Mightier than the pen

I always think I’ll write about something else, but these stories keep happening. Then I realize that is the channel for which I have been created, and there is no sense in trying to deny my life’s path. You’ve got to go with life’s flow. So here we go, back on the road, back to the desert.

This time: I’m 70 feet off the ground, climbing a crack just about the size of my knee. I know this because after trying to jam my knee into it, all of a sudden, the jam is too good.

I’m stuck.

I panic. I breathe. I panic again and then remind myself that no one has ever permanently gotten their knee stuck in a climb.

But then, I start to think of the horror stories, people getting their knees stuck in cracks for up to two hours; finally pried out using whatever material the climbers had at their disposal. So, I start to imagine my moment of terror lasting for longer than a few minutes, and my friends gathering up all the lubricants they had (knowing them it would be coconut oil, bike lube, possibly some KY) and this whole experience turning into a shit show of preposterous proportions.

The entire weekend was a shit show, and as a writer these moments are essential to my career. I mean I’m a dirtbag writer; an offspring of gonzo and beatnik. I can’t script anything. As a kid, if someone told me I’d be a writer who wrote about sports I would have imagined I’d be writing about basketball and baseball, the only two things that really mattered to me as a child. Somehow my life evolved into writing about climbing and other quirky sports. Fortunately as I’ve evolved and grown, so has this world and the audience who wants to read about it. I mean lately it feels like I can’t read the New York Times more than a few days in a row without a mention of climbing.

This is good, at least in the terms of career, like maybe I could do this for a living. This. Writing about the thing I love the most in the world, save for kittens, women and family. Climbing.

If I didn’t write about this so much, I know I’d just rant about the woes in the world. And, someday I may just write a book with all the ideas I have running around that have nowhere to really go. Like, why George Washington is on the dollar bill. The guy owned slaves. Today he’d be a criminal on so many levels. Why don’t we replace him? I mean despite our bloody past we’ve got no shortage of true heroes. Put Martin Luther King Jr. on the dollar bill!

I guess the answer is too sad to contemplate. We’ve held onto our past of slavery, genocide and injustice for far too long. Someday we’ll let go and heal, but in truth the pen is not mightier than the sword. Well, maybe the sword, but the pen is not mightier than a nuclear weapon. And, the customer is not always right. America is not always the beautiful.

See, what I mean? If I didn’t have these climbing adventures I’d be a downer. Maybe someday when I’ve really made a name for myself, I’ll take on these causes. For now, I will still write about these days when America is beautiful.

And what is America really? It’s whatever experience you have. And these desert climbing experiences, well, they make me all teary eyed, hopeful and believing in ideals like freedom of speech, love and beauty.

So we drive up a dusty desert road, and there’s something about dirt roads that make you feel better about America. Like this Subaru I’m driving was invented for this pleasure. Then we hike up a wonderfully crafted trail to the Pistol Whipped Wall in Indian Creek, a series of a hundred perfectly placed rock steps built by volunteers not out to make a buck, but simply trying to make something more beautiful and efficient. (Thank you.)

My friend Jonathan finds an unclimbed line. A crack that has never seen the touch of a human hand; it sweeps up a dihedral and then comes out to an impressive roof. He spends much of his day carefully climbing up, hanging on gear and performing all the acts a new route demands; it’s like the brushstrokes of an artist.

At the end of the day I’m presented with an offer I can’t refuse: to climb the first free ascent. I rack up with 30 pounds of camming devices to slide into the crack for protection, and I’m off. I’m tired but willing my deepest reserves for such an honor. While Indian Creek still has hundreds of unclimbed cracks, someday this experience will be gone.

The climbing is blissfully painful, with a spice of danger. Masochism. The roof 90 feet up has a sharp edge the rope slides over. When I get to the anchors, I notice a core shot – the sharp edge has penetrated the rope’s sheath, with the inner core exposed. My lifeline exposed to the desert. I survive though.

That night we climb well into the evening by headlamp and drive out into the dark to find the campsite. The crew is camping at a site I’ve never been to, and we miss the turn. Fortunately, we run into some friends who have missed the turn as well. It’s 10 o’clock now, and all we want to do is eat food and huddle by a fire. I start to get hangry (hungry + angry) and then remember I should probably drink a beer. (Drinking and driving on dirt roads = ‘Merica.)

As my friends turn their car around, it becomes stuck. I wonder how they could become stuck in an SUV on a relatively tame road, and then I see they are driving on a donut spare. The donut has turned sideways, and only a tow will get the car out. We step out to assess the damage, laughing. One of them takes a step back, right into a pile of cow shit. It was so poetic, perfect for the moment. He pauses at the despair and then laughs some more, and we take off on foot to find the campsite for a tow and some camaraderie.

That next day is when I got my knee stuck. I cry to the rock and try to escape the woe. I think maybe I’ll never do this kind of climb again. But five minutes into the mental battle, I grab onto a piece of gear in the crack and my knee is free. Then I struggle on and enjoy the pain for the pleasure, because that’s the only way to go about this sort of thing.

– Luke Mehall