From the South Coast of Turkey to Phoenix’s South Mountain; from Joshua Tree National Park to Red Rocks State Park, Nevada, I have been fortunate to enjoy a tremendous three months of climbing.

Not just climbing, no, but ample time on rock to remain physically strong and spiritually engaged. I entered a gym just a few times, and found renewed passion for the out-of-doors.

I pressed hard, completing problems which had eluded me countless times before. I tried new problems, both succeeding and failing. And I worked through routines which my hands and feet traversed without eyes. The silence and solitude of sitting atop a boulder can be as strength building as the effort to obtain that position.

There were painful moments when too much skin detached from my fingers too fast. And there were elated moments when what felt impossible became possible, even repeatable, the internal wiring of my body-mind forging new pathways which replaced, “I don’t know if I ever will …” with “I can!” and “I did!”.

There were afternoons in which I was surrounded by a multitude of people followed by evenings in which I was alone in my tent. The rain and snow reminded me that the most cherished things in life are often the simplest: warm, dry clothes, nourishing food, and a safe place to sleep. Nearly every night in J-Tree I took long walks seemingly alone but for the coyotes celebrating the rise of the moon over the desert mountain ridges.

During my second trip to J-Tree, I was in the presence of Bennett Scott and Rob Miller, each a master of climbing in their own regard; each climbing from a place of personal power. Most memorable were the intense, stimulating, and truly opening conversations we carried while piecing together Diary of a Dope Fiend high on a shaded ridge. I came away from that time with an improved understanding of the potential in climbing, and a renewed passion to fulfill that understanding with my own ability.

Of course, there was laughter. A lot of laughter. That’s the stuff that binds the entire experience, a funny sort of glue that gives memorable form to the otherwise discombobulated string of events.

Thank you Fulden, Jae, Mom & Dad, Luke, Matt & Adele, Ben, Rob, Mike and Steve. It was a good three months, a good time for climbing.

I was pleased to have the opportunity to once again be engaged by this year’s Native American Hoop Dance competition held at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. This astounding event is rich in history, honor, energy, and creativity. If ever in Phoenix in February, I highly recommend you attend. It’s like nothing you have ever seen … or heard before.

East Bay Redwood Park, a photo essay
I enjoyed a brief walk on the main trail which circumnavigates East Bay Redwood Park, Oakland, California, from the Skyline drive staging lot to the Chabot Space & Science Center.

Along the path I stopped to take a few photos (above). In the following I share some of my thoughts for why I captured these, and how they affect me. All were shot on a Nikon D50 with a Nikon 18-55 lens.

In general, the overcast sky between 3 and 5 pm was ideal, presenting limited shadows and an even, ambient light which encouraged the colors to pop. All photos were altered in post, mostly to remove some blue in order to present the photos more as they appeared to me.

moss-2 and 3: I never tire of photographing moss. It doesn’t try to run away. Moss presents a rich texture often wrapped around a surface, offering a dynamic color gradient. The right-most of the two shots is turned -90 degrees as I really like how the dark background sits heavy over the green, as though the two are in battle for the light.

cone: I found this still-life composition along the trail. I knelt in the wet needles and mud and shot this for nearly ten minutes until I felt I had found the right distance and angle. I enjoy the contrast of the texture of the three media: lichen, needles, and pine cone. The color was enhanced a bit beyond that which I perceived on the trail, my effort to reveal the hidden reds which are otherwise lost in what we too readily refer to as a green arena.

bear: Hey, it looks like a bear’s face. I couldn’t help myself

flowering: These flowers are just now popping, maybe one in twenty. Very complex structures up close, which work to remind me how much of high school life sciences I have forgotten. To say I recall more than the word “stamen” would be a lie. But what I intended, and did capture, is a very limited amount of material in focus against a backdrop of artifacts created by a short focal length (4.5fs, 30/s, ISO 800).

exposed, fallen-1 … 3: In these three shots I found varying degrees of tree “flesh”. The left-most “exposed” is a healthy, living tree whose bark has peeled back, revealing the hard wood beneath. But it appears to have oosed from some incredible pressure, and if it were not wood, should be soft and gooey.

