly in the shadows of the forest.

Then, end-over-end, it flew, into the gathering dusk, a shining comet, its last notes played out, the wishes of its owner finally and forever complete.

As I made my way, back down towards the road, I felt a shadow and turned. 

For just an instant, I saw the wide grin, the wild red hair, and blue eyes smiled at me over wire frames again, as that mild voice echoed, for the last time.

"Ain't no use holdin' on to the past."

Fallin' From Grace

Fallin' From Grace- a climbing life snapshot by Mike Gray

January, 2002, somewhere in West Virginia…

Another year, another climb.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It is cold in the Southeast, this frosty Sunday morning. The previous week’s hint of far-off spring has given way to the solid reassertion of winter’s grip; an onrushing wall of northern air that rolled down over the Ohio River, Cumberland Gap, and eventually the Shenandoah Valley, sending temps into free fall, spilling snow showers over the Allegheny Highlands and ending my dreams of a suntan in January.

The mercury outside my ice-sheathed RV window reads a blurry 22 degrees F. The grass sparkles with a billion frost diamonds as I step out the back door of the Cruiser, a 16-foot long Dodge Cruise Master RV, with galley, bath, shower, and bunk room for three in a pinch.  Current number of residents stands at one.  I sip at the dark roasted taste of my coffee, savoring the birth of the day, enjoying the feel of the cold air against my face.

Inside, the rebuilt Hilti chassis leans against the battery charger, near the stuffed, scuffed and ever-ready BD Attack pack, bulging with quickdraws, a handful of cams, some snacks, first aid kit, and an extra layer of clothing, including windproof balaclava and gloves.

Wreckage of the morning's breakfast burrito and accompanying dishes is quickly divided between sink and trashcan, and I monitor NPR as the chores eat away the minutes until departure.

The Doctor is inbound.

Right on cue, the silver bullet slides into the driveway.  Mike Fisher aka Doc Goodwack, Doctor Doom, The Total Package, sits slumped behind the wheel of his Taurus, grinning through a wave of Dokken as the trunk pops open and he steps out into the cold, coffee in one hand, home-rolled cig in the other. Dressed in layers of  Gore-tex, capilene and pile, Mike still looks pretty much exactly the way he did when I first met him, several hundred crazy climbs, a half dozen insane winter bivvies, an uncountable assortment of night bouldering and climbing expeditions and an unknowable number of  recon hikes ago.  Most men would be withered and bent, reduced to gibbering madness and hammered into shapeless masses of arthritic, frostbitten, chigger-gnawed agony by now, either from the misadventures or my company alone.

Not Mike. Creatures of the opposite sex have been known to approach spontaneous combustion  when the good Doctor enters a room, all easygoing manner, soft warm voice, olive skin, wide white smile, dark eyes, and barely salted black hair. I have achieved perfect stealth invisibility, just by walking into a room of predominantly females several seconds behind Fisher.  It was as close to non-existence as I have come.

Unlike Mike, yours truly both shows and feels the effects and impacts of the previous decade and the right knee twinges in reminder of its traumatic destruction and reconstruction in a bicycle mishap six years past, as I step down out of the RV with shoulder slung pack and drill. Some mornings, it's hard to believe it's only been forty years since my birth day. Some mornings it's hard to believe it's been more than eighteen. And some mornings, like this morning, I'm caught between the exuberance of my teen years and the aches of my decades.

We push out of Harrisonburg on a wave of music, small talk, and expectancy, cross the first range into Brandywine, whitetail deer and squirrels in motion around us in the National Forest. There is snow blowing over the Highlands, and we both glower at the shroud that stretches out long streamers to the north, near our destination. No turning back now... we are On A Mission. There is a predictable response, any time we have shocked or offended or required far more than baseline intelligence out of the climbing community and/or the world at large, usually by climbing some insane bit of stone or putting ourselves directly in the path of weather that would have turned back Lord Jim-

"Holy shit.... it's the Punishers!"

