Tag: friends

CDS Column: 7 Billion Small

The world at times can seem quite full. Seven billion people all scratching out a living, with hundreds of different languages and customs. It sounds like a lot. But sometimes it’s not.

This past summer, I was working in Belize. I was there with an organization that takes American high school students around the world on volunteer service trips. The Americans were the native language speakers at a summer camp designed to teach Belizean elementary and middle schoolers English. We spent two weeks teaching and otherwise explored the country.

We were hardly the only program there. There were groups everywhere. Even our home base was not immune: There was a group of high school students there to learn about rainforest and barrier reef ecology, another group backpacking through the jungle and a third group of American middle school students who were doing adventure trips around the country interspersed with the occasional day of volunteer service.

This was at one rustic eco-resort, and there were similar groups at other sites across the country. It was a flood of Americans, all there to discover a new place and lend a hand. Our 26 kids were swimming in a sea of transplanted American youth.

Anyone who works on such programs knows there develops a brotherhood and a sisterhood among the staff. An affinity grows for others caught in the same situation, facing the same daily stress of chaperoning dozens of kids that aren’t yours. It must be the same among teachers, but in Belize there were no hallways or walls to hem them in, no busses home at the end of the day. We all worked from breakfast until bedtime, and at the end of the day the students hopefully settled back to their beds without incident. Hopefully.

That’s when we, the staff, would take our breather. We would sit together and chat. Program allegiances tossed aside, we would relax, sometimes solving as a team the complexities involved in individual programs.

It was in one of these impromptu summits that I saw the sticker. It was on one of the other program staff’s water bottles, a lobster next to the letters ME.

“Are you from Maine?” I asked.

“Yes,” the woman replied. “Originally. I now live in Oregon. But my family is still there.”

“Nice,” I said. “I live in New Hampshire. My sister lives just outside Portland.”

She smiled, and I thought that the end of it. But two days later I got an email my sister.

“I’m having dinner with a friend,” she said, “and my friend says her sister is working in Belize. Her name is Alison. Small world.”

“Tall teacher from Oregon Alison?” I wrote back. “No way! I met her the other day!”

Fast forward to now. The holidays are when people migrate across the country to visit friends and family. On Friday, I walked into my sister’s kitchen to see my niece and nephew, and there’s Alison, along with her sister, chatting with my sister. I couldn’t help but start laughing.

That alone might be enough to prove the world a small place, but these sorts of coincidences never travel alone.

Three summers ago, I was in Peru doing similar work, this time taking American high school students to build greenhouses at rural schools. With me were three other staff members — a couple from California named Miguel and Gigi, and a woman named Laura from Wisconsin who lived in Finland. We were all there for the summer, again to corral up to 30 American students at a time on multiple programs. It was two months in total, and we four spent a lot of time together.

For the couple, however, time off together was important. Miguel and Gigi did what they could to get away in the moments between programs, as well as most afternoon breaks when the students were there.

That left Laura and I to spend a lot of time together. We were paired by default, and while such a pairing could have been disastrous she had an adventurous spirit. Together we explored Incan ruins, traveled to remote villages, soaked in hot springs and got to know Cusco. We’d sit in the central square, me writing, her drawing, and enjoy the quiet of a student-less afternoon. Over the course of the summer, Gigi, Miguel, Laura and I all became close friends, but it was with Laura I spent by far the most time.

When the program came to a close I stayed in South America. I traveled to Arequipa and then to Chile. Laura, meanwhile, caught a flight back to Wisconsin and then to Finland. She and I stayed in touch for a time, emailing and chatting over Skype after I returned to New Hampshire, but life eventually caught up. We lost touch.

That was almost three years ago. Fast forward to Monday. This Christmas, I decided to draw my own holiday cards. I wanted to make them individualized, special, and I’ve been drawing a lot lately. So I bought card blanks at an art store and tackled a few, but inevitably it went slower than I’d intended. Most of the box sat unsent.

