Lessons from Skaljari -- Prologue

Indian Creek circa 2006

           I heard a message from home – whispers from the Front Range. Perhaps the Chinook winds caterwauled it through Eldorado and Clear Creek and Boulder Canyon and moved it along the Great Plains, arching it beyond the rolling Appalachia and over the whiteheads of the Atlantic. The message managed its way up through the Adriatic, and landed here in Boka Bay, Montenegro.

The old ways are dead, it said.

            And I wondered if it could be true. I wondered if the days when a man took an apprentice under his wing and taught him the good ways were over. Did they no longer admire men there? Were the masters dead along with their ways? Or did they follow this journey to what I still expect is its inevitable end – alone and content in the wilderness?

I learned in the old way. Outdoors. On real rock. I was taught how to be safe, yes, we all were taught that first. We had to be safe or else this passion of ours would be short-lived indeed. My father taught me. He taught me how to put on my harness, to make sure all the buckles were double-backed so that the buckle formed a “C.” “‘C’ for ‘closed’” we’d say. He showed me the two points on my harness to tie my rope into and reminded me that we make everything redundant because you only have one life but if you make all your systems redundant you’ve got two chances to save it. And he taught me the figure eight follow-through and how to back it up – like I said, everything redundant.

Once we came back from Camp Hale, I practiced that knot at home in the living room until I got it perfect. I didn’t know then that I’d be tying it a million times over the course of my life, feet planted on foreign grounds all around the world. That starting ritual would become like breathing to me. Neither master nor apprentice could have guessed that a simple skill like that, something a small boy could learn in an evening at home, would be the impetus for how the boy would come to define himself. That knot, what it allowed him to do, would affect him down to his marrow.

There was still much to be learned, of course. The climber is empty if he only knows how to protect himself. A true climber cares much more for his partner. I fear that if the message is true, if the old ways are dead, then this realization would be one of the first to go. I saw symptoms of it last time I was in the U.S., when I went to artificial walls steeped in air-conditioned fumes and I saw belayers who were inattentive and lackadaisical. They had not been told by someone they respect and admire that the belay is the apotheosis. To be in charge of another’s safety and well-being, to very literally have another’s life in your hands, is always primary.

I often hear people say that climbing is selfish. Those who look at it that way have erred greatly. They must be of the new ways. They look at climbing from the wrong perspective. They need to adjust their lenses. Zoom out.

Climbing, the whole act of it, has always had two roles: the climber, and the belayer. Sure the climber appears alone up there, muscles tensed and ready, mind engaged in the analysis of weaknesses (both his and the rock’s), moving upward and, more often than not, flying into the air when the rock benevolently tells him, “You’re still not good enough.” At this angle, up close, climbing seems a solitary struggle.

But if you zoom out and take in the whole picture, you’ll see the belayer too. He is essential to this passion we call climbing. The belayer gives all of himself to support the climber. He takes time to check that his partner has tied into his harness correctly. He gives words of advice to calm him before his ascent. He analyzes sequences and strategies for the climber, his friend, so that he can see him succeed. When the climber begins, the belayer raises his arms to spot those first movements, and when the climber has clipped his rope into his first piece of gear, the belayer now practices his art. It is an art that takes years to perfect, an art rooted in selflessness.

Though gyms may certify you after an hour’s course, the lessons on how to belay well will be infinite – refining and refining, ensuring that you can not only catch a fall, but that you can do so with mastery. The master belayer is there as a servant to the climber. He is anything but selfish. When the climber needs slack in his rope to clip a draw, the master belayer pays out enough to make it appear like he doesn’t even exist. When the climber calls for a take to rest, the master belayer makes the rope taught instantly. If the climber is falling from far above his last piece, the master belayer ensures that the catch is soft. If the climber suddenly breaks a hold, or slips, or is ejected from the rock in an instant, the master belayer can still catch him with ease and comfort. He knows when to shout words of encouragement and when to be silent. His brake hand is always on the rope, whether his belay device is assisted-braking or not; he knows that his partner’s life is entrusted to him, and that distraction and laziness and discomfort pale in comparison to the value of that life. There is no excuse to slip up.

Climbers suffer for their partners. I’ve sat for hours on ledges in freezing temperatures, winds battering me, cold, hungry, and tired, solely to belay my friends as they pursue that thing that drives them – an impossible route, a day in nature, a confrontation with absolute fear. And in turn my partners have done the same for me. At the end of a route, when I arrive safely down to the ground, I always thank my belayer, not just for protecting my life, but for giving me the opportunity to do what I love.

To do all of this, to put as much attention and sacrifice into belaying as you pour into climbing, is an essential element of being a climber of the old ways. I learned this first and foremost from my mentors. Those who accuse climbers of being selfish are ignorant of the old ways and themselves guilty of not seeing the whole picture. Again, zoom out. When we go out climbing, we are always both the climber and the belayer. And if we practice both, always striving to be better, the all-encompassing act of climbing will never be selfish.