Down through Judy Gap and the sandstone towers where Howard Clarke and I once pitted muscle and thickheaded determination against gravity and tiny holds, logging more air miles than a Stealth bomber pilot… sweet Jesu, was that really as many years ago as it seems, now?

Past Nelson Gap, once greenbrier and the awe-inspiring sweep of unknown potential on high, distant fins, now a commercial mess, being run with best intentions by a Maryland lawyer.

Winding along the river, past the amazing snapshot back in time that is farm country in the South.  Silos and old red barns, some simple and sagging, some grand and multi-dormered, with hayloft lifts and ramps, ancient stone foundations, chimneys, and tilted gravestones peeking through the swaying broom straw, blanketed horses munching a mouthful of hay, cows standing huddled together in the middle of a muddy field. 

Past Yokum´s and Harper's and Seneca Rocks, La Belle Grand Dame of WV trad climbing, her fins and corners rimed with a dusting of snow, the shadows of ledges and clinging cedars and pines black against the stark white of the faces.  Along 28/55, with a dependably breath-taking view of Champe Rocks as we slow for the curve.

More miles roll by in conversation and music, and in no time we are there.  Down the old side road between Cabins and Petersburg, snaking through S-curves and navigating over miles of rough pavement and potholes, through groves of oak and locust, branches stripped of leaves and snapped in the recent ice storms.

Out into the cold, ropes, gear, laughter and memory mingling with our smoking breaths in the frigid air. Quick march over the hill, down through the descending forest to the edge of the Abyss, where the Cirque suddenly comes into view below.

Ice hangs in curtains, falls in crystalline cascades, depends from rotting stone in a single column eight inches thick and sixty feet tall, transforming simple stones and twigs into glass mushrooms and sculptures of ethereal glass.

Fifty yards apart, Mike and I set rap lines and descend into this tiny sanctuary, together and yet lost in our own thoughts as if the other were a thousand miles away. As he frees half-ton blocks from their precarious balance in the middle of a new line, I set the last bolt on my latest nightmare of mixed trad and sport climbing and we meet at the base, huddling in the weak winter sunshine that fills the Hanta Cave for a smoke and a laugh. We brew tea and hunker next to a small, smoking fire for warmth and motivation.

The stone is cold, brutally cold and I try not to think about that as I tie in and run through the verbal double-check.

Good knot, good buckle.

Belay on?

On Belay.

Climbing.

I try to hide in strategy, but the cold seeps into joints too many times abused over the decades, stealing first sensation, then strength, then willpower. I hang at the third bolt, curled fetus-like over my silently-screaming hands, looking up at the sun, shining on the rim so very far above. Mike only nods in sympathy as I ask ten more seconds and try wriggling the pain out of fingers that feel like they have been smashed with a hammer. Arthritis twinges in the first three knuckles, reminder of too many bar room brawls in my tempestuous youth, too many years earning a living as a construction machine, and too many mid-winter cracks in the years before and since.

Deep breath, calm blue ocean. Nothing to it but to do it.

Crimpers lead off to the highstep, a rock-on that almost leaps to an undercling clipping stance. Swap hands, inhale and push the air out hard through the nose, left hand seeking the knifeblade edge above, right foot high, right hand in a dimple pocket. Shift balance, feeling fading as I step up and stab for the two-finger pocket, racing friction to slap for the open ledge above, reset the feet and just do it, finding the surface of the next hold rimed with frost, too spent and far above the last bolt to stop or even care, now, just GO!!!

Big holds, and my face sticks to the rock for a second at the no-hands rest, breath frosting the fossils in front of my panting mouth as I try to pull it back together and rise above the pain. Knives of wind slice through my hi-tech armor and chills warn me that the trade-off for strength is cold muscles and loss of the flame. No can do.

Up now, the stone more highly featured but the luxury of bolts now at an end as I trust an insecure jam and lean out on the protection of my second-smallest cam, reaching up over the three-foot roof to find the splitter crack above, fingers hooked around the chiseled edge, foot set high on a sloping prow that promises nothing of security as I lieback through the overhang, twisting bleeding, frozen digits into a fingerlock that will surely tear them right off my throbbing hand, if my foot should fail.

