Where It All Began

It was a late night in the late summer of 2008. I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, unwinding from the day's activities. My phone rang. Odd. Nobody ever calls me that late. It wound up being an old friend from college who had found herself stuck between a rock and a hard place. Over the next two hours I managed to talk her down off the ledge, and she managed to talk me into accompanying her to Kentucky to try out her latest obsession: rock climbing. At the time the conversation seemed innocent and insignificant, but unbeknownst to both of us, it would change my life forever.

My whole life, it seems, I have climbed trees, from the time I could walk until just this past weekend. I have no idea what draws me to them or why I feel the need to sit atop them; is it the act of climbing, surmounting, succeeding? Or the feeling of freedom, isolation, independence? Perhaps all of them, I don't know. But that October I found myself at the base of my first ever rock climb: Creature Feature in the Red River Gorge. I followed the cracks, crevices, and idiosyncrasies of the route, mentally scaling the 60 feet of rock face that stood above me. Left hand there, right hand here, bring right foot up, reach to pocket, up... up. It was beautiful. I tied into the rope, put on my climbing shoes, and began to scale the rock. With each foot gained I heard words of encouragement from below me. Not a big deal, I thought, I've practically been doing this my whole life. And right when I started to get confident (cocky?) I was swatted down. About half way up the route there was a section of rock that jutted out, forming a bit of a ceiling, and the only way past it was to climb out and around it. Hmm, don't remember any trees shaped like this.

I wound up blowing out my forearms pretty quickly, as my hands were nowhere near prepared enough to hold the entire weight of my body for any length of time, and climbing around that roof required a bit of strength and a lot of endurance. So, as quickly as it started, it was over -- after that route I couldn't even muster up the strength to snap my fingers. But that didn't stop me from watching other people climb and asking question after question. Every morning I hiked out to the crag and watched the grace with which these pseudo-professional climbers moved up the rock. I learned some lingo, I learned some moves. I was germinating a new obsession.

A month later I found myself out in Wyoming -- my first time out west. And I was there, of course, to climb. My friend and I drove up into the mountains surrounding Lander with a scenic destination in mind: Wild Iris. At a stout 9,000 feet, I was pretty certain I was going to suffer due to the thinner air, but it wound up working out pretty well; I got incredibly winded on the hike up to the wall, but I never had a problem during the climbs. That first day I decided to try my hand at lead climbing, and was completely hooked. I managed to make it up 5 different routes before I could no longer snap my fingers, a drastic improvement. As we packed up our gear and began hiking out of the woods, the sun began to set behind the mountains to the west. I wandered off the beaten path to a clearing on the edge of a cliff and watched the day's end. I stood there, staring off towards the horizon, attempting to snap my fingers and reflecting on what I had just done, what had just happened. Life could never be the same.

How could I go back to work and sit in an office for 40 hours a week now knowing what existed out there? How could I even pretend anymore that I was happy or content? I began planning my escape, my escape from the monotony, the mundane, and the materialism. And it would involve a Volkswagen Bus.