Patience

I drive 55 mph when the speed limit is 70 mph. Why? Because I'm too cheap to waste the gas. But what has come of driving at a speed which a "normal" person would consider "slow?" Especially for a 22 year old. While cruising at that meditative speed, I think I've come to some truth about patience, and only after yesterday did I realize fully how important it is to move slowly, to not be in a rush.

As people fly by me, aggravated at the slow-poke with New York tags, I'm singing along to the Gaslight Anthem's newest album. I am relaxed, and I don't get that anxious feeling that there isn't enough time in the world. I don't have to pass people, which means I don't get caught up in a neck-and-neck horse race trying to pass someone while the car in the passing lane is traveling a mere 1 mph faster than the snail in the right-lane.

Patience.

All summer long I have gone from having absolutely no rope bag, to getting an Ikea bag to belay out of from my friend Bri, to acquiring a Blue Water rope bag after being struck in the head with a fist-sized water balloon flying with such a force that I went down. Yes, I probably could have just went and bought a rope bag, a nice Metolious one, with a larger tarp and tougher material. But after four months I had gotten one that's proved to be adequate.

Yet there was a point when I found a rope and Metolius rope bag at a crag. I searched for the owner, and he came forward. I returned that treasure and again was reduced to my Ikea bag. I thought that the gods smiled in my favor, only to pull the rug out from under me and laugh. But in the end, I got an actual rope bag.

Patience.

Since I arrived I've learned a thing or two about not breaking my ankles. Stick-Clipping. Find a stick, hand the first draw and rope one the first bolt. Holy shit, isn't that genius? I thought to m self, I should get one of those! However, I realized that the chances that I was going to be climbing with someone who already owned a stick-clip was so great that I didn't need to worry about such things. And even if I wasn't climbing with a proud owner of a stick-slip, I am fortunate to be climbing in an area littered with real sticks! Yes, the kind that grow on trees!

Then, just last night, the group I was climbing with found a stick clip. We don't know who the owner is. So for now it sits in my car, ready and willing to save my ankles until someone comes to claim it. Four months of patience.





A photo of a stick clip. Picture by the lovely Elodie Saracco.



And hell, my entire adventure's goal was to go to Utah to rock climb, but I wound up staying in Kentucky for four months, which will be close to about five when I leave. I'll get to Utah at some point. It's not going anywhere, so why rush? I'm having too much fun taking it slow.

Patience.

"Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

Climbing is not something that I would consider a sport. Nor exercise. Maybe a hobby. I've often thought about how it's evolved (from the limited picture of its origins that's been painted for me). It's become some strange phenomena in its own right. A sort of yoga on the rocks, body-building, meditation, adventure, or what have you. I've even thought of the possibility of it being considered an art form. Why? Because walking up to a crag and seeing the features on the rock face which inspires such a shock that the only response is to bolt and climb said crag is the same affect that artists strive for, is it not? Sans, the bolting and climbing of their art work  (though I still remember skateboarders using the modern art outside the Everson Museum, in Syracuse, NY as ramps). Climbing is art without an artists.

The closest thing there is to an artists is the human eye who beholds the line and climbs it. That's it. And because "art" is nearly indefinable, the fluidity of he word allows me to make such a strange claim.

Exercise = art?

No, wait, climbing isn't exercise. At least not for me.

And it's even more strange that when someone gets shot down by a certain move on a line that they will recreate the same move in a climbing gym. Mechanical reproduction. The attempt to mimic nature in hopes of conquering her.

Or is it more co-existing, flowing with, discovering nature?

I'm not an avid fan of climbing gyms unless that is the most available form of climbing in one's area. Climbing in the gym takes away the best part of climbing - the outdoors. You could go outside and smell the fresh pines or go to the gym and smell the fresh pine-sol covering up the stale scent of dirty socks.

Though I loved the time I spent climbing in the gym when I was at school, it just doesn't compare to being outside all the time and climbing. Though I got less injuries indoors, outside is where it's at. Not where beautiful lines are being deconstructed by their holds and transmitted onto plywood and plastic.