It stays, and I move up into a deep dihedral corner, stemming and scumming with my right shoulder, breath whistling in my throat as I find the next-to-last placement.

Settle down, now.... one more roof, one more crux, and you're home free, Ronin. Maybe next time you can get it without that hang... sooooo close now, the bitmap in my head filled with nuance and detail, the gyroscope preprogrammed for the next run.

First, though, I gotta get off this thing in one piece.

Zen.  No mind, just the stone, the wind, the pain of living, drag of the rope at my waist, the smell of moss and rotting wood from deep in the crack, the roar of the river far below, as I reach over the lip of the roof, fingers too numb to find the sweet spot in the mid-face jug, balance wobbling like a drunken beaver on a frozen pond as I step up and around the corner and slap the top.

Another year, another climb.

The more things change,

the more they stay the same

Everyone’s a saint

until you look the other way

The more things change,

the more they stay the same

All we need’s a miracle

to take us all away from the pain.

-Cinderella

Serpents' Dance

I can only tell you.

I can't take you there.

Oh, make no mistake... I have no choice but to try.

Have tried, am trying, and no doubt will take up pen and paper, or reach reluctant hands toward the keyboard, breath held, thoughts racing, words tumbling to try again. It is an imprecise and sporadic effort, I know, and I thank you, gentle reader, for your patience and continued interest as I fumble toward Nirvana, or Meaning, or some such doubtful, highbrowed ideal. Too in touch with my own fallible mortality, I cannot trust this stilted structure of words and perspective to do what I want, what I must. I can only pour it out, one pumping crimson beat after another, the hot kiss of the artery against the razor’s cold, thirsty edge, hoping that some common bond, some dream or memory or fantasy half-recalled, a hindbrain echo, will do what I cannot.

What a poor tool language is. Nouns and verbs, gerunds and adjectives can't make you feel the burning of raw flesh and trembling muscles pushed one step beyond their limits, or fill you with the high, clear singing note that becomes your every thought and essence as the rope sways there below your feet and grit turns under your fingers. Cannot excite in you that giddy dancing with destiny, gravity a faithful companion that ever demands your return, pulling you back, back toward terra oh-so-firma, while beyond, the sky seduces, promising anything and everything, just beyond the next crux.

A victim of years of classroom education on the art of writing (inevitably taught by persons who have, in their entire lives, produced nothing more inspiring than pop-quizzes), I can use clever diction and punctuation, run on sentences one breathless stream pulling you inexorably forward or superlatives of color and light igniting a firestorm in your own imagination, recalling images from your own past, remembered or dreamt.

But I cannot make the leaves glow with the energy of life pouring out of them, or fill the wind with the hundred living perfumes of a growing forest.  I cannot close your throat with laughter and the threat of bright tears or fill your eyes with the high, drifting form of an eagle.

I can only tell you how it was, for me.

The party Friday night had gone long and ranged far. There were large weapons, blasts of lead and powder intersecting the arcing flight of clay targets, loud music, dancing, beer, and appetizers of every description. Smoke and mirrors. Body paint. Madness.

There were white tail deer bounding away under the moonlight, and bullfrogs croaking and belling from the tall grass along the ancient, bobbing dock that thrust into the wine-dark lake. Turtles and bass and carp splashed, and our voices drifted over the water as we watched the stars spin by.

Later, more laughter, and something clear that smelled like blackberries and sipped like water and burned like a southern girl's first kiss under an August moon. Doctor Gonzo came to call, and the party gained momentum again. There was bouldering with beer eliminations, penalty dynos and post-brownie campussing. Badly shot motocross victories played in the background, the silent screen accompanied by a jarring dichotomy of metal and chick rock.

There were giggles and staggering in the darkness, boots and sandals, stubborn denim and capilene and cotton kicked and pulled and tossed laughing.

Near daybreak, there was, at last, sleep.  To sleep, perchance to dream.  And is all we see or seem but a dream within a dream?  Given the first warning pangs of soul and gut as consciousness returns, one can only hope.

