It’s called “In the Wilderness” and it’s over at Appalachian Lit.

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I wrote the first drafts of “In the Wilderness” in 2008, around the same time as “Born to Climb” came out of me, actually. Sometimes it takes a long time to finish a piece, sometimes not. There is a lot about “In the Wilderness” that came together just in the past year or two, most of which was my own maturity and patience to let thoughts and ideas steep as long as they needed to. In a way, I’m thankful for the rejections this essay got along the way— I’ve sent it out quite a few times over the years— because otherwise, it wouldn’t have been as, well, as what it has become now. I was going to say, as insightful, or as beautiful, but that seems presumptuous on my part.

Of course, I love this piece! Of course, I think it’s insightful and beautiful! Let me know what you think.

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Now let me offer you Part two of “Born to Climb”…

I’ve just started another creative writing program, this time for Doctorate of Ministry degree, this time at a seminary. It felt necessary for me to go back and read Born to Climb to remind myself that the writing will come together, eventually, like this piece did. As I start out in this new program, having just finished the first course (a week-long intensive), I’m feeling a bit uncertain and shaken about what the heck I’m doing this for. So retreating to old work I’ve done is a comfort while I move ahead into the unknown.

I recently wrote a new post for the climbing gym where I’m a member about the uptick in running into families with kids at outdoor climbing areas. Read that here. It’s more an op ed and less a researched article, but is at least entertaining? Read it and let me know!

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The topic was on my mind because, well, it always is. I’m often writing and reflecting on our years of dragging our kids around to climbing areas locally and across the country with much affection and a TON of nostalgia. Those were the good ole days, right?

Well, yes and no. More like a combination of beauty and horror, where beauty won us over more often than the horror. Or we just had amnesia for the horror, and we would end up asking the question, wouldn’t taking the mess outside be better than staying home? The answer to that was yes, most of the time, unless it was raining.

I do miss climbing with the kiddos, but it’s been great getting back to just Brian and me. Still on #brianandjen2.1.1, in case you’re wondering. Then all the whinging and fighting we have to manage is our own. Plus, we can take naps in the middle of a climbing day with impunity, which may have always been our favorite thing to do all along. If you’re gonna climb hard, you gotta nap, people.

This is also an opportunity to celebrate our oldest son's recent birthday. He’s 23!

So, I here’s a throwback to those days of beauty and horror, but this time, it’s something written by Brian a billion years ago— okay, only 20— when he moonlighted as Boy on a Bike at our home webpage, anklebiter dot net. He gave me permission. Sort of. He didn’t tell me I couldn’t!

Lessons Learned

We’ve just returned from our first trip to the New River Gorge with two children. Two lessons were learned.

First, we lack the energy and/or patience to climb with a three year old and a six month old. While we managed to do a reasonable number of routes on Saturday (given our rather un-alpine start), today was a wash. Both boys were tired and grumpy from getting considerably less sleep than usual, and they needed near constant attention from us at all times. We can certainly handle them for a day trip (as we did last weekend at Coopers Rock), but a full weekend is a bit beyond us (and, really, them) at this point.

Second, I am still a climber. There has been some doubt about this, since I haven’t been to the gym since February or March, and I have spent more time on my bicycle. But, a few moves into the 5.11 I started with on Saturday, I realized why I have been climbing for nearly fifteen years. The simple flow of moving on stone, feeling out the ripples and edges, creeping ever upward. For a moment, I even entertained the idea of training again, to make the most of our meager time at the New. I thought the better of it, though, knowing I have not the time nor the motivation. No matter, I could always climb, just climb, even if it means top-roping 5.11, failing miserably on 5.12, or padding up 5.7 on gear. Climbing, just climbing, for the joy of it.

It’s likely we won’t try to make the trip the New again for some time. We will, however, make more frequent trips to Morgantown, or explore some of the newer, local crags, whose existence we ignored when we had the time and energy to travel further south.

Yes, I am still a climber.

Posted on 4 June 2006

And lest you forget that I occasionally write outside in the big wide world too, here is something I had published this week (unlocked link)! Loved working on this one SO MUCH. Let me know what you think!

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I still really wish people would read the written word— it matters! I want to publish a book!

Anyway, if you like the recording or the idea of me including more audio posts, let me know. You can leave a comment, or just, you know, click the heart.

This is the first essay I ever had published in a lit mag, in this case, The Monongahela Review. My friend Luke started it, and published a few digital issues before letting it go. I’m pretty sure I just got in because I knew him and went to church with him. But it still counts right? I probably wrote this in 2006 or 2007 as part of the MFA in Creative Writing program I was in at Chatham University at the time. It is old. I’m old. My kids are old. Here, I’m reading the original version, as it was published in 2010.

A caveat: I’m just going to do one recording, and let all the mistakes happen. I’m not going to beautify it. It’s just me, all me, voice cracking, taking deep breaths and swallowing when I’m about to cry.

