El Aguacero

When the aguacero, a violent and sudden thunderstorm, came in four days ago, I was on my terrace, doing circuits on my little climbing wall, trying to distract myself. My mind has started to get fixated on different ideas daily: on the people I will see when this is over, on future plans to travel, on routes outside that I would like to climb, on how to build a life that does not result in being alone in times of crisis. Climbing keeps the fixations at bay, giving me relief from the chatter, at least for a few hours.

I was not the only one with this idea to exercise. Many of us are trying to tame our demons. The city streets are empty, but rooftops are bustling. I could see others on their terraces too, running laps back and forth, doing jumping jacks, or jumping rope. Some did yoga, others dance routines. More than a few just paced: back and forth, back and forth. 

Between attempts on the climbing wall, I would watch these neighbors. In turn, they watched me. After a month in quarantine I feel like we have gotten to know each other, though they are far away and we have never spoken. The woman doing jumping jacks had bright pink hair at the beginning of all this. She wore lycra outfits that accentuated a body that, even from a distance, I could tell was not entirely natural. These days the black roots of her hair have grown and the pink is retreating farther and farther out. She exercises less and does not seem to care about what she is wearing. She and her boyfriend come outside late in the afternoon and spend most of their time now sitting and talking with each other.

Across the main road is another couple. They had lunch together every day on their rooftop terrace when this began. He would grill and she would make cocktails. They turned on the dangling Christmas lights above them even during the middle of the day. They would clink their cocktail glasses together and sit side by side and talk as they ate their meal. They have not been out for a few days now. The last time I saw them, they still sat side by side, that time working on their laptops and talking less. The Christmas lights remained off.

Their neighbor sometimes climbs atop the little building on the roof that accesses the stairs. He stands on it and talks with someone on his phone. He must use video, because he puts the phone out from time to time and pans around himself, showing whoever he is talking to his view of the hushed metropolis. He is there every few days. When he is not on the phone he stands pensively, unmoving, staring out at the city.

The aguacero sent everyone into their apartments. I have a little roof over part of my terrace and so I decided to stay and continue climbing. To be out of the apartment and climbing is always better. The first drops fell large and heavy and beat against the thin roof in staccato. At first, it seemed that the storm might be capricious, threatening only a little and then going away. But it was not so. After a brief lull, the staccato returned and grew into a deafening white noise, drowning out the music I was playing. Hail pounded the open area just beyond the climbing wall and thunder rolled in the distance. 

There have been full days during this quarantine where I have realized I did not say a word, days when there are no calls from friends or family, when I do not have to meet with my students via video conferences, when I can’t find the motivation to sing along to music nor to keep myself company with advise or, failing that, derision. But when the aguacero had reached its crescendo and the heavens were unleashing their deluge, I yelled back at it at the top of my lungs.  

My terrace filled with water, the rain still mixing with hail and bouncing against the pool that the drains could not release fast enough. I shouted and cheered and felt alive again. I continued to climb, more aggressively now, throwing myself at small holds, kicking my feet through the air. The water came in under the roofed area and threatened to soak my crashpad and so I had to move it to a corner. All the while I laughed and shouted and hoped the storm would never stop.

But the pool spread so much that I could no longer climb on the wall, and so I too had to retreat into my apartment like my neighbors had retreated into theirs. I ran to my stairway, getting soaked in the process, and pounced down my stairs, my chest heaving and heart beating madly.

At my window I watched the rivulets pour down the glass and distort the image of the street below and the apartments beyond. There, across the way, was a woman by herself, also standing at her window. The rain lashed down between us and our figures melted into something impressionistic. I watched her. She watched me. The storm flashed and boomed around us. Framed in her window, she became like everyone was becoming: a distant abstraction. 

The evening darkness seeped in and though the storm began to lift, I could not make the woman out in her window anymore. When the last clouds moved on, and a few stars appeared over the city, that familiar quiet returned: quiet enough for my thoughts to start creeping back. I stayed at the window, watching, and waiting to see who would return now that the storm was over. 