Either that, or a someone’s pet ferret has died in my mouth, probably from the thunderous concussions pounding through my head.

Oh, my dear sweet lord... I am NOT eighteen anymore. Not even close. Twenty-one was a bright light over a decade and a half fading in the past. I extracted myself carefully, silently, from bed and occupants, oriented through a hook-latched screen door, and stealthed across the campground towards home. Grabbed towel and necessaries, tossed hydration and medication licit and otherwise into my system, and staggered carefully through loose stone down to the ancient bathhouse. The shower creaked on and greeted me with a bitterly cold blast of needle spray, and my yell likely woke the mostly-dead, if not in fact stirring actual corpses into motion. Pipes clanked and steam rose, grudgingly, spiders scuttling to the farthest extremes of their webs as I scrubbed vainly at the aches and pains coming mostly from my skull and savaged gut.

The eyes in the mirror were still red as a werewolf's mugshot, and I fingered stubble that held far more salt than pepper, trembling fingers tracing up my cheekbones to matching silver taking the field from my temples.

Getting kind of old for this shit, bubba.

And then the grin flickered back, unbidden; the upsurge of impish, indomitable, wild Celtic spirit that has lifted me out of so many dark pits, pushed me up against my own limits and beyond my own beliefs, given me the ability to laugh, first and foremost, at myself.

Really, Mister "Path Less Traveled"? What... You got someplace better to be? Something better to do? The silent voice is like a ribbon of razor wire, but even as it slices, I know there is humor there, among the merciless barbs and talons of facts.

Got a timeclock to punch, there, do ya, Ronin?  Is this just too hard for you, bro?  Got a family to raise or a "real" life to be living, maybe some adult, mature Planning for the Golden Years and Putting A Little Something Back For A Rainy Day? You sleepwalked through that role before, remember? You don't work in that world, and that world doesn't work for you. 'Sides… you know that ain't what's really buggin' yer poor little melon...

I closed my eyes, leaned my forehead against the mirror, turning my thoughts to face what I had avoided, the ghost that had haunted me through climbs and work and days and nights over the last week.

Yeah, ya pissed away another friendship, you and yer "ideals" and that damned quick trigger finger about every friend you’ve ever had warned you about. Devil and the deep blue sea, bubba. Rock and a hard place, seems like this is just about where ya came in to start with… trippin over yer pride and goin’ in circles… How far to the next windmill, Don Quixote?

The laugh was one part sadness, one part sarcasm, and one part just plain old hell-bent-for-leather good cheer in the face of the inevitable Truth.

It's a little late for Making Something of Yourself, dude. Guess ya better just do your best to be what you are. Tell it like you see it, walk it like you talk it, swallow your pride and as much crow as it takes to make you messes right and accept when you've stepped in it too deep to ever wipe it all clean again.

The shower room door squealed open, and a paunchy refugee from suburbia waddled in with a towel big enough to drape a Lamborghini and a shaving kit that looked like the entire "Toiletries for Him" section at Nordies. Beads of sweat glittered on his face and in the V of his exposed chest, and his breathing was a bellows, deep beneath years of Haagen-Dazs and Red Lobster.

We stood for an instant, face to face, his tiny porcine features slack in that instant between sight and reaction. There was a flicker of something there... maybe the sheep to wolf recognition signal, I don't know... I don't feel it... then the shutters came down, inside those tiny fearful eyes, and he nodded absently "howdyadoin" all one breathy outrush of spearmint and tobacco as he rolled by.

The voice was there, just at the shoulder of my conscious mind...

You still think YOUR life sucks??

My laughter woke whatever residents of morgue and tomb had remained undisturbed through the earlier shout, and I went off in search of breakfast.

The Cruise Master is a thing of simplicity and functional beauty, an off-white 1978 Dodge camper van restored with patience and determination (as well as a great deal of sweating, swearing and personal insults against the lineage of the former owners), by my pater familias, the Commander. Double beds, galley, micro'fresher (WC and shower), bumpin' tunes, no bells and whistles but lots of functionality. In light of my nomadic lifestyle, and with an eye towards future plans to travel in Colorado, the Tetons, and points west, I had seen it as prudent to invest some of my spring earnings to purchase the same when the 'rents had decided to "trade up".

