Another beautiful shot from Jean Michael Auffant













A Lack of Understanding









th grade, and helped me pay to backpack through the U.K one semester when I was getting burnt out in school. These travels cost us both quite a bit of money, but I was never taught to look at it as a waste. When I was younger, I wanted to travel as much as I could. My parents encouraged this; both of them are from South America, and they believed that seeing the world is important. They took me to see their native countries when I was a kid, sent me on a school trip to France and Italy in the 8grade, and helped me pay to backpack through the U.K one semester when I was getting burnt out in school. These travels cost us both quite a bit of money, but I was never taught to look at it as a waste.





Tao Te Ching. A friend of mine introduced it to me one night after a discussion about meditation; I had begun practicing a little, doing my own reading and trying to find my way. I dove into this small volume and just ate it up. I had been an English major, having always loved reading and language, and I found that the often contradicting statements to be found in the Ching spoke to me in a way the comparatively simple and straightforward seeming verses of Christianity, in which I had been raised, never could manage. For years, I carried the Tao Te Ching with me everywhere, reading it and rereading it, trying to absorb the wisdom I could sense in its letters and lines. Right around the time I dropped out of college, pretty soon after that trip to England and Scotland, I became interested in the. A friend of mine introduced it to me one night after a discussion about meditation; I had begun practicing a little, doing my own reading and trying to find my way. I dove into this small volume and just ate it up. I had been an English major, having always loved reading and language, and I found that the often contradicting statements to be found in thespoke to me in a way the comparatively simple and straightforward seeming verses of Christianity, in which I had been raised, never could manage. For years, I carried thewith me everywhere, reading it and rereading it, trying to absorb the wisdom I could sense in its letters and lines.





There was one line, however, that I did not understand. Really, at the time, I disagreed with it wholeheartedly, and this drove me up the wall. I knew that this book contained more wisdom that I would come to know in my lifetime. For me, that was, and is, a fact. The idea that this one line contradicted what I believed, what I felt to be true, threatened to undo the whole thing. This scared me. I had lost my religion, a terrifying experience, and would never be able to have another, but I did not want to lose this too.





The line was this: “The wise man never leaves his hometown.”

Tao Te Ching, for all its wisdom, not see that? What, I wondered, could this possibly mean? Travel is like education; nearly everyone agrees in the value of seeing other cultures, of learning about and coming into contact with ways of being different than your own. How could the, for all its wisdom, not see that?









Insight through Projecting









It was a Thursday morning, and my alarm went off at 6 am. I skipped the shower, ate a quick breakfast, and jumped into my car. I had packed everything I needed the night before. The streets leading in town were busy with morning commuters, but the traffic thinned as I left the last of the neighborhoods behind and drove out into the farmlands surrounding the city. Soon, even these disappeared, and I found myself driving through hilly grassland which, eventually, gave way to a winding road up into the mountains. As the road rose in elevation, the views into the surrounding valleys become more and more spectacular. In one direction was a landscape of dry, low-rolling hills in various shades of yellow. It was barren, and for this it was, in its own way, beautiful. In the other direction was a series of ever-lower ridge lines, green with brush and trees, which led directly into the Pacific Ocean. On clear days, you could see the white lines of the surf and the hazy shapes of the islands just off the coast.





th birthday here exploring the wilderness with a stomach full of mushrooms. That same day, I had decided to become a teacher while sitting on a boulder overlooking the landscape that slipped wonderfully into the great abyss of the ocean beyond. I had a connection to this specific place on earth, a connection forged over years and years of getting to know it. It took an hour and half to drive from home to the bouldering area. This place was special to me; it was where I learned to climb. On this mountain top, on the sandstone boulders scattered on the slopes amongst the tall, broken-topped pines, I had learned what it meant to try hard. My first projects had been here. I had done my first v4, v6, v7, and v8 here. I had camped alone for days in this forest. I had spent my 25birthday here exploring the wilderness with a stomach full of mushrooms. That same day, I had decided to become a teacher while sitting on a boulder overlooking the landscape that slipped wonderfully into the great abyss of the ocean beyond. I had a connection to this specific place on earth, a connection forged over years and years of getting to know it.