The middle two are a portion of a massive tree which fell quite recently. Both of these reveal a very vulnerable yet living tissue, the meat of the monster which seems too large, too strong to have toppled. While I have walked passed, climbed on, even climbed into many fallen trees, it never quite feels right. I am reminded that we will all fall, and could fall any day–young, healthy, and vibrant.

“fallen-2″ is the most interesting to me for had I simply shown this to you, without explanation, would you know it was wood?

The right-most (fallen-3) is from a place just below and to the left of where the trunk snapped and split, the bark nearly meeting the exposed flesh. It is rich in color and contrast, the overlapping plates of bark a barrier to so many potential attacks, but not against gravity. Gravity always prevails victorious.

leaves and leaf: Two very different kind of leaf structures. One nearly silver and flat; the other dynamic, flawed, and in a state of change. It seemed that if I held the leaf for just a few minutes more I would witness its further decay or spontaneous combustion into brilliant flame.

Today I had the pleasure of meeting two most note worthy people: Hugh Downs and James Alexander.

My brother Jae of BallBoy Productions works with the Phoenix Children’s Museum, a place for play and interactive learning. Today I assisted him with the interview of Hugh Downs, formerly of the evening news program 20/20.

While our time with Mr. Downs was not extensive, there was a distinct honor in meeting him. His face, his voice, his demeanor were all of a man whose endeavors in life have given him a certain presence, and being in that presence for just a moment was an honor.

Thank you Mr. Downs for sharing your voice.

This afternoon SpanAfrica co-Director Brad and I enjoyed an extensive conversation with James Alexander, a gentleman who has devoted twenty six years of his life working through not-for-profits to help people in need. He met his wife in the Peace Corp, both his children were born Africa where he lived for twenty one years, and even now he continues to devote his life to a similar line of work.

Last year Mr. Alexander was a recipient of the Nelson Mandela Freedom, Peace and Unity Award from the African Alliance of Rhode Island, a means of honoring the incredible work he has done.

Even by means of a less than clear phone connection, he instilled a sense of power, peace, and trust through his words. I found that when the call was complete, I desired to meet him, to travel with him, to learn from him, for the vision he imparts is not that of a need for electricity or running water for individuals, rather the needs of entire regions in order that the people as a whole may rise to a higher level. Mr. Alexander understands how to work with people, to raise their capacity as nation.

Thank you Mr. Alexander for sharing your vision.

Seeking Solace on Muswell Hill
I went for a walk this morning, from the round-a-bout at the top of Muswell Hill, London, along the re-purposed railroad / hiking trail, through Highgate Wood, and then across the road and into the less developed Queen’s Wood.

These now protected reserves are believed to be the remnants of the ‘wildwood’ of England which existed until about 5000 years ago. The literature at the entrance to Queen’s Park did not state if the woods were intentionally cut by humans for building materials and to clear land for farming, or if something out of human control occurred to cause a wane of the naturally wooded areas. I assume the former, as has been and continues to be the case where ever humans call home.

Queen’s Wood, in less than what I believe to be two or three square-kilometers harbors 90 species of fungi, 108 species of spiders, and dozens of species of birds. The maintenance crews are now placing cut logs and branches in piles to give safe harbor for certain bark beetle populations, one of which requires an undisturbed environment for several years before its larvae develop into mature adults. Some mammals too seek shelter in the wood piles.

These city parks and reserves, as maintained by the City of London, are needed anomalies to break the monotony of pavers, concrete, and three story buildings whose street-level shops beg that we fail to recall the difference between wants and needs. Niceties become must-haves in the spree of the moment.

On the edge of the parks, women with pink caps and scarves, black coats and matching knee-high boots push strollers with child. Dogs run off leash despite the signs, owners calling in shrill voices which remind me of Archie Bunker’s wife upon his turn from work. And those are the men. The women’s voices are nearly inaudible or easily mistaken for the squeal of a bus brake coated by wet pavement.