Yes, the masters taught me. They taught me with their gracefulness as they danced up Yosemite boulders, and with their grunting and cursing as they wrestled desert offwidths. Some I knew were masters; their skills were beyond anything I could comprehend at the time. Others I only knew as my friends. But they trained me and we learned together and we grew into a comfort with these skills that made climbing much more than a hobby, more than a sport or a pastime. When we climbed we could revisit ourselves, recalibrate our minds with our bodies, aligning ourselves with who we wanted to be.   

These masters taught me how to be a good man, how to be well-rounded. They waited patiently through tirades I spit out against the rock, knowing that the real challenge was not the route, it was myself and my anger. They taught me that the route is a vehicle for understanding one’s self and that I must analyze those lessons as closely as I do the ones about body positioning, breathing, and efficiency. Self-control extends beyond the crag.

I learned that your sense of self will always be measured against the objectivity of the route. Arrogance will not make difficult climbing any easier. That axiom will be repeated again and again, at times making you face abject humility. Because in climbing, you are never good enough. What a beautiful lesson it is. Don’t misconstrue the lesson; once you embrace the reality that you are always flawed, then you can let go and truly enjoy the fall.

All these lessons were taught to me in the old ways and I mourn the new climbers just coming into this life if they are not learning them too. To climb the harder grades is one aspect of being a climber, yes. But it does not mean access into mastery. The grade itself means little compared to the journey to overcome the impossible. As you ascend the ranks of difficulty, beware if the numbers define you. As we move into 5.13, 5.14, 5.15, the same challenge will be present that was there on our very first routes; it is the most impossible challenge of this whole climbing experience and as we improve, it will loom ever stronger: the challenge of overcoming our own ego.

I have seen so-called “elite” climbers feign mastery and believe their climbing grade has earned them some new rights – the right to play music at the base of the crag; the right to cut into a party’s toprope route because it’s their warm-up; the right to spew beta at strangers, or speak patronizingly to beginners; the right to scream and holler and throw chalkbags like petulant children. Such climbers may be “elite,” but they are masters of nothing. Climbing purely for numbers and sloughing off all the other lessons is to miss the true virtues of climbing.

We climb for spiritual sustenance. Here the accusation of climbing being selfish again falls short. To accuse a person of being selfish by climbing is like accusing him of selfishness for eating. We need the fulfillment that climbing gives us as readily as we need the nourishment of food. The act of climbing gives us life. When we are both belayer and climber, giver and taker, philosophers of the myriad lessons climbing can teach us, then we become better. We break down and examine our egos. We learn patience, humility, and self-reflection. We give to our partners, we allow them to climb and in doing so, we feed their passion. The act of climbing is rooted in this balance.

Abandon this misrepresentation that climbing is selfish. A climber can be selfish, of course, but the act of climbing, the pursuit of everything it encompasses, is anything but. The old ways teach us this. That is why these ways must not die.

As climbing moves into gyms and Olympic platforms, we must make sure that the lessons do not become artificial as well. We will have great athletes practicing the sport, and ego-boosting titles of the “best climbers in the world” will make it seem like the pinnacle of this pursuit lies in an ability to do impossible movements on plastic monuments. We will adorn golden medals on great athletes, making the weight of ego that much heavier.

We still need masters – we the dilettantes who are eager to know how climbing enriches one’s life, those of us who hold the belay sacred, and yes, those of us who want to climb weightlessly, with perfect form, strong bodies, and minds light of ego. There is still too much to learn. Without masters, who will teach us? After twenty years of climbing, I still seek masters. This apprenticeship, I know, will last a lifetime.

Winter

            

          The rain came and did not leave. One day in October, that blinding Balkan sun went behind what we thought were only a few clouds—we sighed in relief, finally in the shade—and then the rolling thunder came and the beachgoers who sat on the pebbled beaches of the bay rolled up their blankets in the threatening wind and retreated to their homes. We put on light sweatshirts and took off our sunglasses and found our umbrellas. By the time the sheets of rain rattled at our doors, everyone was secured in their homes. Then came out the electric heaters from last year that we dusted off and plugged in. We let their heat fill our houses with a warmth so unlike that summer sun. The rain fell so much that the mountains blackened. The deluge soaked into the limestone and sprang out from its pores, dripped down stalactites and muddied its nooks and crannies.

For six months it rained.

            I walked to work in rain pants and jacket and boots. My umbrella still did not protect me from that rain that swept through the air horizontally. I would arrive at work soaked and I’d settle into the sterility of a classroom lit fluorescent and watch the dark monsoon outside. This was the long winter in Montenegro. The bay filled and poured over onto the sidewalks. The lashing wind pressed the rain through the crack between my front door and the floor and a small puddle formed there that I had to stifle with a permanently-placed towel. On weekends I would watch the streets from my apartment filling up with torrents, overshadowed by the grey clouds low and suffocating.