After warming up on a few easier problems, I made my way to the objective: a beautiful, tall, over-hanging compression arete that led into a high slab over a bit of a dangerous fall. The sandstone ranged in color from orange to black, persistent lichen giving it a tint of yellow and green from a distance. This line was amazing. I had been to this climb every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning for the last month, something like 10 sessions already dedicated to this one boulder. Most days had been much the same. I warmed up, hiked the pads to the climb, spent an hour or two fighting my way up the arete, and left with sandpapered fingertips and sore elbows, driving the 1.5 hours back in time for class and/or work, depending on the day. Rinse and repeat.





By this point, I had gone through the full gamut of projecting emotions. I had been discouraged, reinvigorated by a breakthrough, frustrated by a missed opportunity, made nervous by the impending send, and felt dejected by multiple punts. After all that, after session after session of full physical, mental, and emotional engagement, I found myself approaching the climb this day with a sense of serenity and calm. When I sat down in front of it to put my shoes on, I wasn’t intimidated nor confident. I wasn’t afraid of failure nor excited by the prospect of success. There was a slight breeze, and on this side of the mountain, in the shade, the air was a bit on the cold side. I could hear the air moving through the trees, could feel the cold making its way across my scalp and cooling my hands. The climb looked to me, this day, like an old friend. As I strapped the Velcro of my shoes down, I looked forward to this coming encounter the same way I looked forward to seeing someone I felt akin to.





Tao Te Ching that had puzzled me for so many years. I sent that day. It was my first v11 and an important moment for me. This climb had been my longest project to date and still is the most time I have ever invested in a climb. I had been stuck at the v9/10 level for three years or so, and that send catapulted me into a yearly improvement that I am still riding now. It meant a lot to me, and as I stood on top of the boulder, exhilarated by the success, a little disbelieving, but, most of all, thankful for the experience, I suddenly had a flash of insight. I understood the line in thethat had puzzled me for so many years.









Depth in the Shallows









I spent two weeks in the U.K. Ten days in France and Italy. 5 Weeks all over Brazil. Ten Days in Fiji. Ten days in Northern Ireland. 2 weeks in Thailand. A month in Australia, and a month moving through Peru, Chile, and Argentina. And yet, for all these trips, all this time traveling, I didn’t know much about the places. Those trips were mostly, with some exception, spent frantically going from city to city, hostel to hostel, trying to see and experience as much as I could. For all my rhetoric about traveling, about getting to know a culture, these short, frenetic trips I not give me a sense of the place at all. If anything, I came back with less knowledge, impeded as I was about my own smugness and pride for the things I had seen and experienced. I had a tick-list mentality to traveling.





The same thing can happen in climbing. I don’t know how many times I have been on a short trip somewhere and taken that mentality to my climbing, wanting to come away with sends rather than focusing my attention on the climbs and the place. I wonder how many climbs I have quickly judged as too “schrunchy” or “not my style” and moved on to another climb, essentially looking for those quick sends and numbers. It strikes me that, with this mentality, I come away from each trip with basically the same experiences: quick sends and the satisfaction of success. But, in seeking that, I wonder if I am missing out on possible experiences like the one described above.





Tao Te Ching. Part of the mentality that drives our energetic search for new experiences, experiences that often are just a rehashing of ones we have already had, is a kind of escapism, a desire to be elsewhere than we are. We have all had this feeling when working a project or when faced with a particularly stressful week at work and home. There always comes that session when you fail to make progress, when maybe you even regress, and a little voice in the back of your head tempts you with the prospect of the easy send around the corner, the instant gratification simply leaving and turning away from the struggle. Often, we chase that temptation all over the world, always coming away with the same quick, satisfying but short-lived experience. And once it is gone, we are simply waiting for the next chance for another, an endless chain of immediately gratifying but ultimately shallow and forgettable experiences. This is becoming more prevalent, I think, as climbing and travel are beginning to mix more and more. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing; honestly, most of us have to work a lot to make our lives livable, and so maybe two weeks off twice a year is all we get. In two weeks, it may be all but impossible to develop a deep connection with a place, as opposed to something shallow and fleeting. This belies a larger issue and returns us to the. Part of the mentality that drives our energetic search for new experiences, experiences that often are just a rehashing of ones we have already had, is a kind of escapism, a desire to be elsewhere than we are. We have all had this feeling when working a project or when faced with a particularly stressful week at work and home. There always comes that session when you fail to make progress, when maybe you even regress, and a little voice in the back of your head tempts you with the prospect of the easy send around the corner, the instant gratification simply leaving and turning away from the struggle. Often, we chase that temptation all over the world, always coming away with the same quick, satisfying but short-lived experience. And once it is gone, we are simply waiting for the next chance for another, an endless chain of immediately gratifying but ultimately shallow and forgettable experiences.