On Isolation -- Weeks, Months, a Lifetime

The early mornings are still immune. At least, they pretend to be. Asleep, I dream as I normally would have — of a classroom of unruly adolescents, of a day in the mountains, of Her. And when I awake, the dream-ether hangs in the air for a moment still; I exist in a world that, even though it was born from a dream, is more normal than the reality that awaits outside.

One wall of my apartment is entirely made up of glass. Six stories up, I can look down on an avenue and watch its quiet abnormality. If I am still waking, I can fool myself back into that dream-mind. Let it be like it was before. But then a lone Bogotano will appear below, walking his dog, a facemask secured over his nose and mouth, surgical gloves on hands holding the leash. And then the dream-mind must let go, leaving my true mind to face the realities of isolation.

* * *

A month ago I had one of my best days in Colombia so far. I went climbing in an area not far from Bogota. We had been spending every weekend there in order to make progress on the hardest route I have ever tried. On that day, I did the route, achieving a life goal of mine. There was a crowd there and when I came down, there were hugs and cheers and high-fives from friends I have made over my last nine months here. How easily we embraced then. How simple the pleasure.

That night was my friend Santiago’s birthday. Many friends gathered to celebrate and again we sat close to each other, greeted each other with hugs and kisses on the cheek. We joked about coronavirus then, all sat together eating lechona and drinking beer and being merry. 

A week later they closed the climbing area. Then they put up controls leaving the city. And then the quarantine went into effect. 

Photo: Juan Sebastian Riaño

* * *

It’s been fifteen days. They say the quarantine will go on for a month, but even now they are hinting at an extension. In all likelihood it will be at least two months. There is a chance it will be three.

I live alone. 

The ocean of time ahead of me is hard to fathom. On a call with my mother — I call more now — she reminded me, “At least you have spent a lot of time alone before. You are used to it.”

She is right. I’ve been spending time alone since I was young. When I was twelve, I spent three days camped alone in the Canadian Rockies, a rite of passage designed by my father. (He was camped nearby, though out of contact, and was ready to rescue me if I ran into trouble.) By the time I was eighteen I took a year off before college and traveled the U.S. alone, living out of my truck. In adulthood I have taken international trips alone, climbing in Asia, Europe, and South America, traversing the Himalayas on a motorcycle — I even named the bike “Solivagant” on that trip, which means “to wander alone.” I’ve written magazine articles on the pleasures of solitary trekking in the mountains, the peace that it invites. My career for the last twelve years has involved me questing out alone into one foreign country after another and adapting to the challenges of new schools, new languages, new customs. It has been a professional life that is often isolating, and yet I have made it through, I’ve enjoyed it, I’ve called it adventure. 

But to equate those experiences with what lies ahead is false. On my travels, there were always new people to meet, new places to explore. Travel invites the potential to move from isolation into new and exciting communities. There was also always the physical challenge and reward of climbing and hiking in these new places. There was fresh air and vast landscapes, aspects of the experiences that were fulfilling and good. And even that twelve-year-old who was restricted to a small camping area for his solo had something that I now know is a great luxury: an end. He just had to make it three days. As lonely as he got, he had a number to count down from.

I’m counting up now. Fifteen days today. To what number I am counting to, I know not. And though I do not know when this will end — none of us do — I know that, having finished one more day, I am that much closer to the end, whenever it may be. Knowledge of that forward progress offers some reprieve. It has been my mantra, in fact. At the end of each day, I tell myself: You are one day closer. You are one day closer.

If nothing else, this time is teaching me about my pride. I once felt so successful in my ventures alone. For being the archetype of the loner, I would pat myself on the back. (Who else would there be to pat me on the back anyway?) In December of 2016, after a year in a remote part of Bhutan, I wrote, “This part of my life, I feel, is a great story. But the theme continues to elude me. Is it about abandoning the materialism of America? About finding spirituality among Himalayan Buddhists? Is it about adventure and challenge? About loneliness perhaps?” Now I must face that question with new eyes. I’m also aware from my experiences that for those of us who are known for our independent resiliency, there are less check-ins, less calls. He’ll make it, they believe. He always does. 