The full load of gear previously stashed in the cramped confines of the Panzer now dispersed to a myriad of drawers and cupboards; jumper cables and cords and chargers and tools finally out from underfoot, gear and ropes and packs and other valuables racked in their own organized locker, grub and books and toys and all the things a rovin' student of Life and the Path needs to keep him happy.

Or too busy to notice the difference between furiously active and happy.

The day was cool and clear, a few tiny clouds giving lie to the forecast of showers and rain on the western horizon, a gentle southwest breeze stirring the golden heads of tall grasses in passing pasture, swallows and robins and wrens winging through the sweet morning air, Jerry and the Dead lilting out "Dark Star" as I rolled the Cruise Master along the backroads of the Shenandoah Valley on its shakedown run. A steep bolted route awaited my attentions and a first ascent, across the hills and far away, in West-by-god-Virginia (smile when ya say it). Another season had come and gone, and it was time for me to take to the road, again, if only for a little while. I was wrapping up loose ends, saying my farewells and alohas, paying my respects and debts, making time to have all those promised and long-delayed breakfasts and lunches with old friends from school, work, and the crags. Leaving my nemesis undone wasn't in the cards...

The route had bested me for two months, shutting me down again and again in the intense inverted slugfest of the first roof. Legs buried in the eight-inch offwidth, upper body and arms dangling at a downward slant, linking the series of long, brutal throws while transitioning from flesh-shredding leg jams to precise, sequential foot placements seemed beyond me. I had come within one fall of redpointing the route, three times, over the last couple of weeks. Time to get my game face on; take the pain, accept the fall, just do it... or call it too hard and admit to myself that I'm just too damned old, too soft, too weak, too slow.

Memorial Day traffic was light, and I suspected that I had not been I the minority with the previous nights' world tour through systemic abuse. Haze lay thick upon the distant flanks of the Alleghenies as I piloted the yacht-like Cruise Master down through mountain curves and forests. I braked as fallen orange signs and broken pavement intimated the approach of road improvements, halted for the weekend and holiday, leaving graders and trac-hoes and backhoes clustered and abandoned along the road like forlorn, mechanical aliens looking for a cheap room and someplace good to eat.

Franklin was jumping like any other small town on a major road during a national holiday, and I smiled and waved at throngs of strolling old people and giggling kids, sultry sixteen-year-olds and young turks with WWF t-shirts, bar-b-cue and Mountain Dew, Coors and a Mean Gene burger, yard sale heaven and a marching band.

An hour later, Seneca reared its twin summits above the broad green fields of Germany Valley, and I negotiated the busy three-way stop, threading the van through gawking tourons and straining dogs, ponderously turning land yachts that made me look like a tugboat next to an aircraft carrier by comparison, Verve, Prana, Lands End and Teva-clad slackers and rockjocks and river rats wandering from Yokums to the Gendarme to the Front Porch Restaurant, staring across the road to the towering plastic and plywood idol of the climbing wall or swiveling ancient spotting scopes to scan the face of the glowing white fin for climbers for as long as their quarter kept the lens open.

I parked in the farthest lot, letting the engine cool while I arranged slices of honey ham and crisp spinach on grilled pita bread. I unfolded a camp chair in the grass beside the parking lot and sat down to enjoy my sandwich, staring up at the folds and wrinkles Seneca, the crag I had come to think of as "the White Lady". Learning to place gear, to lead and clean, retreat and rappel, among these high, polished fins and corners had taught me so much about safety, climbing, the outdoors, and the eager, often nave kid I was then.

The sandwich was crumbs, and I washed it down with ice-cold spring water from Endless Caverns. Soft, hazy clouds drifted overhead as I turned once more onto the highway, Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" providing the backbeat as I urged the old van up through its gears.

An hour later, I lay, hands and arms crossed beneath my chin, legs straight out behind me on the flat boulder, perched some sixty feet above the floor of the Cirque. Fifty yards away, and dead-on, my latest obsession glowed in the noonday sun.