In 2023, Brian and I took our last trip to Hueco Tanks— last, but hopefully not, you know, last-last. It was the first time we had both been there since 2017. My project for the two weeks we hoped to be there was Big Iron on His Hip, a wild V7 traversing climb in Martini Roof that I had “almost done” in 2015, if almost doing something is even a thing. So that’s where we went on one of our first days there. I don’t remember who got there first, but another couple arrived that seemed to be the same age as us. The woman definitely looked familiar to me, and when I saw her hands, I realized who she was.

It was Melissa Strong. I’d met Melissa once before, back in the days when we took our annual family trip to Hueco and met up with our friends Paul and April. Melissa and her husband Adam co-own the commercial guide service, Wagon Wheel Coopt, that Paul worked for, and on one of our tours, we ran into her, and Paul introduced us briefly. In the intervening years I’d heard about her again because of a horrible electrical accident she’d had that almost cost her her entire hands. It was a hard story and name to forget, and so I immediately knew who she was. As you do when climbing near other people, we struck up a conversation, probably starting out with, where are you from? Then I asked her if she was Melissa Strong, and told her that Paul and April were mutual friends and that we had met a long time ago and that I had heard about her accident. Melissa and her husband Adam were super friendly and easy to talk to, so conversation meandered from there.

Melissa and I also began taking turns trying Big Iron. Yes, the woman missing some fingers, the full use of her thumbs, and had skin grafts on her palms and fingertips was working on the same boulder problem as me. And folks, I didn’t make any more progress than she did. It’s true, MelissaIStrong. Watching her climb with her altered, or “new” hands, as she calls them in the book, was amazing— an inspiring and humbling experience.

Besides the boulder problem, age, and knowing Paul and April, we had another thing in common too; we both are writers— she was writing about her accident and return to climbing, and she’d scored a book deal already. Writers hear the good news about someone else’s writing successes— a book deal!— with mixed feelings, and so to be honest, I first felt a pang of envy. The pang didn’t last long, and since then I have followed her as she wrote and finished her book. And now it’s out, and I’ve had the honor of reading it. Hers is a story that needs to be out in the world.

Climbing Through is much more than a book about Melissa Strong’s accident and return to climbing. This is a book by a climber about living a life that includes failure and suffering and healing and love— but not the mushy kind. This is a story for everyone, even people who have never climbed before in their lives. There are chapters on the important moments in her life that were the building blocks of her own character and resiliency,— including a failed first marriage, struggling with infertility, and opening a new business— and the solid foundation of friends and family that support her, all of which she would end up relying on in the aftermath of the accident as her safety net.

I, of course, loved the climbing details in this book. Strong spends time explaining how climbing works to the non-climbing reader, though not too much time. It’s tricky to teach something while you are telling a story without the details distracting from the narrative itself. I think Strong does a good job with this by sharing how she learned how to climb. The only thing I wish is that she would have included more about how hard she climbed prior to the accident in order to emphasize the struggle of relearning how to climb post-accident. She is clear about how it feels to climb after her accident with her new hands, but I wonder, what did it feel like in her body before that, to climb super hard, to not struggle but flow? She does hint at it here and there, but Strong was— no, is!— a genuine bad-ass climber and has bragging rights.

I overruled myself, moved my hand, and latched the hold. The internal battle between my brain and my will continued, distracting me as I moved my foot, gracelessly, carelessly, to make the next hand movement. My foot slipped, I released the holds, and I stepped off and away from the wall. Quickly I examined my hands to make sure all of the skin was still in place. Pain screeched through me. I paused and breathed through it. If I could keep my foot on, maybe I could pull through a few more moves, I thought. Annoyed at myself for sloppy climbing, I tried to calm my nerves. You know how to climb. You can do this.

Besides the climbing, the best part to me was the solid and steady relationship Strong has with her and Adam’s family members, especially her parents. As a parent of budding adults myself, I appreciate a story where the familial bond remains strong, even when the kids move out and there is physical distance. Strong’s parents were with her throughout her life, supporting her all along the way. Though she is a strong person (pun intended), she recognizes that she couldn’t have done any of the hard parts of her life on her own.

The writing in Climbing Through is solid. Strong’s voice is consistent and steady. She doesn’t write in order to sensationalize. She doesn’t use flowery or strong emotional language. She is not melodramatic. Rarely does Strong even allow a personal pity party. I don’t know Strong very well, but I think to do so would be outside of her character. She tells her story as a matter of fact, and pulls the reader along willingly to the end.

Lastly, this is a good looking book. The cover is a cool photo of Strong climbing, and the paper quality and font and size of the text itself is really pleasing. It looks less like a self-published book than I was expecting. I’m no expert and have had little experience with this publishing company aside from maybe the old 1995 Sherman Hueco Tanks guidebook and How to Rock Climb! by John Long. FalconGuides, an imprint of Global Pequot Publishing Group, Inc., focuses mainly on putting out guidebooks— hiking, foraging, camping, nature— but occasionally they’ll publish a memoir. Climbing Through was a really good choice, and FalconGuides did a nice job with it.