The day after Christmas I picked up the box, feeling a guilty about the remaining cards. On the cover was a beautiful line drawing showing just how creative cards could get, and underneath small print credited the artist. Four words: “Art by Laura…”

It was my friend. Her name was on my card blank box. I looked at the box and remembered her afternoon drawings in Cusco. Suddenly it was as if she was at my dining room table, in line form. I laughed out loud. I Googled to make sure it was the same Laura, and it was.

I tossed the box aside and wrote a much-belated email.

This column appeared in the Conway Daily Sun.

Reasons to Climb

Reasons to Climb

I’ve been writing bullshit about climbing for years.

I write about handjams, pick placements and descents, about hauling and bivying, rope recommendations and runouts. The truth is it’s all bullshit.

I don’t climb for the summit or the send. Those are just excuses. The reasons I climb are Scott, Ryan, Peter, Michael and Paul. Josh and Juliet, Paul and Sasha and Jim. Katie and Majka and Jay. Pat, Jack, Adam, Silas, Ray, Elliot, Bayard, Eric, Brent and Jay. Chuck, Michael, Chris and others. People I forgot, others I don’t even know, names I don’t recall. Those are the reasons I climb.

I have been swimming upstream for months now, struggling against something I’m not even sure I fully have my hands around. It catches me at home, at work and in the car and takes me down. It knocks me off my feet and leaves me screaming, crying. In a moment it can rip me ragged, but when I get to Shagg, Shell, Cathedral or Cannon with one of my reasons none of it matters.

Yesterday was that way. Friday night I didn’t sleep. I ate consistently last week for the first time in a month, but that ended Thursday night. I met Ryan and Michael in a parking lot in Jackson at 7 a.m. Saturday. Ryan left Western Massachusetts at 4 a.m. to join Michael and I without asking us to delay our start. I offered, but he said no.

The two of them piled into my car, and we rolled uphill to Pinkham Notch. On the way up we joked, but once we started up the Tuckerman Ravine Trail I began talking. As we hiked I unloaded my pain, frustration and exhaustion. They just listened. We hiked fast, passing party after party. At times I didn’t want to keep talking, but I couldn’t stop. I kept at it until we got to the ravine, at which point I had to sit down. I felt like I’d lost a quart of blood. The weather matched my mood.

When we got to the base of the route I asked if I could lead the first two pitches. I wanted to warm up on the first pitch and then be fresh for a shot at the crux. Neither Ryan or Michael hesitated: Of course, they said.

I never stopped to belay. I had enough rope at the top of the first section to launch into the crux, and I took it. I had an outlet, and I was blasting for the moon.

The rest of the day went smoothly. Michael took the next pitch, then Ryan got the third, and we topped out around 2 p.m. We packed our gear, stripped off our crampons and walked down. I walked silently, knowing with each step I was closer to re-entering orbit. Ryan and Michael carried the conversation, allowing me to drift inside my head.

When we drove back into Jackson they invited me to dinner, but I declined. I’d had enough for one day. I needed to get home and brace myself for whatever was coming next.

A few hours later I got a text from Michael: “Proud work today. Killed it.”

I didn’t feel like I killed it. I felt like I got up, stepped out of bed and start falling. I fell all day, and I was getting ready to crawl back under the covers when his text arrived, sleep serving as my only net. I’m not crushing, I thought, I’m getting crushed.

But every few days I meet one of my reasons for climbing, and I stop falling and start flying. With Scott and Peter as copilots I get to crush, if only for a few minutes on Wednesday morning in the Cathedral Cave. With Paul I get to launch off the bouldering pad into the stratosphere, even if I never make it past the rock gym rafters.

Climbing is not about summits or redpoints, it’s about partners. It’s about sharing a rope with someone who can save your life. And that isn’t limited to when you are in the mountains.

We are astronauts, Peter says, and we are going to the moon. Thank you Peter, Scott, Ryan, Michael and Paul, for shepherding me. Without you I’d have missed my target. Alone I’d be lost in space.

[Author’s note: Peter reminded me that his references to astronauts and the moon were originally coined by Colby Coombs, the founder of the Alaska Mountaineering School.]