I continue to tell myself the same thing. You’ve weathered other storms. You’ve known the darkness and have beaten it back. You can do it again. Loneliness has been your companion more than once. A lifetime of lonely adventures has given me so much good. And those experiences are an advantage for the challenges to come. But that life has also led me to the way in which I must now face this challenge: alone.

January of 2017, the next entry as I left Bhutan and set off on my motorcycle toward Nepal: I wrote, “as is the plague of the wanderer, other existential questions have started to arise ... What purpose does this adventure serve? When will I grow up, settle down, commit to something stable? What is the effect of such long-term loneliness?”

For those of you who have stayed put but have cultivated communities around you, have built families, have fallen in love — I envy you. To spend this time in quarantine with others is a blessing. I spend more time than I’d like wondering how much easier this would be if She were here. And if you have Her next to you (or Him), as much as She might be grinding on your nerves these days, know that you are lucky. Don’t take Her for granted. 

* * *

I am not beaten. Not yet. I have convinced myself to slip into something like a monk’s mind. In the mornings I meditate. I built a small climbing wall, and I use it almost daily. I do the perfunctory work I need to get done for my virtual classes. I cook new recipes and hone them for the day when I can share the meals with friends again. (You will eat well, my friends. You will eat well.) I read. I write.

And I continue to examine those existential questions on loneliness. I weigh what it has given me and what it has taken. There is now time to reflect on a whole life that has led up to this moment. My hope is that by scrutinizing these questions with this monk’s mind, I may now start to arrive at answers. And if not, well, at least I successfully distracted myself for another day. Then, before going to bed and returning to the normality of dreams, I can say again to myself, You are one day closer. You are one day closer.

New Routes in Skaljari

*I'm no longer in Montenegro. This is an article that I intended for a climbing magazine, but it never got published. So I offer it here.

Leo on "Vertical Gardener" (7a+ (5.12a))

Our pre-climbing routine in Škaljari, Montenegro goes like this: put on harness, clip draws onto gear loops, get the rope out from the rope bag and settled at the base of the first pitch of the day, do some shoulder warm-ups and stretches, and take out the phone to send the local paranoid schizophrenic a text message:

Charlie. We’re up at the climbing area. Please don’t come and bother us.

You know, standard stuff.

* * *

The climbing scene in Montenegro is still relatively unknown. Even on his Balkan foray, Adam Ondra skipped over the country entirely. He went from the now well-known Drill and Chill festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina straight over to Albania, where impossibly long tufas awaited his banshee screams. I don’t know if he drove through Montenegro, but if he had I am sure that he looked around in awe; here is a country that is almost entirely composed of limestone mountains replete with canyons, caves, and new crags to develop for generations. 

I have been living in the town of Tivat for two years now. My arrival brought the local climbing community numbers to three. By local, I don’t mean the town; I mean the entire country. Nobody climbs here. Those of us who do are foreigners—a Bosnian, a Turk, and me, the American. A few others dabble, but only on occasion. In a country known for its advent and subsequent victories in “The Lazy Olympics,” it should be no surprise that finding Montenegrins who are willing to put in full days at the crag are few and far between. Many of those who feigned interest in joining us find it hard just climbing out of bed before noon. 

This dearth of climbers has left most of the potential crags untapped. There is only one primary area near the capital city of Podgorica, called Smokovac. It is the original and still most-developed area here. It is a kind of Frankenstein of development, bolted ad hoc over time by a variety of climbers passing through from various countries. On most days, its nearly seventy routes sit unclimbed, a ghost crag populated intermittently with itinerant passersby.

When I arrived to Montenegro, I was far from Smokovac. In search of a community and a place to spend free weekends and afternoons, I followed some cryptic Mountain Project beta to a large amphitheater of limestone just fifteen minutes from, and overlooking, the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Kotor Bay. In 2005, some other wandering climbers—Austrians and, surprisingly, a few Montenegrins—bolted four routes there. The rest of the wall, which had room for a comfortable one-hundred routes, was left untouched. I didn’t find a community, but I did find a way to spend my free time.