Interested in purchasing this book? You can get it at Amazon, but here are some non-Amazon links:

BAM

Bookshop

Hudson Booksellers

Walmart

Grief is nebulous and tricky, I find. It’s unexpected and yet completely predictable. I want it to be different than it is, last longer, feel worse. I want to be constantly reminded that I’m missing my sister, Loey, that she isn’t here. I’ve been wearing her clothes a lot this winter. Her sweaters. Her earrings. I want to be sad all the time. But honestly, sometimes I forget about it for a little bit. Sometimes I’m not sad. And then, when I least expect it, I see a stupid InstaGram post that I want to send to her because it made me laugh. Or I need to call her to talk to her about something going on with my kids. Then it feels pretty bad and I get really sad again, and God, I’m so thankful for the painful and burning rush of those emotions. My younger sister and I recently got a tattoo so that we’d be reminded more often, a visual trigger. It’s definitely an awkward conversation starter, and well, I guess that’s part of grief too. Bring it on.

Here are four books on grief that may or may not have affected my own process of grieving.

Let’s Take The Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell.

Given to me by a friend, this is a book about a friendship between two women and their dogs. It’s lovely and it’s very sad, since, spoiler alert, one of the women dies as well as one of the dogs. Gail is a journalist, a writer’s writer, and this is just a very well-written story with wisdom and reflection sprinkled throughout. I read this a year or so before Loey died and had some thoughts about what losing her might be like as I read it; but my wonderings couldn’t have prepared me for the reality. No book or thinking ahead can do that. Well, at least not for me.

The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course. Until Caroline died I had belonged to that other world, the place of innocence and linear expectations, where I thought grief was a simple, wrenching realm of sadness and longing that gradually receded. What that definition left out was the body blow that loss inflicts, as well as the temporary madness, and a range of less straightforward emotions shocking in their intensity.

A Grace Disguised by Jerry Sittser. Jerry’s family was in a horrible car accident and in a matter of moments he lost his wife, his mother, and one of his young kids. This is a book by a Christian who is well-acquainted with grief, though his was such a catastrophic loss, I can’t really relate. The recent loss I have experienced seems so much smaller and more manageable. This is not memoir, but he writes in hopes that he can help people deal with devastating loss by tackling hard questions of faith that the grieving are likely to ask.

Sorrow indicates that people who have suffered loss are living authentically in a world of misery, and it expresses the emotional anguish of people who feel pain for themselves or for others. Sorrow is noble and gracious. It enlarges the soul until the soul is capable of mourning and rejoicing simultaneously, of feeling the world’s pain and hoping for the world’s feeling at the same time.

A Hole In The World by Amanda Held Opelt. Amanda wrote this book after a season of deaths, including her sister’s. She felt unprepared for grief, didn’t know how to mourn, and so looked to the past to discover “rituals surrounding death that allowed mourners to be present in the experience of bereavement.” A friend of mine sent this to me after Loey died, and I read it right away. Some of the chapters didn’t interest me, like “Keening” and “Telling the Bees.” I’m not compelled to cry aloud in anguish or talk to bees— weird! But other chapters like “Sitting Shiva” and “Wearing Black” seem like good practices to acknowledge death over an extended period of time. Whatever happened to the practice of wearing black for a year and not being social? Read the book to find out. The downfall of this book was that I could tell when the author was really interested in a practice and when she really wasn’t— some chapters seemed to deteriorate into paragraphs of lists of “and then...”, “and then...”, like she was hurrying to get the information out so she could move on. This book didn’t help me grieve, per se, but did get me thinking on what I need to do in remembrance of Loey’s death.

You are supposed to fumble through grief.

With Or Without Me by Esther Magnis. This is a raw and honest memoir by a young woman who experienced the death of her father as a teenager, the ensuing silence of God, losing and finding her faith. I read this book years ago after listening to an interview with the author, who talked about how her father’s death killed and then resurrected her faith in God. I grew up hearing that if you lose your faith, that’s it, you’re done, so I really appreciated her perspective. In the interview, she said that our expectations of God, our assumptions of who he is make him small, and this leads us to be disappointed in him.

I prefer this book because Esther’s narrative felt so much more real, less filtered and staid than the others. She isn’t trying to teach anything. This is definitely not a how-to. This is just her story, how dealing with grief was for her. It’s messy and wild. She got really angry. She got really drunk— many, many times. She swore a lot. She smoked tons of cigarettes. She asked God where he was— she howled at him. And as time went by, little by little, he brought her back around.

No lightning struck in the years following Dad’s death. No voice rumbled forth in thunder. No hot coals burned my tongue, no Christ came to me in a dream, no sea parted, no pillar of fire appeared, and no wind whispered. There was no choir of angels, not even a lone angel, nor was my name called by God. There was nothing. God was silent.

And I will never forget that silence. Today, I sometimes think that there is a power in his silence— a power we cannot even imagine.

…There were no more questions directed inward, no more hatred whisperings from within. But God must have been even quieter than all that.

