Adventures of the Good Squad

Adventures of the Goon Squad

 

“Anything silly is worth doing well”

        -   a stamp my uncle uses on his letters

Climbing is one of the sillier human endeavors.  I recall that Sir Edmund Hillary, upon returning exhausted and battered from an expedition, was asked by Nepalese villagers why he tried to go over the mountain rather than walk around it to get to the other side.  The usefulness or practicality of the effort to climb up the steep sides of things can simply not be proved.  But climbing is, for many of us, a completely irresistible pull, and we bend our schoolwork, jobs, and sometimes entire lifestyles in order to spend as much time as possible in upward pursuits.  What drives young people with college degrees to quit work and spend months on the road, sleeping in drainage ditches outside of desert towns, wearing the knees out of their pants, eating carrots and peanut butter and goodies from the dumpster behind King Soopers, snooping around campgrounds avoiding rangers like outlaws, and despite the appearance of poverty remain totally psyched? 

morning niceties in the Brave Little Toaster

At Colorado College a core group of climbers coalesced around similar values: getting out to new places, trying really hard, not getting benighted, and doing it in silly costumes.  From afternoon excursions to the Garden of the Gods to spring break rambles across Utah and Arizona, we enjoyed a lot of fun rock and showed up at many a crag sporting outlandish outfits and awesome (hideous) stick-on tatoos.  At some point someone called us the “goon squad,” and I think that title fits.  Following strict adherence to a ratio of 30% try-hard, 20% silly costumes, 20% sending tattoos, 15% tasty summit snacks, and 15% Tecate (with lime, of course), we have been able to enjoy a decent amount of quality rock climbing, survive a fair share of questionable rock climbing, have a whole dang bunch of fun, and not get a car stuck (yet!).

three goons atop Lone Peak, Wasatch Mtns, Utah

 the DMFay topping out Monster Tower in impeccable style

the usual state of things

I assumed that David had brought is A-game for his impressive neon clown ascent of Monster Tower and Washer Woman; I was wrong.  The next day David busted a move that took the club down by debuting an authentic Colorado College baseball uniform on our free ascent of the precarious Standing Rock in Monument Basin.  True class!

Wild Iris, August, preparing for some serious sport whippin after a week of trad climbing.  Right now I'm thinking: "I either need to send, or I'll be laughed off the wall"

DBR going for the Fruit Bowl King Swing with some real chuztpa, no doubt encouraged by the Wal-Mart St Paddy's special on his head

The Sharper World

A sunny Saturday at Indian Creek, tired and not sending, my hands ripped from their tortured devotion.  More cracks loom all around, each an invitation to try, to get whupped, to see if I have the strength and tenacity and elegance to dance with its brutal simplicity. 

So many opportunities, and I’m so tired.  The dance is so hard.  Why am I trying?  Why did I drive here alone on a weekend, to struggle and bleed and drink beer with tired hands with these stoic men?  Why do I keep running?

Thoughts drift to loss and sadness…the tendrils of a dream.  Memories of love, days spent basking in a woman’s sunshine, the bliss of togetherness.  Days of friendship, with our own rains but absent of the sting of isolation, the endless march, feeling the weight of my tired feet.

Someone at the wall needs a toprope put up so I grovel out of my perch amongst the rocks and shake the cobwebs from my head, rack up.  In itself an act of intention.  The climb is a 5.10 finger layback into a thin-hands slot, don’t need extra gear, it’ll go.  On the vertical again, pulling hard above a piece, pushing the possible fall out of mind beneath me, only movement is upward.

Clipping the anchors on a wall of chocolate in the early evening, the gulf of air all around, the ravens circling, the valley verdant in spring foliage, life blossoming in cactus and cottonwoods in the desert.  Lean out and breathe it in, my back sore and rippling under my shirt, my hands crusty and stiff.  This is why. 

Lowering to the ground amongst sore, sweaty people, and for now, because of now, they are friends.  Lounging on a boulder in the fading sunlight, commenting on the progress of comrades above, sharing pains, telling lies and fueling dreams.  Letting bare feet smudge into the coarse red dirt, climbers above, etched in shadow against the rock, still in that sharper world.

Ryan grunts as he attempts to swing a meaty wrestler’s thigh into the gaping crack above his head. Large cams hang beneath his shoulders on a sling, dangling like some whimsical wind chimes as he shudders to get purchase.  Scott belaying, silent, stoic.  In their world each edge of rock is sharp, each line clear, each feature and curve of stone critical in its size and texture.  The light slices across immutable edges, the rope, their lifeline, threads humbly over unchanging stone.  Never more clear that we are visitors. 

Below, the edges soften.  Features blur together into aggregate forms, lumped together for simplicity: pillar, talus, corner, ground.  No longer tuned to the whispering rhythm of rock and cliff, the mind drifts to softer hues: the view below, the panorama of canyonlands, conversations, water.  The sun dips into some untrodden tract of desert, the golden hour falls on the Second Meat Wall; conversation mingles with the pop of beer cans, truth and lies.  Our world soft, our bodies relaxed after the fight.  Climbers still above, perched on the cliff like some forgotten gargoyles, clawing their way toward heaven.

The sky above, the dirt below.