It had been a sixteen month stint in Yosemite valley. A montage of changing seasons, of meals cooked on a two-burner in my tiny cabin, of easy money and easy friends and good climbing. It was a break up that set me free, seven glorious alpine peaks I galavanted up in the sunny, bright aftermath, whiskey I drank and kisses I stole in the dark.
There were emotional highs and lows like the topography of the Sierra Nevada mountains that surrounded me, (what am I still doing here?) and then the decision that it was time to quit my job and take off in pursuit of more. Serving cocktails in the Ahwahnee bar enabled me a life where cash padded the linings of my pockets and my bank account, where I could climb whenever I wanted and where my partners were also my next door neighbors. Where I woke up in my little cabin and drank coffee under baby sequoia trees with Half Dome like a watercolor painting on a giant canvas in front of me.
But the valley was also crowded with tourists, and working for a company that seemingly only served to promote the overuse of the park was wearing on my conscience. We called ourselves lost boys and girls, living in our own version of never never land amongst towering granite giants and verdant green meadows with little in the way of real-life responsibilities.
Sometimes I wanted those real-life responsibilities, or told myself it was time to experience them. But when it comes time to make a decision about what to do next, climbing always takes first place.
Down the 395 to Bishop it was, in my van with its rattling suspension and peeling paint.
I’ve tried to make writing a priority.
“This time I’m going to really dedicate myself to it,” I’d tell my friends over coffee, eager to invent a future of “making it work as a writer.” Truthfully, I have no idea what that entails, and more often am devastated, without a clear direction. With climbing I have clear goals, train x times a week, climb x grade, but writing unravels before me as a literal blank page.
It’s easy to climb everyday. We roll out of our beds in our respective vans, gather at Black Sheep for coffee, and with every day sunny and 65 degrees, we head out. To Owen’s River Gorge to clip bolts on long, pumpy sport routes, or the the Happy Boulders to pull on forgiving volcanic tuft, or to the Buttermilks where pads line the granite boulders and friends gather to give the world-famous problems a burn. The Sierra Nevada stand stoic and snow-capped in the background, and life is unclear, but good.
This is an attempt to treat writing like I treat climbing. With consistency and zeal. We’ll see what happens next.
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