Where the Pavers End
As I walk deeper into the wood, further from the concrete / mud boundary, city structure gives way to something a little less organized but at the same time more comfortable. The number of mothers, strollers, and children is reduced. The source of light is no longer an ambient glow from a source hidden behind a ceiling of clouds, but the leaves themselves glow yellow and orange. The florescent green moss and lichens painted across the texture of the trunks of the English oaks gives a sense of life independent from the canopies overhead.

Even more than the change in light, it is the transition in sound which I noticed most. As though I passed through a doorway, there is a threshold where if I step back I hear only the engines and brakes of the red double-decked buses; one step forward and my audio space is filled instead with the call of birds, the wind moving in short bursts through the mostly bare branches, and the water from the morning’s rain falling to the wet leaves and damp soil in discrete drops.

I was reminded of the constant noise we as humans create, most of which add stress, not joy to our lives. There is no jet plane, no engine roar, no jack hammer, no nail gun, no police siren, no car alarm, no chain saw, no coffee grinder, no milk steamer, no vacuum cleaner, no garbage disposal; no opening of a plastic bag, candy wrapper, or styrofoam container which compels me to smile. And yet, this is what fills the majority of our lives.

The Song of the Human
While the human voice in song is the call of our species to be recorded, in the rest of our world, we make little more than noise. I cannot help but wonder what effect this has on our personal psyche, on the health of our species as a whole.

When the vast majority of our six billion people live in environments in which the noise of the city never ceases, not by night nor the early morning, never–what happens to the human mind when the stimuli is continuously eroding, chipping away at our sense of peace?

I have known people who lived their entire life in a city such as New York and cannot handle the silence of a farm or the woods. They have learned to accept the background clamor as the norm, and silence to them, is frightening.

Perhaps this is testament to the incredible flexibility of our species, the ability to reset the mind and body to a new, higher threshold which feels all right. Perhaps levels of ‘healthy’ are not relative to silence, but to our own personal threshold. Or perhaps silence from human generated noise is the key to reducing human stress, on a personal and societal level, and the complexities of tightly packed cities could be resolved with a greater emphasis on silence, both outside and in.

Balance
In my life, I need not moments of calm to balance the noise of humanity but the noise of humanity to remind me how much I need the calm of the Wood.

Driving in the North of England, on the narrow, winding roads is as anticipated–magical. The countryside has seemingly not changed for hundreds of years. Small villages with quaint roadside shops. Dark forests. Roads so narrow it is amazing cars are even allowed, let alone parked or passing. Fog banks rolling across the stone walled farm lands and sheep dotting the landscape as far as the eye can see.

Having checked the prices of B&Bs over local pubs, Fulden and I determined we could purchase a tent, sleeping bag, foam mat, and spork (spoon-fork) from a shop just across the street from The Outside Place in Hathersage for half the price of two nights in the least expensive accommodations. (Certainly subject for another blog entry is the ludicrous cost of everything in this country)

We camped at the Stanage National Forest campground, just below the Plantation. It was beautiful. Past a cattle guard, a single-lane blacktop road takes you twisting down, down along one of the countless thousands of hand built stone walls through a gate and into the open, grassy terrace of the campground. The manager was very accommodating, offering the loan of a map, books, and climbing information. Steaming hot showers are available as well.

At dawn of Saturday morning, the wind was so fierce the tent temporarily collapsed (inverted) and I had to press it back to its upright position, from the inside.

We took the trail from the campground through the forest and to the Plantation, soon climbing in what were most certainly gusts over 50MPH driving sideways mist and debris. But the temperature was tolerable due to the cloud cover, the rock remaining dry on the leeward side of the boulders. By evening, the wind died down and the sun came out. The final two hours of climbing were incredible.

Although colder, Sunday was mostly sunny and replete with what seemed to be half of England at this popular destination. Entire families on ropes, toddlers bundled up and bound at the base of the crags; eager kids in bright red helmets crawled over warm-up boulders like ants over a fallen bowl of icecream; proper boulderer without helmelts but with pads, and those who were just out for a hike along the few miles of trail that run the length of the gritstone ridge.