            Those of us who are new here asked, When will it end? It cannot rain this much. We hypothesized a great error in things: climate change, a freak year, an aberration over the sea. We wrung our hands and rubbed our temples. The old Montenegrins settled into their winter selves with only little concern. Yes, it will rain for months. This is not so unusual.

            But what do we do, we who come from sunny places? We who only know how to spend our free time outdoors? The foreigners wanted to rail against the rain, to stop it somehow—an idiotic thought indeed. It persisted, as all natural forces do, and would not retreat. And so we found ourselves in our homes, looking out of the windows, waiting for a sign of sunshine.

            It came two weeks ago. In the night I awoke to a strange silence. There was no pitter-patter on the sidewalk outside of my door, no grumbling thunder. The air that leaked into the cracks between my doors was clean and dry. At 6am I looked out of my front door and the atmosphere was cool and grey-blue, not a cloud in the sky. The bay was a sheet of glass. 

I remembered when I arrived in the middle of summer, when I had been awake at such times of morning. It was hot then and I would jump and dissolve into the bay and swim. Now I could see that summer was returning. Soon these mornings would be mine again.

            As strangers living here we must believe that some part of this experience can be our own. This is especially true for those of us whose lives and very identities are always itinerant. We have very little that is ours. The land isn’t, nor the seasons. It is not our food, or wine. The language and customs all belong to others. But perhaps a moment in time, and this little space we occupy, can be our own. 

            I’ll take these summertime mornings, the same ones that welcomed me here almost a year ago. Their stillness is mine. The sound of the birds awakening and the feeling of that cold breeze before the sun comes over the peaks.

Yes, this could be mine. After so long in the dark rainy season, trapped inside, I need this morning sunshine. I do not want to possess it like some collector, no. I’ll take these mornings as a lover—we fall in love and intertwine so that one now is part of the other. That is how these mornings are mine. They beat in my chest. I see the world a bit clearer when I am with them. These Montenegrin mornings give me faith that things will always become clear again, that the sun will rise and try its best to stay long enough so that we can forget that the rain was ever here at all.

Trains in the Wood

The afternoon train held the same passengers it always does. They had been celebratory and raucous for the whole trip. Casual dresses, button-down shirts and ties and slim-fit dress pants. Talks of investments and schools for their kids, criticisms of European hotels and overrated restaurants. Spilled wine accompanied by caustic cheers and hard pats on the back. They were friends. They would take this ride again and again and it would always be celebrated. Their children either sat quietly on the leather seats, transfixed by glowing screens, or they stared out of the windows as the forest blew by, never quite being able to get a grasp of where they were.

I had friends aboard. We reminisced of old times at the beginning of the trip and I had enjoyed it. We talked about what we knew of the mountains—what we had known—and we bought rounds of beer for one another and it was good to see them with their loved ones in their arms. My parents sat in back, quietly with grandmother. I would come by and check on them when I could. But I enjoyed going from car to car and seeing what changed and so I did not spend time with them and they got used to my absence.

I fell in love on the train. Too many times. It was always like that. When I walked through the cars it was always easy to fall in love. There was the barista working at the café car, who bantered with ease and who I struggled to make eye contact with because I thought she would see all of the love inside of me and the sight would scare her away. I fell in love with the girl in the kira who was visiting from that make-believe land that I had once dreamed of. I sat and talked with her and she was very shy. I plunged into the black onyx of her eyes and imagined the kisses I’d give her on that porcelain skin. And there was also the girl that I dreamt about when I had fallen asleep in my chair. The girl who I hiked with in mountains much like the ones the train rumbled through, who I swam with naked in the frigid lakes and who I wrapped in my down coat aside a campfire that was a tiny glow below a resplendent night sky.

If one girl knew that I had fallen in love with the other she might think that I had not truly loved her. But I had. I still do. For love is not the fire ablaze; it is the scar that stays. The proud scar, from something penetrating through thick skin and leaving its mark forever. And so when I walked along and fell in love again, it was a building up and a weighing down, because love is often one-sided. And if it is not, it is hidden away or unrequited.

The train barreled on, but the world in the cars seemed steady. We felt large there in our car, the identities we bore expanding and colliding into one another, trying to find room. After the initial confusion of boarding, we found our cars and they found their cars with those like them. The beautiful cars with the beautiful people who effused compliments on each other’s clothes and jewelry and new noses. The deviants who looked sideways at each other and complained of the odor and felt at home in misunderstanding. The erudite and learned debated ideas beyond the point of their knowing, still grasping to the need to be right. And the insecure clutched onto one another and pointed fingers at the others, deriding all their abhorrent ways, inventing faults that no one else could see.