I counted bolts again. Three out the eight-inch offwidth roof, a rising curve of stone and space and pain that soared out almost ten feet from the base. Four more bolts from above the Business to the lip of the second five-foot overhang, affectionately nicknamed the Kit-Kat Roof for the solidity of its appearance and quality of its cracks. And then three, wide-spaced and crafty in locale, to take you right up the perfect profile of the arete that capped the headwall.
Mosquitoes danced in front of my face, and gnats attacked my ears and nose. I took one Last long look through the monocular and packed it in.

The next day was wrong, mad, strange. Perhaps that was the secret, after all those perfect, clockwork days of predictably failing. I don't know any more than the frogs, singing out there in the new-fallen rain.

Start was late and leisurely, after realizing that my rope was likely still lying right there in the garage where I had carefully packed it into a new bag, the night before the party... Doc Doom showed, late but dependably THERE, Dokken cranking from his stereo as he slid into the drive at high speed, stepping out into the dust, he rolled a smoke, poured a cuppa and cursed traffic, NPS Law officers, unspayed dogs and holiday traffic. He laughed at my lapse of memory and pulled cordage from the trunk of the silver bullet.

Instead of the usual short hike and rappel to save energy and time, we thrashed in through the lower path. I didn't question, didn't doubt, just went with the flow. Like the man that threw himself naked into the rosebush said, it seemed the thing to do at the time.

The Cirque was like the set for some Brazilian epic, green and fecund and humid. Locust and cicadas and birds filled the air with song, backdropped by the trickle of drops to which the waterfall had been reduced and the song of the river a hundred yards below. Millipedes crawled slowly, impossibly up the rock, and a corn snake, no bigger than a bit of gear cord and just eight inches long, slithered and melted over ledges and cracks and holds.

I warmed up on "Rock of Ages", an old favorite that Melissa (the Muse) and I had put up to open the Cirque, nearly eight years ago. Fifteen feet of 5.8 stemming leads to big holds through a slight overhang to a rest ledge, from which you chase a crack and 5.9+ face holds to pumpy mixed finish almost 90 feet off the deck. I was sweating, my heart pounding and my moves all herky-jerky, and although I finally pulled off the more run-out direct start, I flagged and took a hang at the last bolt.

Rapping down, I cleaned the draws and recoiled the rope, carrying my gear to the foot of Brother Love, breathing deeply through my nose to fight off the brief surge of nausea that locked my jaws. What the hell-? I had been careful to steer clear of anyone I thought was infectious, spending most of the last week training, isolated from the myriad coughers, sneezers, wheezers, and carriers currently inhabiting the 'burg. I tried to relax, munching on some peanut butter and honey, drinking plenty of water. I cursed myself with the thought that this was, without a doubt, something left over from my night of excess... then grinned and shrugged. It was, in the end, only a rock climb.

I stretched, visualized, tied in, and bonked. The first run shut me down at the same predictable, impossible spot. Fingerlocks from a squat, clip first bolt, lock biners at hanger and rope end, bump the right out to the jug at lip, undercling left and pivot, match at the lip, swing out, pull up, heel hook left/toe cam right/Leavittate, second bolt, head down, blow it and you’re talus stain.

Deep breaths, pull up/atomic sit-up and throw left to a shitty jug, reset feet and throw right to a hidden horn inside the crack, more dancing, throw long left to another jug, slightly better.

And that was where I stalled. Legs locked into the crack, Our Hero vainly tries the moves three times before calling "Take" and lowering off to pull the rope.

I shrug it off. It's just that kind of day. I pass some time doing trail work with the Doctor, then tie back in, drink a long gulp of water, and go back up, into the fight.

And suddenly, its all right there, and the fire is bright inside, and I'm not weightless but I am STRONG as I pull, dancing out to the edge, pulling through; crimpers setting me up for the high left before the crossover, and the rest is just a flow...

