A Week Off

Happy February 21st.

I've had a week of debauchery in the climbing world. As in, not climbing.

I took a personal day and watched three old movies, a genre I'm in love with and only getting in deeper. Last night I got home from work earlier than usual and watched Now, Voyager with Bette Davis (who I'm also falling in love with) and read The Scarlet Pimpernel. I have to set time limits with that book, because I imagine the movie in my mind, the 1982 version with Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour and they fit, making the jump from book to film to fit the image in my mind.

Climbing has been peripheral lately. My body is tired. I'm sick, still fighting off a sore throat and now stuffy nose for two weeks now, and it's getting me down.

And I don't have a project.

That's the void in my life. The next step.

I just finished Climbing Free by Lynn Hill, and the lesson I gleaned from her hard-climbing carefree life was to find a mentor to carry me to my next project. She relied on her man friends, first John Long to encourage and support her, then Russ ____(whatever his name is), her husband, etc. She listened when they said, "you should do this" and she did it.

Did she ever have ideas of her own? The book struck me as being written by 'we' the whole time and I have to confess I wondered where Greg Child's expertise came in, there were so many cliches and highschool transitions. I'm not here to criticize. Climbing Free is a compelling story, if incomplete, and it provides insight to Lynn's level of commitment and focus, her motivation and skill at climbing, her single-mindedness that makes her so good at the physical, and so human in the rest of her life. I suspect she's socially awkward. It's hard to be focused and fit in.

I know a few climbers like that. They're not all good, but since climbing is a common bond, climbers will forgive a lot, put up with personality quirks and more often, voids. Climbing fills that void, that small talk edge so many people learn to cultivate. Climbers don’t small talk, they talk about climbing. It’s simple, it simplifies, and fills the void.

This week’s forecast is all about snow. Snow and climbing don’t generally mix.

Suggestions for inspiration, anyone?

Take a Powder, I think, will be the next route to try. Onsighting is too much of a buildup, I’ve decided that projecting is much less of an expectation for me and it could lead to several good things. One, the first attempt will always be an onsight attempt. Two, the discipline of projecting something. Three, trying and falling will be good for my head. Four, this will help build my hard route experience base. There are all kinds, you know. Also, I learned you can set up Sunshine Dihedral from Take a Powder, and I’ve been wanting to hop on that since…Wartley’s.