True to its reputation, gristone may just be the most perfect substance on the planet for climbing. It is neither too sharp nor too smooth, a contiguous surface of friction. It offers decent crimps, incredible slopers, bomber ridge lines and finger pockets that hold from all directions. It is possible to just walk up nearly vertical surfaces without so much as a grain coming loose from beneath the rubber of the climbing shoe. Amazing.

In all, an incredible adventure.

As an avid listener of NPR, I thoroughly enjoy my cross-country travel as a time to immerse myself in focused education and stimulating entertainment. I have this past few years, with the advent of Sirius satellite radio, found my ability to learn via listening alone vastly improved. And with that, I cannot get enough–I could drive for a dozen hours a day for a week on-end if only to have that focused time without interruption to listen and learn.

In recent years I feel as though I have graduated from U.S. Economics 210, Middle Eastern Politics 200, and Culinary Arts 104. While Click & Clack have invoked my laughter for over ten years, Garrison Keillor and Scott Simon have given me stories which I will remember for a lifetime. Michele Norris, Liane Hansen, Diane Roberts, Will Shortz, Nina Totenberg and a host of equally talented, rich voices have woken me each and every morning for as long as I can remember … voices that have accompanied me on countless road trips in the South West and coast-to-coast, across the U.S.

Coming back from Phoenix last week, there was a story which is worth sharing, for it was perhaps one of the most engaging hours of radio I have enjoyed in this past few years. It is the story of Esmé Codell in her first year of teaching in the Chicago public school system. Read by Esmé, it is emotionally moving, thought provoking, heart wrenching, and hilarious. I cried, laughed, and wanted to rewind to hear it all again.

I encourage you to do the same.

Spinning SUVs
I am sitting in a Denny’s just off of Interstate 40 in Grants, New Mexico. The storm outside is not the kind that lowers visibility to an uncomfortable level, nor one that will bury the cars in the hotel parking lot during the night. Instead, the relatively warm day (mid 40s F) heated the road just enough to melt the snow from the previous flurry before the surface froze again, creating a perfect sheet of ice just beneath the thin layer of white. The transition from dry pavement to ice was rapid, in less than a half mile. It was catching everyone off-guard.

My ‘03 AWD Subaru burdened with camping, climbing, and biking gear, gifts for my family, and ample food for a few days was relatively stable, tracking forward without issue. But when I passed an SUV in the ditch facing the wrong direction, and another spun-out just in front of me moments later, facing backward in the median, I decided the next exit was the safest bet. I passed two more recently stranded vehicles and a state trooper before I left the interstate in the last mile.

I contemplated stopping to help, but determined that my vehicle on the side of what was quickly becoming a single lane could complicate the rapidly building danger zone. Unfortunately, many of those vehicles would need assistance from a team of horses or a decently sized tow truck with studs or chains to be removed from their unfortunate position.

Dooenok?
The man now seated across from me also came down I-25 and over on I-40, in an SUV. He too felt the call of Denny’s late night menu. My salad and omelet consumed, I am enjoying watching the variety of travelers stagger in, take a seat, and order. Some are regulars, it seems, the menu not required. Others may be experiencing Denny’s for the first time. It’s an interesting dance, the wait staff asking the same questions, the answer slightly different from each patron.

Walk in. Sit down. Talk about the weather. Sit back. Relax. The waitress comes to the table every few minutes, asking again “You still do’n ok?” which sounds like “Dooenok?” If English were not my first language, I would not understand and just nod to be polite. Stand up. Walk out. Over and over, hundreds of times per day.

If this behavior were tracked, each person tagged with a marker that is traced on three axis, the flow of human particles over any given time in Denny’s may resemble the movement of a gas into and out of a vented chamber. Not unlike the combustion in the cylinders that power the vehicles which brought each of us to this place, come in cold and under a little pressure, consume, expand, and then leave warm and satisfied.