Crank your right hand around into an impossible angle to undercling a calcite-toothed column, hips grinding in the narrow confines of the crack as you strain upwards, only friction and belief holding you against the merciless pull of gravity as you snake a left up, through the crack, to catch the positive lip of a hold on the right, all thought suspended as you turn, looking down to carefully, consciously NOT step on the bolt hanger, toeing a pencil thin edge, right hand sweeping out in a controlled fall to catch a dusty sloper pocket, stalling your descent for just long enough to SINK the left into the pocket, elbow deep, hand curling through spiderwebs and leaves, scrabbling aside nuts and bones, twigs and moss and dirt and pebbles to lock you in as you growl, deep inside.

The carabiner's click is a ringing note, and the rope seems to drift through my fingers, into the gate.

The rest of the climb is almost anticlimax; clean moves, good clip stances, a great day and beautiful moves. But that's the easy way out. Too many stories get lost in clichés down that path. Sitting here, at the keyboard, I smile with the twinging memory of hard moves, the feel of muscle straining against disbelief and gravity, and of dreams becoming reality. The weeks of effort, of doubt and soul-searching, the whole pattern of my life thrown into introspection over the success or failure of this climb, all that recedes now, the serpents' dance come full circle, self-doubt and hesitation drifting away on a wave of present contentment. I know that this season, as all others, will pass, and that the new day will bring challenges and obstacles, doubts and fears. In this moment of clarity, I accept it, without anticipation or dread.

Later, driving through Petersburg with the bright sun shining down through the pouring rain, I fold away the memory of this route and its lessons for another day, and another crux, to share with a friend, to carry on through deep water and heavy weather, to savor during long hours behind the wheel.

And to lay down another strand of the tapestry, here; another shining thread, weaving across the void, trying to tell a tale of the untellable, reaching out for forever.

Snapshot Memories

Snapshot Memories

9/30/2001, edit 12/01/10

Evening's cool shadows, creeping silent across the hills as the golden light laps higher on their weathered slopes, twisted arabesques of cloud burning crimson above the horizon. The shaved circle of the moon, just shy of full, crowns the eastern ridgeline, as the swollen golden orb of the sun drops into a sea of purple, gold, and platinum among the serrated mountains and passes of the western horizon. Bats dance and swoop, and night birds blend their bell-like tones into the chorus of cricket and frog. the first cool kiss of evening comes to touch fevered brows, and stars glimmer in the darker blue above the vault of cloud and sky.

Rewind: my father's voice, coming from the darkness of a Virginia summer's night, one silhouetted finger pointing out Orion, the Dippers, the Polestar. Cicadas fill the woods with their endless, surf-like susurrus, and fireflies rise blinking from the grass, wafting on its rich green smell to hang above the spread blanket.

Segue: Frost shifts and falls in fine powder as I push back the lip of the sleeping bag, to find the Muse looking at me from ten inches away. We touch fingertips, snuggling closer, smiling and squirming like children, then turn, cupped like spoons, to watch winter sunrise light the crags across the river. Yesterday's climbs are an ache in fingers and wrists and shoulders, and the anticipation of today is barely held in check by the frigid conditions of pre-dawn. I risk permanent skin damage to light the Optimus 8R and quickly dig back into the warmth. Somewhere, a rooster's cry, and then a donkey's loud bray, greet the first light.

Intermezzo: Sunlight like a blow on the back of my neck as I hang off one set of fingertips, toes smeared against improbability, snorting gently through my nose, using mouth and one free hand to sort wired stoppers a dozen feet or so above gear that would inspire confidence only in the most Pollyanna of worldviews. The air is heavy and perfectly still, and a jay's shriek shatters the silence.

Slot the wire; sweat running down the slope of my forehead to channel directly into the corner of my eye. Clip in the quickdraw and lock the biner with one eye squinted shut, fingerlock starting to slide as I quickly chalk the free hand and catch the horn above just as the last cohesion finally fails... feet off, a protein pendulum, reversing now, fingers finding the slot and high step-

Off.

Epiphany- the firm, steady grip of a tiny pink hand, huge blue eyes gazing from a wise little face cradled in the nook of one arm. The tongue pushes against the lips, and then a toothless smile lights the little face, my heart, the world.

