I've been at this post for awhile, so hopefully you'll all enjoy it! My first big send at Wild Iris went down on the 4th, a route called "Rodeo Free Europe", my first 5.14a. After which I, fittingly, got to experience both my first rodeo, and the explosive insanity of Lander on Independence Day. My efforts are now focused on the ultra mega classic "Throwing the Houlihan", a STOUT Todd Skinner 14a, which feels difficult, but (with a stroke of luck!), possible. The brutal monos in its middle crux have been causing some considerable pain to my fingers, but I guess they made tape for a reason. Thunder storms have prevented any more than some self-belayed single move attempts today, but hopefully some progress will go down in the next few days. Until then, enjoy the rest of the post, it's been some work to write up, but I'm pretty happy with the result.
When the boy looked out his window, he gazed upon his mountain. Each morning, the sun baked its eastern face, a message to the opossums and coyotes nocturnally prowling its slopes that the time had come to cease the hunt, and cede the forest surrounding to those creatures whose reigns began when rays of warmth seeped over the hills surrounding, like a giant bathtub overflowing with the light of life itself. By night, the boy could gaze from his window and, with a final drowsy gaze before sleep finally yanked closed the lids of his eyes, trace the hulking outline of his mountain in the massive swath of sky devoid of stars. And in his dreams each night, visions of those mysterious, blocked stars would appear, as seen through the clear, thin air of the summit above.
The boy loved his mountain, its almost gravitational presence, but near the forefront of his mind, fear of the untamed wilderness splayed wild and hungry across its slopes fought to the forefront of thought. He read voraciously of adventures beyond the bounds of his home's shining chain link fence, the likes of Krakauer and London simultaneously terrifying and inspiring his eager young mind. As would logically follow any such youthful interest, the urge toward action soon dug its spurs into the boy's sides, his mountain beckoning as it eclipsed the westward-falling sun. He looked toward its rounded summit through his bedroom window, an impossible distance away, and envisioned himself there, bidding the sun farewell on its journey toward foreign lands. That night, he quietly swore upon his mother's grave (she was perfectly alive and healthy, just a room to his right, but movies and books suggested this was the only way to assure action of such gravity) that the next day, he would set off for an adventure of grand proportions, to bag the summit of his soaring neighbor. In the waning light, he plotted his route up the monolith's north-eastern face (a bearing gleaned from his bulky army surplus compass, and promptly recorded in a moleskin expedition diary).
Though he slept through his alarm set for an early "alpine start", morning came promptly enough for the boy, with grogginess quickly chased off by jittery excitement for the coming climb. He began packing, sparing no preparation. First a canteen, purchased in the same fashion as his compass, was filled to the brim with cool tap water, overflowing onto the tiled floor as he screwed the rusty lid in place. Next came food rations, in the form of three ham and cheese sandwiches, carefully sealed within ziplock baggies, and placed in a repurposed school bag next to his canteen. He briefly considered bringing his father's camp stove; a forest-green relic from some forgotten family trip, which now sat unused in the garage, but quickly decided against the idea based on the machine's bulk and weight (and, as he was somewhat ashamed to admit, his lack of ability to operate it). A compass and map (hand drawn, but accurate) were zipped into the top pocket of his pack, with his shiny yellow rain jacket stuffed into the main compartment below. This addition he particularly prided himself on, as the radio weather man had forecast a pleasant, sunny day, yet the boy knew preparation was a best friend to the adventurer. And so, with a tug to the leather laces of boots he had learned to tie just a few years previously, he began his expedition. The trek commenced with a leap over the fence separating his family's rectangle of civilization from the woods beyond. Near his home, terrain was familiar, and he imagined his feet packing the dirt beneath him into the trails he walked almost daily. He imagined generations of feet doing the same, his children, his children's children, till the day when constant pressure of curious shoes fused the particles beneath to an unbreakable concrete. "Perhaps", he thought as he brushed aside a low hanging branch, "it is by this mechanism that city sidewalks are created. From the volume of people wishing to visit the places where now stand great buildings, the beauty which had initially drawn them became trampled to a dull grey. And what were they to do, at the extinction of the place they all loved so dearly, but to erect buildings in place of trees, and connect telephone wires where once streams ran clear?" Having had this thought, the boy began to tread softly, the idea of steel and asphalt in his forest, near the slopes of his mountain, one too disturbing to consider.