…There must be power there we do not understand.

This is the last post from me until April. I have decided to give up writing for and checking Substack for Lent this year— and who’s to say that I’ll pick it back up again when Lent is over?

Just kidding, I will. Sorry to scare you.

Pittsburgh remains our common home, a shared understanding. For the most part, all four of us have been to the same places traveling and climbing. Last summer we all took a trip to Wyoming, apart and yet together. Brian and I hopped the pond twice recently which were our first important trips without the kids. This is to be expected, normal. However, it felt different when Oren went away last September to travel around Europe for three months. Now he’s been the farthest away from home and for the longest chunk of time without any of the rest of us. He’s experienced something that we have no reference for in our own tiny boring lives.

Since college, Brian and I have done all of our traveling together and been happy to stay closer to home. Traveling around the country to camp and climb is how Brian and I broke the mold. In these experiences we pushed past what our families of origin had left us with, the seed they had planted. These new experiences formed us differently, and were part of how we became our own unique family, how we did things our own way. Our kids came along and they were formed by these things too.

Now Oren has gone to Europe and done that to us— he has crossed over a threshold that we established and into something new. He’s broken the mold! He has been formed by this and separately from us. I have no idea all the ways in which three months in Europe has changed him spiritually or emotionally or mentally. Probably he doesn’t even know yet. For now, all I can do is ponder and process what it was like for me, his mother, while he was away and treasure these things up.

I am, unfortunately, a fearful person. My approach to the future is to prepare myself for the worst. I don’t commend living life with adult kids this way to anyone. In a physical sense, they are out of my hands. I have released them. But there is still a spiritual and emotional connection that may never be totally severed. These less tangible connections to my adult sons still cause me to worry but without a way to resolve it. I can’t do anything about what is happening in their lives besides sit back and watch it unfold. Besides prayer. Prayer deep into the night and the small hours of the morning. Prayer in everything that I do during the day.

This is what parenting is for me now. Brian and I agree that it’s the hardest phase of parenting yet. I can’t tell them what to do anymore, though sometimes I try. I try to discern the right time to speak. I try to practice restraint and wait for their invitation, an invitation that may or may not come. Sometimes I can’t hold my words back, and then I’m grateful that so far my sons aren’t put off— at least, they don’t say so to my face.

So, Oren goes across the ocean for three months, and honestly, I wasn’t looking forward to the loss of sleep, the constant feeling of dread that something bad would happen and I wouldn’t be able to get there— not that he’d need or want me to. Believe you me, I could think up some really awful things. He was traveling with a friend, a good friend who I know well, and so I also worried for him too.

Here is a list of things I was worried about:

• What if they get sick

• What if they get mugged

• What if they get hurt (climbing)

• What if they lose their money/credit card

• What if their money/credit card gets stolen

• What if they lose their passport

• What if their passport gets stolen

• What if their bags get stolen

• What if they get scammed by a friendly stranger

• What if they don’t have anywhere to stay

• What if they don’t have a way to buy food

• What if they miss their flight home

These are all reasonable worries, right?

Before they left, Oren’s travel companion, Augustine, suggested that it might be best if they only shared things with us after the fact, like sickness, because he was confident they could manage on their own. Sure. Fine. Whatever. (EEK.) When I told them I was worried that they might get mugged and get all their stuff stolen, Augustine said, “Actually, I hope that happens! That would be a really good story!” Ha ha ha.

I will tell two specific stories, my favorites from Oren’s trip, to try to illustrate what it was like parenting from afar. He has given me permission.

When Oren and Augustine flew out of Pittsburgh for Paris, I’d started crocheting a blanket that I wanted to give him when he returned. It gave me something specific to do as I waited. My main prayer for the boys young men was that they would encounter the kindness of strangers. I began to imagine as I worked on the blanket, praying, that the Holy Spirit was calling these kind strangers forth in flesh and blood as my hook and hands wove the yarn into stitches.

The boys vagabonds had planned ahead a month in Florence with a place to stay, museums to visit, and books to read. This was the only planned part of their trip and would take place in October. But first they spent a couple of weeks climbing in another Italian town, Arco.

When it came time for them to travel to Florence and claim their Airbnb reservation, they tried to stuff a few extra minutes of climbing into their last morning in Arco, and ended up missing the train to Florence from another small town. They were stuck in this unknown town, overnight with nowhere to stay and decided to go to a restaurant and eat well before spending the night, who knows where, like a park bench or some old cold church steps, until they could get the morning train. They lugged their giant backpacks and their musical instruments with them— Augustine had his violin and Oren had an acoustic guitar plus all their worldly belongings— and sat down at the table in the restaurant.