I went to work, believing in an if-you-build-it-they-will-come kind of scenario. I theorized that what was keeping Montenegro back from growing its climbing community was simply a lack of infrastructure. If I could bolt this beautiful crag, with such convenient access for those around Kotor Bay, surely people would start coming out.

Lonely bolting. But what a view.

That first winter of bolting what would become known as Škaljari (after the neighborhood it sits above) was long and lonely. Most days I went by myself and fixed ropes during various intensities of rainfall. Since the crag is primarily overhanging, many of the lines stay protected and dry. On days when the rain abated, I tirelessly cleaned and bolted the easier slabs and vertical faces, knowing that if a community would arise from this crag, they’d need to start on beginner routes. 

The base of the crag was littered with the decaying carcasses of a variety of animals—goats, a fox, tiny and fragile bird skeletons, bleached turtle shells. There was a Saanen goat skull there with perfectly-preserved horns spiraling out of it like wrung towels. I hung the skull at the base of the wall and dubbed the still-unnamed sector “The Boneyard.”

In three months of going up to Škaljari on weekends with an old, borrowed Bosch, I put up twenty new routes. When they were finished, I reached out to the aforementioned dabblers in the area. They dabbled, as one would expect, but then faded away again, finding excuses that prioritized coffee at the ubiquitous seaside cafes over a day at the crag. 

My salvation came eventually in the form of Austrians. Valentin Sattek, a psychology student from Vienna, got ahold of me about the development I had been doing. He said he was coming down and looking for crags that he could bolt.

When asked why he chose Montenegro, he said, “I saw a picture from Smokovac somewhere on the internet and got hyped. Then I started some Google research about climbing [there] and realized that there is not much climbing going on but probably lots of potential. I always had the idea in mind to start developing a really good remote area which is not on everybody's list. And it basically all worked out.”

He came over with a small group of friends and I was finally able to try out a few of the climbs I had bolted. I had an idea about how good the rock was, but to be there with the freedom of a belayer and the support of a psyched crew was pure bliss. We all joined up in doing the first ascents of some of the most tantalizing lines: “The Awesome Osim” (7a+), “Midnight Macabre” (7c+) and, eventually, the stunning “Oligarchs in Existential Crisis” (8a+). 

But Valentin didn’t want to merely do FAs nor add bolts to an existing crag. He wanted to start a whole new area. After leaving me with a new 8a project whose crux turned out to be pronouncing the name—”Ich mach dich gesund, sagte der Bär”—he left for uncharted territory.

For Valentin the problem wasn’t finding new crags, it was choosing from the many obvious options. He asked for help from the other foreign climbers and they all told stories of undeveloped walls with easy access and room for hundreds of lines. He finally settled on two.

Ersin Bas, the Turk, told Valentin about a crag in the beachside port town of Bar. From there, you can see both an Orthodox church in the distance and towering minarets from a Mosque whose speakers call devotees to prayer. The crag also overlooks an old fortress and settlement whose history is as stratified as the limestone outcrops that surround it. First it was Roman, then Venetian, then Ottoman, then Austro-Hungarian, then Serbian, and now Montenegrin. The coincidence did not go unnoticed: here a Turk told an Austrian where to bolt lines for Montenegrins (in theory) to enjoy. The collision of worlds continues. 

Valentin and his friend, Lukas Schmutzer, went for a closer look and were enthralled by the potential. They spent a week there and then returned the next season with Valentin’s girlfriend, his father, and another full crew of uber-psyched Austrians. They established a total of twenty routes and now Bar is one of the best difficult crags in the country. 

Valentin getting the first ascent of one of his new routes in Bar.

But Valentin confronted an oh-so-hard existential crisis of his own. He loved yet another untouched crag near Podgorica. In the idyllic Cijevna Canyon, following a cerulean river near the Albanian border, there was, again, enough rock for a lifetime’s worth of bolting. He had heard tales of this place from the other local, a Bosnian named Srdjan Lecic who has lived here ever since the war in the 90s, and from Kleman Becan, the Slovenian hardman who came through a few years ago and bolted two routes there. They all said the crags go for miles down the canyon. One need only park along the canyon road and choose a wall that looked good.

