The Rebirth of Slick, An Additive Adventure Entry

In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com

Three weeks from today, I’ll be flying to Ethiopia. I’ve been training for trip. I’ve been aqua jogging.

Actually, I just had to stop aqua jogging. I was over-training with the 12”-wide water-flotation device. In my defense, I was just trying to keep up with Astrid, the 65-year old woman with a hip and knee replacement. At 33 with two back surgeries, I was eating her aquatic dust. It’s a good thing I’ve finally been cleared to go back to climbing. It’s about time—East Africa is looming close.

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Hoarding the Collection

It takes two people 94 days to use 36 rolls of toilet paper. This is pure science. This is my life. Or it is give-or-take the two half rolls I left behind in North Conway last week.

My friends Jim and Sarah came over on my last night in New Hampshire to load my van for me. They each went up and down the stairs a dozen times with me trotting/limping after them. I’ve been placed on carrying restriction by my friends, let alone my doctor, pre-back surgery this week. So Jim and Sarah carried big bins and boxes, and even scooped up the poodle when he was making a run for the van. I carried, well, nothing.

“Jim’s having van envy,” Sarah said, on one trip.

I followed her down the stairs to the parking area. Jim’s been climbing twice as long and twice as hard as I have, or will. “Think this looks good?” I asked him.

He harrumphed. The van was chock full of bins, boxes, skis, rice cookers and salad bowls.  “This used to look good,” he said. “Can’t say I envy it now.”

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Edge Dweller

Cathedral Ledge, Photo by Peter DoucetteYou might not believe what I’m going to tell you. You might—if you have read things I have written in the past months—think I have some perverse law of attraction with tragedy. But maybe the truth of it is that I am trying to turn the tragedy around. When you find a dead body on your second day of vacation, you might have no other choice.   

Peter and I were in New Hampshire when it happened. We’d spent the day climbing cracks at Cathedral Ledge that started off wet at the bottom, behind the shade of trees, and turned crisp and dry when the sun hit their full depths up higher. By four we’d ditched our packs in the car and walked along the base to survey other routes. The ground was spongy with slick roots and cavernous leaf piles.

Peter saw him first, and put out his arm the way you do when you careen to a stop in the car, and you’re the driver, stopping, and want to keep the passenger safe, even though you know your arm will never accomplish that on its own.

I walked right through his arm. I walked closer to the man’s crumpled and twisted body knowing I might never forget the image or the experience, but knowing it was part of my life already. Over the next two hours, we brought rescuers to the man and ran trips up and down the trail with supplies. Each time I returned, the man became real to me as a father or a brother, or a husband with the receipt from the hardware store still in his back jeans pocket. He was not a climber, though I automatically envisioned him one with sticky rock shoes and a harness full of unplaced gear.  In the end, he was a man who’d driven to the top of the cliff the day before and made the choice to never return home.

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Whispering Into A Roar

Majka Burhardt on Omega, Cannon Cliff, NH. Photo by Peter Doucette

In conjunction with Climbing Magazine and climbing.com. Read online HERE.

This is a story without a conclusion. Maybe that will change by the end. At this point, I’m not betting on it. Four weeks ago, I wrote a piece about trying to understand death in the face of more death, and in spite of life. I thought that, by writing it, I would move on from it—be released from it.  But here’s the thing about writing about death: it creates conversation about death. And when you write about death and climbing, it creates a roar.

I can’t fully understand it, but I also don’t know if I am that surprised. I wrote about being scared as a climber. I wrote about questioning my choices. And suddenly, everyone else seemed to question my choices as well. My best friend from first grade wrote to ask me to please stick around until we are both old and can swap stories of our different lives.

“Maybe it’s time to reconsider the danger level,” he said. “I hope you are open to interesting twists and turns that may keep you in safer territory.”

I wrote him back: “I will be careful. I am careful. I am paying attention.”

My New York writing friend, a new mother, wrote and said, “Maybe it’s a good time to take it easy. I’m serious.”

I sent her a similar response to what I sent my grade-school friend, and as I typed it, I believed it, but I also wanted to take it back. I didn’t really want to send a response at all. I didn’t really want the note from her in the first place. I didn’t want to be reproached. And even though I knew it was out of love, I didn’t want to be questioned. It might have been because I didn’t want the questions to get in my way.  But really, it was because all the answers I could come up with sounded hollow and weak. But I still typed them onto the white space on my computer. What else was I supposed to do?

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Screaming Uncle at a Whisper

A joint blog with Climbing.com

Photo by Peter DoucetteSunday, August 16th was Craig Luebben’s funeral. Four weeks ago, Craig was the last person I saw at a memorial. We had a long conversation about risks, coming home, what makes it worth it, and what makes you stay. We talked about how tired we were of going to climbing funerals. We talked about how much each life lost augmented the last.

Craig died on Sunday morning (August 9th), and on Sunday afternoon I sat at my computer and googled “Craig Luebben Climbing Accident.” Ten pages of articles came up about books and pieces Craig had written about how to avoid them, and what caused them.

Here are the other words I have slowly typed into the oblong oval google search bar on my screen in the past eight weeks: Missing, Denali, accident, death, Tibet, soloing. Andrew Swanson. Jonny Copp. Micah Dash. Wade Johnson. John Bachar.

When you write out the words that someone is gone, does it make it true? How long can you stave off this reality? How much reality can you face at one time?

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