My mother's face seen through the screen door, surprised, amazed and as happy as a child on Christmas morning, which is exactly twelve hours away, and the way the weight of ten hours of air commuting falls away as she cries and hugs my neck, with snow settling softly from Virginia skies.

Backtrack: faces gathered in the leaping light of the fire, laughing, amazed, derisive, quietly watching, hands clasping water bottles and assorted brews, stronger spirits passed hand to hand, brass and glass and aromatic smoke drifting among the throng as enough beta flows to map out El Cap or the Lotus Flower Tower. Chili and pasta and sauces pungent with cilantro and garlic bubble on stoves and coals. Gear litters the tables, spreads in piles and pools of nylon and aluminum among vans and cars and tents, sorts and shifts with a metallic clangor and chime amid stoner strategy, counterpoint to debate and recollections. A battered radio scratches out bluegrass and Celtic tunes as deer watch quietly from the riverbank with raccoons and opossum on the prowl along the perimeter, alert for the wayward pack, the unguarded tent, the empty site. Dogs bark and scuffle and run, racing through the twilight, children tumbling among them. Another chime of sweetly discordant metal, and two more shapes materialize in slogging stages, lurching out of the darkness to be greeted with silent smiles, uplifted hands, cold bottles, laughing, loving abuse and open hearts.

Above it all, the crag, silent, glowing, mystic and ancient, slumbering, remembering other voyagers on the Path.

Parallel: sprawled in the Cave, watching as the third day of spring rains pours down outside, sipping Pete's Wicked, nibbling fruit and cheese and hard crusted bread, between sessions of bouldering across the inverted terrain of the pocketed ceiling like mad geckos. Carpet squares and pads litter the floor, cast off by previous stone nomads, seasonally removed and replaced. The smell is musky, green, the air of New River Gorge damp and heavy. Rachel and Melissa whisper and giggle as Troy and I take turns at inversion. Plastic rustles, and there is a spark, inspiration on the wing. Forearms flaming, we float amid a cloud of chalk dust and determination, making the most of the moment.

Sitting, filled and surrounded by a deep, wonderful stillness, above the rim of some long-forgotten backcountry chunk of geology.  Raise your smile and eyes to the sky and rub your wind burned face with hands rough from jams, fingers swollen and bloody at the cuticles, white with chalk, muscles throbbing and twitching, sweat and adrenaline slowly subsiding in the realization of the top, the solid click of the caribiner in the anchor. Relaxed, watching as the Muse cruises the moves, excess gear bulging in the pack at her shoulders as she finishes with a silent smile and exhaled breath.

Shoulder to shoulder, just being, for the moment, there in the silence, amid the dry leaf and green life smell of the forest. Jack-in-the-pulpit nods in the evening breeze, tiny white-spotted red mushrooms and ferns springing from the duff around its regal stem. A tardy honeybee drones hurriedly past, heading for home, and in the distance a whippoorwill begins his endless rhythmic call. The lass mentions beer, fresh strawberries and ripe cheese waiting in the cooler, and inspired we rise, leaning on each other, suddenly stiff and sore, to make our way down the fading fire road, through the ancient derelict CCC camp to the car.

Fast forward: huddled in the lee of a storm-shattered tree, with Cindy’s grinning, rose-cheeked face inches from mine, nibbling half-frozen cheese and cookies, miles from anywhere, with a 30 mph wind whipping the snow around us into a veil of white.  Postholing thru shin-deep snow to finally reach the High Knob, from which we catch glimpses of Seneca Rocks, miles away and a thousand feet below.  Hand in hand, we stand, sheltered from the storm by the glow in our hearts, lost in wonder.

Exit: racing into the east, between horizons on some unknown highway chasing my endlessly stretching shadow into the first star's light, the wind in my hair, something from our lost innocence pumping from the radio; past, present and future all balanced on the cusp of one timeless, eternal now; kaleidoscope of images and lessons, failures and triumphs, sorrows, revelations, and rainbows.