What is a motivated developer to do? Keep at the overhanging, thuggy routes in Bar? Or spend time developing the technical orange faces in Cijevna? Woe was Valentin. 

His answer: develop both. Again a crew of drill-toting limestone aficionados came, and again they left the place with thirty-six routes ranging from 5s to 8s. 

* * *

Meanwhile, back in Škaljari, I continued for a second winter of bolting. This time however, I was able to climb my routes right away. A colleague expressed interest in climbing the summer before and I took her out to give it a try. Ćina was one of those with whom climbing took hold right away. Before long, she was leading, projecting, and even did a first ascent of one of the lines I bolted. And what is perhaps even more surprising: she is a dyed-in-the-wool Montenegrin. We head out to the crag three to four times a week now, often with her prompting the decision. That is to say, she wouldn’t fair well in the Lazy Olympics.

Cina on "We Will (We Will) Rakija" (6c+ (5.11c))

It would have all been rosy had it not been for Charlie (a pseudonym). Kotor, though famed for its quaint Old Town and stunning bay, is also known as a haven for the mentally ill. The mismanaged local government and inept police force have done little to quell the conflicts caused by those afflicted with mental illness. Unfortunately, in going to the crag so often, we became embattled in one such conflict. 

The heightened “activity” in Škaljari was noticed by a man who held strange delusions about the area. Charlie made claims that the land was his. We checked with the municipality, the neighbors, and with Charlie’s family—it’s not. They all verified that we had every right to climb there. They also explained that Charlie, infamous in the area, had some issues discerning fact from fiction. He also claimed that the goats in the area were his. One day he came up to the crag in a fury, yelling that we were eating the goats, which kept him from getting the milk that would cure his stomach ulcers. They were “holy animals,” he said, while making violent threats against us. He said we were killers, not only of his goats, but that our presence there was slowly eroding his and his family’s health, giving them tumors, stomach cancer, and heart palpitations. 

I’ll admit, the goat skull that I had hung at the base of the wall didn’t help. Nor did the “Boneyard” moniker I had ascribed to it. 

There is no doubt that Charlie is suffering more than us. But he pushed our limits too when he came to the crag on another day wielding an axe. His bad day became our bad day then. He took out a knife and cut the handlines we had set up between precipitous sections of the approach. He smashed the bolts that the lines were anchored to with the butt of his axe. And though he only yelled at us, and never put a hand on any of us, he left us there trembling with fear and rage.

But this story has a happy ending...sort of.

After countless months of dealing with his threats and tirades, we finally went to the police, Charlie in tow. As expected, the officers were useless, doing nothing more than competing with him in one shouting match after another. However, upon leaving the station, Charlie gave us a glimpse of hope.

On the side of the street, after another diatribe about god knows what, Charlie was graced with a moment of lucidity. “Why don’t you two just send me a text message when you go up there. You can say, ‘Charlie, we are up in Škaljari climbing. Please don’t bother us.’ And I won’t.”

We were flabbergasted. Nearly at our wits end, he gave us this clear and easy solution. 

* * *

Today Škaljari has a total of forty routes. Last winter it did not rain much, and temps were perfect for projecting and sending. Ćina ascended the grades bit by bit, and I finally got back into a consistent climbing routine. 

Charlie, for the most part, has kept good on his word. Though to approach, you still have to step over signs he stole and posted that say “Private Property”, and then walk past a rusty barrel painted in blood-red with the words “No Pass Zone.” But other than that minor detail, Škaljari has become a legitimate climbing area.

Few Montenegrins have come out to climb there. But the greater international climbing community has begun to notice it. We have come across Croatians, Germans, Norwegians, and French, among others, on days when we went up expecting, as usual, to be alone.

Me on the first ascent of the aptly
named "Lunatic Enthusiasm" (8b (5.13d)).