A man sitting at a table next to theirs, who was with a woman and presumably on a date, happened to be a musician too. He noticed their instruments and began a conversation with them in broken English. The robust conversation lasted the length of the meal and continued when they left the restaurant. (It isn’t clear to me whether the poor woman was forgotten about entirely.) The man finally asked the boys young travelers if they had a place to stay, and when they said no, offered them the floor of his flat to lay their weary heads. They got a good night’s sleep, and he didn’t steal all their things. He was just a very kind man who maybe saw a hint of his own young carefree self in these two American boys men. This is what I had been praying for, and this is only one story out of many when strangers were kind to Oren and Augustine.

For a little bit of time, I wasn’t as worried.

And then the second story unfolded in real time via WhatsApp.

When they had spent their month in Florence, the boys pilgrims headed back up to Arco to climb some more. Upon arrival they found that all the campgrounds had already been closed for the season, no one was climbing, and again, they had nowhere to stay. Oren texted me this information one morning.

I texted him back: Where are you going to stay?

His reply came along a good bit later: In a cave.

Yes, he said “a cave.”

My first thought was, What the hell? My second thought was, Why am I surprised? Oren had wanted to live in a cave since possibly middle school? or high school maybe? when he read a British climber, Jerry Moffat’s memoir, in which Jerry wrote about his own cave-living days as a young climber living “on the dole.” Or maybe it was from an old climbing video he watched. He didn’t inherit this desire from me.

Then another text came through: And I have food poisoning.

Pause for a moment to put those two things together. Let your imagination go: a cave plus food poisoning.

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My imagination, of course, began to run amok. The cave image that popped into my mind was something roughly akin to Shelob’s lair in The Lord of the Rings, further polluted by Oren’s sickness— Ew.

Also, “wild camping” is illegal in most places around the civilized world, and this was true for Arco too. I know because I looked it up on the internet. I imagined them being thrown in jail and missing their flight home a month later. I wanted to text him: Sleeping in caves is illegal!

Instead I typed: Dude, I’m sorry. Is it cold? (It was the beginning of November.) I imagined him getting hypothermia and dying.

It’s a little chilly not terrible though. Can stay warm in my sleeping bag.

And then I imagined him getting dehydrated and dying.

Don’t get dehydrated.

I’m trying not to.

And then I imagined that the food poisoning was really E. coli, which I think you can die from. I asked him if he had a fever.

No.

And then I imagined him drinking non-potable water and getting a worse parasite and dying, so I asked, Do you have access to clean drinking water?

Yes. There are public drinking fountains all over the place.

Ah. They’re close to civilization and not in Shelob’s Lair. Phew! Okay. I could breathe again.

After conferring with Brian, who was alarmed but not as delusional as I was, thankfully, I texted him: You know, if you need to find a place to stay for a day or two, put it on the credit card and we can cover it. I know you always wanted to live in a cave…

He responded: LOL yeah, this isn’t how I pictured it. A mature response, I thought.

They did leave the cave that day and found cheap enough room in town. They never got hurt or mugged or sick again, and they made it to the airport in Paris on time and arrived back in Pittsburgh uneventfully. I gave him the prayer blanket I made. All turned out well.

Now that he’s back, I’m back to a normal level of worry, partly because he’s here. Plus, I hope the distance gave my old heart strings a good stretch and toughened me up. I know that he can go away across the ocean for three months and survive by himself. Of course he can.

The one thing that I imagine has changed for him is that now he knows he can travel the world, he knows how. And once you figure out how to do something, well, you usually plan to do it again, bigger and better the next time. I think this will be true for Oren. I think it’s a matter of time. I wonder where he’ll go next and what I’ll crochet to keep my hands busy then.

I’m late updating my reading list from 2025, but it’s the saddest reading list I’ve ever had since I started keeping track, and for the first time in the history of me reading (so, since I was six), I’ve left so many books unfinished. I used to be very strict about finishing every book I started, and not trying to read too many books all at once, but this year, I failed hugely. I decided that if I didn’t like something enough, it wasn’t worth my time. I also usually have at least three books going at once, which doesn’t help me engage as well as I’d like with any of them individually. That may be contributing to me not finishing some of them. I haven’t updated my 2025 reading list yet, but maybe when I do, I’ll include the books I didn’t finish and why.

I’m also really late starting a new career or vocation or whatever you want to call it as a writer. I’m a verifiable old lady— I can show you my AARP card— and this year I’ve been feeling way, way, way behind in that realm. So behind that I doubt if I’ll ever catch up. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a great essay somewhere and thought to myself, My gosh, I could’ve written that. But I didn’t. And then when I do write something, and I try to send it out for publication, I get the response that it’s old news, it’s already been done. This happens to me over and over again. But it hasn’t happened to me enough because after a few times, I quit trying. And since I quit, I don’t learn. I haven’t had the years of being in this type of work to toughen me up, to give me perseverance and work capacity, to make me fast in the way that I think and get ideas onto paper. I’m so slow.

Okay enough bitching.

This really is supposed to be a 2025 wrap up, though you wouldn’t know it by my introduction.