Presently, upon crossing the creek where one could catch crawfish in the cool shallows beneath water-worn stones, the boy entered territory unexplored. As the angle of the ground beneath began to steepen, he could sense the true beginnings of adventure. He could smell it on the gentle breeze kissing his cheek, the odors of pine, soil, and dust combining to create the visceral cocktail of excitement in his chest, and like ghostly fingers, pulling him by shirt and shorts irresistibly toward his destination. After some traversing of the slope, he encountered a faint trail leading upward, perhaps a thoroughfare for the local dear, as they drift silent as falling leaves between thick pines. Undergrowth, some bearing the unwelcome sting of thorns, scratched the boy's bare legs as he climbed, suggesting longer pants could, perhaps, have been a more prudent choice. On the hem of his shirt travelers clung, burrs eager to escape the grasp of their mother and be flung into the wide world around them. Distractions and interests that would normally have competed for the boy's attention fell to the wayside as he climbed on; strange communities of insects beneath stones remained undisturbed, and time could not be spared to identify the warbling call of a distant bird. Through legs aching with the weight of lactic acid, he pushed forward, slowly allowing himself to become defined by the pure effort and sweat which poured forth from his body, the latter drenching the cotton of his shirt. He imagined himself to be walking toward his destiny, boyhood shedding on the trail behind him as he pushed forth into the body of a man, with muscles like those of his father rippling like carved wood beneath the fabric of his clothing. Higher he climbed, weaving through boulders and scrambling up gullies loose with scree, mind unwaveringly fixed at a point above, where internally he already rested, soaking in the joy of his accomplishment.
Success came without ceremony, as is its way beyond the constructs of society, and the boy pushed through a wall of thick branches, intertwined like the hands of passionate lovers, to a welcome plateau, the very one he had gazed at from his window for so many days and nights. Though the entirety of his trip totaled no more than an hour, his legs and chest bemoaned abuse of many days, exaggerating the strain which had been put upon them. Based on this exhaustion, he was surprised to find himself in the company of others, a group of teenagers to which the aroma of marijuana wreathing the area could be attributed. They sat around an ashen fire pit, and regarded his arrival with little more than a series of nods toward him, the graffiti and beer cans strewn around them creating something of an aesthetic clash with the forested surroundings. Still, the boy was unfazed. He was, after all, the only one present who had just summited a mountain (his mountain, at that!), and could inexplicably sense that it was only within his heart that burned the spirit of endless adventure, setting him far apart from the others. Looking around the dirt clearing he located the tallest tree there, a finger of the forest pointing towards God himself, and ignoring his tired body, climbed high to a branch bent perfectly to accept his wiry frame. There he sat, with pride comparable to that of Hillary or Norgay, and glowed with the sheer joy of his achievement. For it did not matter that his mountain possessed no remote, windswept peak, or that, indeed, no self-respecting cartographer would grace its slope with a name or description. In the boy's mind, his mountain still towered, strong, proud, imposing; a monument challenging the ability of man, and inspiring his wildest dreams. And as the boy looked toward the horizon, the world stretching onward towards infinity beneath him, he gazed at countless other mountains, greater in both height and difficulty than the one he occupied, each one beckoning in stony voices with tales of adventure and impossibility. They lay spread before him, a great canvas framing the heavens, waiting to be painted with a palette of effort, ingenuity, and unquenchable love for the world they held in their valleys and peaks. And, smiling with anticipation, the boy took up his brush, and again began to dream.
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