When one German came through, he said, “This is great. You have so many options. We could go to Škaljari, or Smokovac, or Bar, or Cijevna. You could do a whole climbing trip just in Montenegro.” Two years ago, that wouldn’t have been the case.

I’m leaving this year. Off to my next job in Colombia. But Valentin is still motivated and has already made plans to keep returning every fall and every spring. His friends have put up pictures and videos on social media and interest is percolating around Europe. Now with locals like Ćina and Srdjan at the helm, Montenegro’s nascent climbing scene also has a pulse. Hell, even Charlie has given some support. His last text message back to us said:

Ok. Be careful, buddy. Have fun. 

He even ended it with a heart emoji.




FULL TOPOS OF ROUTES ARE HERE.

Watermelon Memories

            We used to listen to the same music track on repeat — a somnolent hip-hop beat with dreamlike lyrics. She liked it that way. We’d indulge in every note again and again, the same way we’d indulge in each other.

            Those summer nights I’d stay late and we’d lie together on the sofa in the small lounge at the back of her house. We’d start by watching a movie on her TV, sitting side-by-side, holding hands and leaning against one another. Eventually the movie would end, or the disc would skip and pause, and the screen would paint the dark room in its ambient twilight. Then we would hold each other and we would kiss and caress under blankets.

Her perfume would work its way into my t-shirt and would linger there long after I left, usually at two or three in the morning. I would tiptoe across her creaky floorboards so as not to wake her parents. And I would make the drive home bleary-eyed, forcing myself to move against that force that always seemed to want to draw me back to her arms and to the warmth and comfort of that room.

Those memories are distant now. But I can still feel the dryness of my contact lenses as I drove home. I have a faint memory of that perfume; the other day I smelled it again and in this world, a continent and almost two decades away, I found myself back in that lounge. I would like to also feel that love again, its pins and needles and sweet exhaustion. But its time has passed, and that is okay.

It’s the taste of watermelon that has stayed with me. On one of those summer nights, before we made our way to the sofa in the lounge, we sat and talked together in a kitchen lit rebelliously against the night — one of those scenes you glimpse while walking through a neighborhood after sunset, looking in on the lives of other people, their house dark except for that one room illuminating a moment of their lives. Perhaps this memory has endured so long because it is one of the few times I remember belonging on the inside. I was meant to be there with her in the light of that kitchen. Since then, more often than not I find myself belonging to the outside, looking in. I did not know then how good I had it.

Truth be told, I was always intimidated by those rooms. Her father was a doctor and they lived just a few houses down from the Denver Country Club. I grew up simpler — our family never poor, but still living under the stresses of making ends meet. The rooms of her house held a grandeur that I had never known before. The amplitude threatened me and I felt I always had to be bigger in order to fill the space.

The way I remember it, it had been one of those particularly hot summer days before that evening fell. At night I could feel the residual heat pulsing from her driveway as I walked up to the side door and she let me in. She was wearing one of the spaghetti-strap tops she would always wear.

I don’t know what we talked about then in the kitchen. We usually talked about our dreams in life, who we wanted to become, what we wanted to do. It is funny to write this now and to know that I exist in the future that those two teenagers could only imagine.

Her golden retriever sat happily at my feet. I sat on a barstool against the kitchen island. She brought out a Tupperware of seedless watermelon that had been cubed and sat chilling in the refrigerator all day. As we talked, we picked up cubes with our fingers and let their coolness dissolve in our mouths.

At one point she leaned over to kiss me and her mouth still held the cold and flavor of the watermelon. We were both surprised by the pleasure of it. Then we ate the watermelon piece by piece and kissed each other after every one, relishing each sensation of warm lips and cold breath and the taste of watermelon.

Those are some of the sweetest kisses I’ve ever had. They are the most vivid in my memory. I’ve never tried to replicate them because they belong to those two dreamers, then. Those two young lovers kissing in a lit kitchen, on a summer’s night, as the heat dissipates on the sidewalk. “The busy street is empty, whistling winds are blowing gently, listening intently to all of the things they have to say.”