2025 was a mixed year. We traveled a lot to amazing places: England, Wyoming, and Kentucky. After years of trips being sabotaged way too many times, it was wonderful to be able to do three. I crocheted quite a bit and finished a blanket for my son while he was away on a three month trip to Europe. He arrived safely home in time for his birthday, and I draped that lovely blanket over his shoulders like there was no tomorrow!

This year though, I didn’t write as much as I wanted. Or, I wrote quite a bit, but not the things I usually write. I didn’t publish much, and I tinkered around a lot, but I did write a couple of meaningful reflections for specific events.

In the spring I was invited to write a Good Friday reflection on the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” I read this reflection to a church full or people, which I never do. I was honored to be asked— it’s the first time I have felt really seen for who I am in a church I’m a member of— but it was really, really hard and emotionally taxing. I won’t share a link to this one because I truly believe that this meditation on praying for my nephew who died of cancer was meant for that time and space alone. I’m sorry. You kind of had to be there.

Then my beloved sister died, also from cancer, in July, and I had the terrible privilege of remembering her life and what she meant to me during her memorial service. If reading the reflection on Good Friday to a church full of people was hard, reading this was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I hate nothing more than trying to read through tears, but in both cases, there was no avoiding it. My composure was not expected.

This year, I again wrote a bunch of posts for the ASCEND Climbing & Fitness blog, and here is a list of links if you want to check them out (the titles, I think, give a good idea of what the posts are about):

“Climbing at a Busy Outdoor Climbing Area: Thoughts on Crag Etiquette After Our Trip to the Red River Gorge.” 17 December 2025. https://www.ascendclimbing.com/blog/climbing-at-a-busy-outdoor-climbing-area

“To Train or Not to Train…” 7 October 2025. https://www.ascendclimbing.com/blog/to-train-or-not-to-train

“Summertime Travel: A Threat to Climbing Areas Around the Country.” 2 July 2025. https://www.ascendclimbing.com/blog/summertime-travel-and-a-threat-to-climbing-areas-around-the-country

“Is Climbing Only for the Crazy? the Strong? or the Young?: 5 Myths-Not-Myths of Climbing, Debunked, Sort of.” 4 June 2025. https://www.ascendclimbing.com/blog/is-climbing-only-for-the-crazy

“My Year of Toproping: A Discussion on Why It Failed Me.” 11 April 2025. https://www.ascendclimbing.com/blog/my-year-of-top-roping

“Taking Care.” ASCEND Climbing + Fitness Blog. 13 March 2025 https://www.ascendclimbing.com/blog/taking-care

“Winter Climbing.” ASCEND Climbing + Fitness Blog. 5 February 2025. https://www.ascendclimbing.com/blog/winter-climbing

I love writing for the ASCEND blog because I get to write about whatever I want, and I love writing about climbing. These aren’t serious or fine-tuned, but they are fun.

Another piece I spent a lot of time on this summer/fall was a 1500 word essay that was required for the application for the Doctorate of Ministry Creative Writing and Public Theology Program at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. That’s right, I decided to apply for seminary, and lo and behold, I was accepted! I’m going back to school! What better endeavor for a middle-aged lady who probably should have done graduate school long before this. Better late than never, some people say.

This brings me back around to my starting point— on being a late bloomer. I have high hopes that this program will help the feeling of being behind diminish. I chose the topic of the Theology of Play for the analytical essay, which I hope to be focusing on in my studies these next two years starting in June. It was academic and so different than anything I’ve written in a long time (I got my Master’s in Creative Writing in 2009 and I did more creative non-than academic writing for that) and required citations formatted in the Chicago Manual Style. This essay felt like a huge success.

One last thing I want to share with you is an article I had published in Christianity Today in August, “Confessions of a Reluctant Church Volunteer.” This article is the story of my own experience volunteering at church and asks the question, if there aren’t more volunteers, will churches be able to help their communities in the way they need to? It was also really enjoyable to write, to be able to tell part of my vocation story, and work on it with the CT editor. I hope to write more in this capacity for a magazine and with the guidance of an editor in the future.

I think all this work, though super slow, slow like trying to get molasses out of a jar to make cookies on a cold day, is still forming me into better writer in different ways. You know, practice makes perfect. I’m not giving up on being a writer yet, and I think 2026 might turn out to be a better year for that.

Happy New Year everbody!

Merriam-Webster defines convivial as “a cheerful word that typically suggests a mood of full-bellied delight in good food, good drink, and good company…” I recently read (part of) a book by Ivan Illich called Tools of Conviviality, where he used the word to talk about technology (like health care and education) that is meant for the common good, meant for human flourishing and freedom. Really though, he shows where these tools went wrong and became decidedly not convivial— unfriendly or inhospitable, to say the least.

Maybe even social media was intended for the good of all, but most people these days wouldn’t call it convivial. It’s meant to capture people rather than free them. Sure, social media is free, but it is not free-ing. Maybe I’ve misunderstood the Substack creator’s intentions, but to my dismay, Substack has morphed into something more akin to social media than a convivial platform for writers.