I think the reason these short vacations and short projects leave us wanting more, thereby, perhaps, not fulfilling what we needed in the first place, is that they don’t really teach us anything new. The short vacation and the quick send both only serve to reiterate something we already thought about ourselves, the fact that we are well-travelled and cultured (or need to get away) or the fact that we climb this and that grade. These kinds of experiences are more about imposing the Self on a place or thing and less about learning. Any true lesson takes time to learn and happens in the long relationship you develop with something in which the dichotomous gap between you and the thing begins to become fuzzy and permeable. For me, this is why the wise man never leaves his hometown: he knows it takes a lifetime to fully build a relationship with a place where that gap ceases to be and a sense of oneness takes over.





Now I have never quite had this kind of experience, I think it is something of a rare thing for my generation, but I have had glimpses of it and I have known people who have. There are places in the world that I have spent a significant amount of time in, and I know those places in a way I don’t know most of the countries I have visited. I have had experiences with climbs, like above, that have shown the difference between a shallow experience and one with depth. Does this mean that I am going to stop traveling and going on climbing trips? Probably not. I am not a wise man, and all this does not negate the pleasure derived from novelty. Fun can be its own reason. What this does mean, however, is that I have started to think about where I want to be, long-term, so that I can start to build this kind of relationship with a place. It means that I am going to go back to the Rocklands next year for the third year in a row. It means that, rather than just waiting for the next trip to come around, I am going to try and take some time to get to know the place, the moment, I am in. It means that I am going to seek out climbs that require me to spend time with them, that will take time to develop the understanding necessary to send.





Tao Te Ching is in its ambiguity, and this is what I find useful about literature in general. Language is a tool, and a damn messy one at that. The underlying assumption that people attribute the same meanings to the same words is fundamentally flawed for the simple reason that it is not true. People are complex, and their relationships to words are nuanced inexplicably. For me, this seems to match, rather wonderfully, the essential ambiguity of being a conscious being in a material body. Do I have a soul? Am I only a body? What are my thoughts? What should I make of the sometimes discordant urges of my physical and moral selves. I honestly don’t know. But I do know that the tension between the concrete nature of language – it does, after all, exist in a real way and has real consequences in the world – and its abstract, symbolic foundation mirrors the mental/physical dichotomy of my own existence. The beauty of theis in its ambiguity, and this is what I find useful about literature in general. Language is a tool, and a damn messy one at that. The underlying assumption that people attribute the same meanings to the same words is fundamentally flawed for the simple reason that it is not true. People are complex, and their relationships to words are nuanced inexplicably. For me, this seems to match, rather wonderfully, the essential ambiguity of being a conscious being in a material body. Do I have a soul? Am I only a body? What are my thoughts? What should I make of the sometimes discordant urges of my physical and moral selves. I honestly don’t know. But I do know that the tension between the concrete nature of language – it does, after all, exist in a real way and has real consequences in the world – and its abstract, symbolic foundation mirrors the mental/physical dichotomy of my own existence.





This is something that I also find useful about climbing. The depth of the experience I had with my first v11 came from, I think, having to face both the physical and mental challenges inherent in projecting a climb and from the fact that this interaction was with something objectively outside of my Self. As I got to know the climb, the climb changed me. It taught me, in a way, and gave me insight into the line I couldn’t previously understand. I saw, from this experience, that the preconceived notions we carry with us, often rigid and hard-lined, create a predilection for shallow experiences and are obstacles to having deep ones.





Tao Te Ching was missing something; it’s that I wasn’t listening deeply enough. It wasn’t that thewas missing something; it’s that I wasn’t listening deeply enough.