Con El Taxista

The ride is not smooth. When there is relief from the trancónes, traffic jams, the asphalt is still littered with potholes. In the back of the taxi, I am jarred both when a tire drops into a hole and when the driver makes erratic attempts to swerve around them. Outside my window, the plurality of big-city life goes on, just as frenetic as the drive.

Luxury cars vy for their spot in something like a lane. The drivers curse and honk. Dilapidated trucks lumber in front of them and belt out black exhaust. This is a wealthier part of Bogota, however the main thoroughfares still allow some equanimity to exist between the classes — if only while sitting in traffic. No one goes anywhere with ease.

In the median of a road erroneously (yet optimistically) dubbed “the highway”, a homeless man has strung up a hammock between a metal fence post and a concrete pylon. He lounges in it and sings what I imagine is a coastal tune, envisioning himself on a Carribean beach up north, the sounds of traffic replaced by imaginary waves lapping at an imaginary shore, the fence post and pylon becoming palm trees.

The taxista snickers a little as we move past. He eyes me against the rearview mirror.

 “Where are you coming from?” he asks in Spanish.

I thought my Spanish would be up to par by now, but my difficulty with getting back to fluency belies my age. A mental rigidity has crept up on me like an arthritis. It is true what they say: learning a language becomes harder as you get older. But I am only relearning, so I hang onto a stubbornness that I have given the false name of ‘hope.’ 

“I was just in Suesca,” I respond.

“No, no. What country are you from?”

“Oh. Sorry. I am United-Statesian.”

“American.”

“Yes, American.”

There is a silence that speaks volumes. He is weighing what follow-up questions to ask that I might understand. I am going through all the ways I could have responded better. The Spanish that lives in my head is both potentially alive and dead, a Schrodinger’s cat curled up in my brain’s left hemisphere.

“And you speak English?” he asks.

“More or less,” I joke. He doesn’t seem to get it.

We continue down through the traffic. There are many Venezuelans out, many with babies in their arms, walking through the bumber-to-bumber traffic and asking for colaboración. Not a “handout” not a “donation” but “collaboration” — as if in giving we are now also vested in the effort to end their nightmare. 

I notice that the taxista keeps eyeing me from the rearview mirror. I recall stories I have heard of people getting robbed by drivers. I have already announced that I am foreign — a weakness that could be taken advantage of. “Be wary,” I remind myself. 

There is a Colombian expression that applies now, one that I didn’t understand upon arrival: No des papaya. It literally means “Don’t give out papaya.” Figuratively, it means you shouldn’t put yourself in situations where you could be at risk. Perhaps my arthritic brain stumbled into a danger unawares.  

“Hey. Will you do me a favor?” he asks.

“That depends on the favor.” I imagine this is the setup. What could be next? Perhaps, “Give me all your money or I’ll drive you out to the fields.” Or, “I’m going to drive you somewhere else and then we’ll talk about the favor.” Have I already given the papaya for the taking?

He hands me his phone. 

“Could you write to my wife, in English?” he asks.

“Does she speak English?”

“She is studying it. She really likes it. I think she is pretty good. I don’t know though. I can’t speak it.”

The screen is ready for a new text message. It says “Mi Amor” on top.

“What do you want me to write?”

“A ver...Could you tell her this: Amor. Eres la mejor persona que conozco en mi vida. Me has apoyado en todas mis dificultades y quiero estar contigo para apoyarte. Me has dado toda la felicidad que tengo en mi vida y intentaré hacerte feliz también. Te amo, mi amor.”

I do my best with the translation, plugging in the sentences as the taxi continues to bump and rattle and swerve.

“How did it come out?” he asks.

“Well,” I say. “Would you like to hear how it sounds in English?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, I would.”

“My love. You are the best person that I know in this life. You have supported me in all of my difficulties and I want to be with you to support you in yours. You’ve given me all the happiness in my life and I will try to make you happy as well. I love you, my love.”

I hand him back his phone, the English text still waiting to be sent.

“I love her very much,” he says. “Thank you.” 

He looks over the message, trusting that those foreign words convey everything that’s in his heart. He hits send just before we pull up to my stop. 

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.