I use Substack to write and read (only a few) other Substacks. But there are things about it and add-ons that have crept in during my time using the platform that have made it feel much more like social media. Notes is one of these add-ons. I rarely read Notes or write my own. Notes in Substack, as far as I can tell, works a little like Twitter did/X does. I was never on Twitter myself, but I have heard other people say this who know. You write a Note to garner more interest for yourself or a post you wrote or someone else’s, ever bringing yourself to your follower’s attention. It seems to be most useful for people who need the least amount of help growing interest.

For example, when I post a Note, no one reads it. Okay, one person reads it (thanks Keith!). But if someone who already has a thousand or a million followers posts a Note, they get, maybe, ten likes. But then it gets shared and reshared and re-reshared, etc. It ends up being a conversation between people who are already recognized as awesome, so they can then recognize each other as also awesome.

“You’re amazing!”

“No, you’re amazing!”

Okay, I’m sorry, that’s not fair. I have some resentment issues that I need to work through, for sure. I digress.

Chat is another add-on I don’t use. Sometimes I’ll comment on a person’s post, but why would I want to “chat”? Do I really want to talk to people here? Seems like a time waster. I also don’t use the Substack app on my phone because it encourages its own version of doom scrolling— not doom scrolling to read people’s writing, but to read their Notes. Or Chats. I’m not really sure, actually. I tried the app for a short duration thinking it would be a better way to read the people I follow, but it ended up trapping me, scrolling endlessly to figure out what I was actually reading, eventually realizing it was just chatter in Notes. The app is bright and shiny, and you want to click on it all the time. Then it forces you into this cattle chute of scrolling before you even realize what’s going on. Not convivial! Force is not friendly.

Notes, Chat and cattle chutes aside, “liking” is the part of Substack that is most like social media for me. It’s the part that I find myself caught up in against my weak-ass will. I used to be pretty good about not caring how many likes I get, or at least telling myself that I didn’t care. In a way, getting likes on Substack is like getting likes via Instagram or Facebook: it’s kind of the goal— getting noticed, getting people to talk about what you wrote, getting other people to want to read it and follow you too. It’s all about the getting.

It’s also not like getting likes via Instagram or Facebook. Substack’s problem is that, since it’s not officially social media, people don’t use it as such, and the liking function is super ambiguous and useless. It doesn’t reflect reality. Ha, reality!

Personally, when I read someone’s post, if I know them, I usually like it— I click on the heart. I want them to know I read it (and usually I like what I read). If I don’t know the person, I typically don’t like it even if I like it. Annoyingly, when you read someone’s post in an email, and you click on the heart in the email, it links you to the webpage and you are forced (again!) to click the heart there. It takes just that much more time, and so, I don’t always like stuff, you know, even if I like it.

Maybe this is why even popular writers on Substack don’t get a lot of likes. Take Freddie deBoer for instance. He is a journalist and prolific cultural commentator who has, roughly, a gazillion and one followers, and his posts generally get about twenty-five likes. That’s a pretty low percentage of his readers. He must get a lot of comments (or Chats or Notes) because he’s always arguing with those who misunderstand what he said before. He does make good money via Substack(he has said this himself) though, which is better than getting a lot of likes.

Substack also offers data, stats. Numbers! Numbers don’t lie, right? How many subscribers do I have? How many followers? Which subscribers open their emails? Where are people finding my posts when they do read them? How many likes does each post get and from which subscriber or follower? How much interaction do I have with my readers? Substack keeps track of everything and sends me reports which sometimes I read and sometimes I don’t. I can opt out of receiving stat reports via email, but the numbers and graphs are always the main thing I see on my dashboard when I go to write a new post or to check how many people liked the last one I wrote.

But the stats haven’t helped me. The stats make me crazy. They are incomplete and sometimes give me a bad opinion of my readers. The numbers do lie! For example, two of my top posts in the past year or so, the ones I have received the most likes for, were about losing something— the eulogy of my sister by far received the most likes of anything I have posted in the more than two years I have been writing on Substack. In second place was the post about the dramatic conflagration of our van.

What do these likes mean?

I know in both cases that my writing was very good (IMHO), but it seems like it takes tragedy to get a rise out of you, O my readers. But that’s a very ungenerous take on it. In all likelihood, these likes were meant as moral support.

But is that what likes are for? Writers pay attention to likes so they can write according to what the largest number of their audience is interested in. I actually hope that I don’t have another event like those two to share with you, O my readers.

The latest essay I posted on Substack in November was a short essay concerning climbing that I thought all of my followers would like, not just climbers. It’s also an essay I worked on for a long time, here and there, over the years. It isn’t the typical post that only took me an hour or two to write. This essay holds my heart in it, too, though slightly less earnestly and a little more fun than the eulogy or the conflagration. But after being out in the world for a week, it received all of four likes. Four! Now a month later, that number has gone up to six.

Maybe this is a sign that my writing is actually terrible or boring, even though I, personally, love it and sometimes hear directly from people that they love it too. Maybe I should’ve kept the word “climbing” out of the title. Maybe that single word made 80% of you roll your eyes, and you didn’t even look at it. Maybe you said to yourself, My God, not another climbing post! I only have time for death and carnage!