It’s times like this that you can do nothing but make the best of it. I have no guarantee that I will make Phoenix by tomorrow night for Christmas eve. A discussion between travelers in two other booths makes it obvious that I stopped in the first mile of what is now over twenty or thirty miles of mess. I may awake to five or six feet of snow in the morning or crawl along at a sub-optimal velocity as I attempt to cut south from Holbrook, along the beautiful Mogollon Rim, through Payson, past the foothills of the Superstitions, and into the East valley.

But whatever happens, it’s part of the adventure of travel. Whether in the U.S., Japan, India, Kenya, or Spain, even with the best of modern technology, I simply do not have control over all the variables nor do I desire this. It is the unknowns that sometimes give us the gift of surprise and therein a new appreciation for those basic things which we otherwise take for granted.

Early climber gets a spot
I sit in the passenger seat of my Subaru Outback Sport, the sun rising to my right over the East Spur of Hueco Tanks State Park, twenty miles outside of El Paso, Texas. My car’s thermometer reads 25F degrees. The wind has fallen silent for the first time in a week, giving the desert a welcomed calm which enables the sun’s warmth to be fully received. I will likely remove two of the four layers I now wear before I am allowed into the park.

I rose at 6 am and drove from the Hueco Rock Ranch to the park entrance, again the third in line. I may jump on a volunteer tour by 10, or wait till noon to gain access to North Mountain. My cell phone dangles by its USB tether from the driver’s side visor, facing due West to a gap in the mountains which apparently enables a very narrow band to the desired Edge connection. With this digital lifeline I am able to work until allowed into the park, and again at night following dinner and time spent in the Barn or around the fire.

It’s a strange juxtaposition, to let go of the comforts of modern accommodations, to camp in the middle of a high, wind scorched desert outside an historic border town, to watch the sky catch fire by the hand of our own sun before it gives way to the countless suns of the night sky, and then to slip into the world of electrons whose messages carry reminders of the deadlines and demands of those who awake each morning for a very different reason.

The Rock Ranch
The Ranch was established in the mid ’90s by the late Todd Skinner and friends, and is now owned and operated by Rob Rice. It consists of a 2-story house and hotel, the “Barn”, two fire pits, slack lines, a dog kennel, and a few dozen camping spots set among ten acres of creosote bush, prickly pear, and ocotillo. The house/hotel offers a higher quality standard of living with nightly socializing away from the intense Foosball games in the Barn. The Barn houses a never-really-worked tuner and speakers, Foosball table, hot shower, card tables and cross-selection of donated couches which have long since reached the end of their intended life.

This is the year the Park Service permanently closed the Mushroom boulder, as presented at the Rock Ranch. Too much top soil lost, artifacts destroyed by the pressures of overuse. The majority of the climbers responded by asking why the Park Service didn’t take precautionary measures sooner, to protect and preserve instead of waiting until it was for the most part, too late. The Park admitted to having not managed the area well, inspecting hot spots too seldom. Sad, for the artifacts and for the climbers too.

A climbing mecca
People come from around the world to climb at Hueco Tanks, three or four languages spoken each night around the fire. And yet it feels like a family reunion for the faces are familiar from previous years at Hueco and commonplace meetings at Joshua Tree, Bishop, or Rocky Mountain National Park. Despite the countless tens of thousands of committed climbers world-wide, the bouldering community feels small when I consider the number of familiar faces over so many miles, a perpetually unfolding journey to mecca, year after year.

Sedan roof racks sport crash pads, cargo vans with built-in kitchens, mini-RVs and pull along trailers, all adorned with an ornamental myriad of stickers promoting peace, climbing, and intentional homelessness by high school and college graduates who prefer the challenge of climbing a rock than a corporate ladder.

It’s a simple life, focused almost entirely on improving the mind and body for just one purpose –to climb harder. Some people climb one day on, one day off; some two days on, and then rest. Some come for just a few days or one week and push themselves to the limit, climbing four or five days straight which inevitably results in a donation of blood to the granitic god who turns crimson to brown; fingers taped, muscle tissue torn, wrapped, and bandaged.