The chatter in all the cars vibrated through the train so much so that the rotating clamor of the wheels on the track could not be heard, nor the great gales creaking the timber outside, nor the heavy rainfall.  The people consumed full meals standing up and ordered more drinks, and passed crinkling chip bags and plastic juices to their children as they pushed them along to play amongst themselves. The chatter held steady but what was said, no one could grasp completely. All was important, all gave a measure of the speaker. It was the voice and the noise that mattered and so one conversation fell upon another like bodies fired upon and collapsing in a ditch.

But then the chatter quieted when the passengers realized the train was slowing. When it stopped, the cars all held a white silence. The passengers pressed their faces close to the windows, pushing their noses up to the glass and steaming them up as they looked out at the misty forest.

There was still a pitter-patter of rain and the clouds made the forest grey, though evening was not yet near. The children who had been staring from the windows were pleased. They could see the forest now. What a strange appeal it had. It was a place that they had read about in their books, but they had never seen up close and so still.

The parents began to worry and then one asked, What will we do if the train does not start up again? and murmurs spread and filled the train as they grabbed their children and held them close. The children felt the discomfort then and their fascination began to be replaced by a fear that connected them to their parents.

Outside, the quiet of the wood permeated everything. I opened the door, and the colddamp hit me. I stood on the entrance stairs, and all I could hear were drops falling from the wet pine boughs onto the fallen trunks and blankets of moss. The clouds overhead were thick and wet and seeped in through the canopy. A bluejay alighted on a cedar branch and preened itself, sending dew drops off of its wings. I stepped down from the metal stairs, onto the rough gravel of the tracks and finally stopped to watch the jay, my feet planted on the black humus of the forest floor. The cold enveloped me. I zipped up my jacket and put my warm hat on and slipped my hands into the big downy pockets.

I could almost swim in the mist. It held its own silent vibration, more benevolent than that of the train, familiar and filling. I closed my eyes, listening to that empty noise.

And then I felt the gears shift; I was not sure if the feeling came from the train or if it was something inside of me. There was a cheer from inside the cars and the train started to inch forward. I turned to face it, but I did not reach out to grab the banister for the stairs that would put me back on the car. I walked alongside of the train as it slowly moved forward on the track, its steel wheels making labored revolutions. There was still time to hop on before it picked up speed. Still, I followed it only perfunctorily. I knew that I was expected inside, where I had left my bags and where my friends and family were.

I walked along the outside and the barista waved from the window of the café car and I waved back. The masses were already getting back to their conversations behind her. She motioned for me to get on board and I smiled at her, but I stayed beside the train, walking in the forest just beside the tracks. Now the train was picking up speed. The great body had momentum. Her car now moved faster than I could walk. I let the car move away and she smiled again and waved and then I could not see her anymore.

I saw the girl in the kira sitting pensively next to a window in the next car that came by. I looked up at her and she smiled, but did not wave. She only stared at me, and I wondered if she wanted to tell me something, that secret that would give me courage perhaps. She was so beautiful that I wanted to run along the side of her car, but I could not will myself to do it—that would have changed everything. I stopped and I hoped for time to freeze and I hoped that the train did not exist, that the only things that could exist would be she and I and the forest. I wanted some sign from her to come aboard, or better yet a sign that she would join me there, outside. But she only watched as the train moved her away.

There was still time to climb aboard if I ran and grabbed hold. But it was not what I wanted. The forest grew more comfortable, even as the clouds descended and the mist melded into a drizzle that collected into dewdrops that covered my clothes and dotted the light hairs on my head and beard.

The train clanged along and the noise of the crowds grew again and I could hear the pullulating festivity, though it was muffled by the sound of the train and the fact that I was outside. In each car that rolled by the scenes were the same as when I had ridden along. The friends bantered and talked of the same commonalities and the same goals and the same struggles. An older man – no, he is my age, but he looks older – quickly glanced out and he saw me there watching the train and we exchanged glances. Then I knew that I am strange.

I was comfortable there in the forest, comfortable with my strangeness. His look, a questioning, wondering look, only increased my comfort because I knew that he saw me and didn’t understand. Though I had just stepped off the train, I had been this way for so long. I do not know any other way to be. I knew then that alone in the forest is where I felt safe and that it was there among the crowds and the children and the women I have fallen in love with I was afraid.

The man turned away and he did not appear to tell anyone on the train that I was outside. He forgot me. And soon all the cars moved passed one after another and I no longer followed alongside of the train. I stood in one place and watched each car continue past me, one after another, carrying all of those I had once been among, those who sat in the car with me and shared their stories and their food and their drinks; those who I loved.

The train disappeared from sight first and then the sound drifted into an abstraction that was overcome by that omnipresence of the forest, that vibration. And that was all I heard. And I was home again.