Silhouetted against the midnight flames are animated bodies whose legs, arms, and fingers retell the epic battle of the day, each move accompanied with the sounds of explosive release, cries of pain, and ultimate victory. The dances by fire light are the retelling of battles lost or won not with an enemy, but with an ancient companion whose uplifted magma chamber eroded into the perfect training ground for the climber’s soul.

… and into the Canyon
One week ago I returned from an eight days backpacking trip with the Grand Canyon Field Institute for which Christa is a founding instructor some fifteen years ago.

I cannot fully describe the intense learning experience coupled with the phenomenal beauty of the north rim of the Grand Canyon where we carried heavy packs through more than 12,000 feet elevation loss and gain. It is the sharp contrasts from rim to river, the rich, exposed geologic and dynamic human histories that create such a compelling, raw story.

An Open Book
Nowhere else on this planet can one witness such an open book to so many years of history, from the ruins of mining expeditions just decades past to the bedrock formations 1.7 billion years old. In this place Christa wove a story eight days and at the same time 4.6 billions years long as we hiked from the rim down through limestone, sandstone, shale, and confusing mixtures of all three that tell an incomplete story of mountains rising and falling, rivers flowing east and then west only to be temporarily blocked by volcanic eruptions. Ultimately, the Grand Canyon was formed, yet even today the full story remains elusive.

I grasp what I saw through the magnifying lens, the shapes of ancient trilobite tracks, crinoids, worms, and brachiopods, but even after three years of exploring the Southwest with Christa, whose profession it is to teach geology, archeology, and paleontology, my brain struggles to fathom the one variable that makes all things possible—time. I am overwhelmed by consideration for the quantity of creatures that must have lived and died in the ancient oceans to build a thousand feet or more of the standing limestone cliffs, now painted red in flood by the overlying, frozen sand dunes and river floodplains.

To Thunder River, Tapeats, and Deer Creek
Out of the limestone comes rivers. Not just seeps, trickles or flows, but rivers that pour from slits and mouths and gaping caves of limestone walls, rain water filtered through overlying layers reaches an impasse and moves instead horizontally. These rivers gain volume, momentum and pressure, and—with time—emerge from underground caverns and caves to refract the rays of the high noon desert sun. At the base of the falls are cottonwoods, juniper, maidenhair ferns, grasses, and pools of water that have not for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years run dry.

We found refuge there, as did the Native Americans in decades and centuries past, for our needs have not changed so much in the intervening generations that we cannot appreciate something so incredible, authentic, and rare. It is good that our inventions have not replaced in us the basic appreciation of pure water and cool air.

We hiked beneath Thunder Falls and up Tapeats Creek where we found a living cave rich with stalagmites, stalactites, and an underground river thirty feet wide and a few deep; to the muddy brown Colorado River and to Deer Creek where the Piute dead pass back into the underworld through the narrow, winding water way. We came back up more than six thousand feet by way of Surprise Valley and a sandstone plateau where driving rains drove those of us without a tent to the shelter of the sandstone ledges.

Each evening Christa read to us—stories from the river, the Hopi, the Mormon settlers, and those not of books but of the rocks and stones themselves for they have recorded the coming and going of entire continents afloat on a semi-molten goo. If only I could learn the Latin names of plants, the age of the rocks, and the lineage of the peoples who have made this place their home as easily as I memorize the speed of a new processor or interconnect fabric, I could tell you a more complete story. For now, my photos will have to do.

Sadly, only for a few days each year do I go without cell phone or internet connection. But these days I cherish most, for my mind is no longer concerned with the timing of things, the overlapping conference calls, nor the financial health of my company. It seems then, during these brief, true vacations, that if every microwave oven, cell phone and TV, if every embedded CPU and laptop on the planet would spontaneously disappear, the world would be a slightly better place.

Thank you Hank, Midge, Steve, David, and Christa for a most educational, light hearted, and enjoyable time.