I apologize for that too. I know in my empty-outline-of-a-clickable-heart that that is not what most of you are thinking. You aren’t just waiting to read the sensational stuff. This is the very problem with Substack, the un-conviviality of it. Substack turns us into people who we actually aren’t. It does not make people friends. I shouldn’t even be making such a horrid assumption about you, O my readers! I shouldn’t be paying attention to the stats. I should be ignoring the likes. I should write for the sake of writing because I love it, and you should read it only if you want to. That should be enough.

But Substack is slowly forming me into a person who is hungry for things that don’t matter, with an appetite for getting those empty hearts filled with red. I mean, look at me here, practically begging for you to like my posts by telling you I don’t really want you to like my posts. How undignified!

It is also making me— making me!— use so many exclamation points, another practice that I really do not like.

Maybe I’ll feel better about myself if I go back to the harder-to-use yet somewhat more convivial Wordpress platform.

Maybe slightly.

Probably not.

Be careful what you eat for breakfast when out climbing. There is nothing worse than having to relieve your abruptly troubled bowels when your harness and your climbing shoes are on and you are tied into the rope. Was it the hard-boiled eggs or the maple and brown sugar instant oatmeal? It takes time to untie, unbuckle, and remove that stuff. It takes time to find a private spot to do your business in the great outdoors of a likely busy climbing area. It takes time to dig a hole. It takes time to comfortably situate yourself and aim. It could take more time than you actually have. If this doesn’t go well, it could completely ruin a climbing day before it even gets started... and a pair of underpants.

~*~

The worst is when you start up a climb and then realize you have left all your quickdraws1 on the ground. Hopefully, the rope is clipped into the first bolt already, or now you have to climb down, or worse yet, jump. Hopefully, you won’t hurt an ankle, knee, or back.

~*~

Here come the dogs, barreling right towards you. This one jumps up and licks you. That one noses through your stuff for food and steps muddy paw prints all over your favorite hoodie— is it the same one that blew by you on the trail earlier and almost knocked you to the ground? Yet another one prances happily on your rope, wanting to say Hi! to you while you are trying to belay. You glance around wondering, Where is this dog’s human? Eventually you do hear the people coming, because they are hollering the dog’s name over and over again, trying to get them to Come back here right now, Rocky! C’mere boy! They finally arrive in person, somewhat more aloof compared to their furry ambassador. You try to pet the dogs while steering them away from your stuff, saying Oh hey there, cute puppy! No, no, bad doggy. Normally, you like dogs, but when an unknown dog is not on a leash, it’s hard to just assume, this dog must be friendly! This dog is cute, so it’s fine! Granted, most people are apologetic for their dog if they are too exuberant, and they try to grab their dog before any true damage is done. But you’re always afraid there will be the one dog, just following his nose, that brazenly runs up and eats the sandwich right out of your young kid’s hand, your young kid who happens to be terrified of dogs even when said dog doesn’t run right up to them with their scary looking teeth, your kid who would be scared even if the dog were laying down calmly, one hundred feet away. You appreciate the apology, really, you do, but it doesn’t un-terrorize your kid. So when the dogs come running in, as a parent, you kind of have to assume that all the dogs are going to be like that one unleashed, sandwich-eating dog, and then you feel like the bad guy when you ask the dog(s)’s person, maybe with a tinge of annoyance in your voice, Would you mind leashing your dog(s), please? And then you feel like you also need to apologize, Sorry, my kid is just really, really scared of dogs. It seems like this leaves everyone with feelings of disgust — well, at least one parent is left feeling this way and assuming everyone else harbors similar emotions.

~*~

You are en famille at Beauty Mountain, New River Gorge, on a rare— now that you are parents of young-uns— weekend-long camping and climbing excursion. You have warmed up your body and fingers well on a couple of easy rock climbs. Right now, though, you are just sitting there, in an awkward position in your ancient, lopsided Crazy Creek camping chair in a pile of leaves and dirt and pine needles, back propped up against the trunk of a tree, with your toddler finally passed out, head lolling, rosy-cheeked, sweating in your arms. You were ready to attempt that project route you have been waiting to try for a long time— since the last time you were able to be outside, which feels like eons ago. You don’t get out much these days. But your toddler had been pitching fits all morning because he hasn’t napped at any point since you’ve left home early yesterday morning, and he didn’t sleep well last night in the tent. You are too afraid to pass him off to his dad because the poor kid might wake up. And then, poor everyone else. You are already getting looks from the other climbers in the area— even their dog is better behaved. The worst part is that you feel a deep, shakey weariness beginning in your shoulders, biceps, forearms— holding him is going to make you too tired to climb hard when his nap does finally end. You sit and stew in bitterness that your climbing day is probably ruined. But on the flip side of that emotional coin, you are also happy he isn’t screaming anymore. It’s so quiet and peaceful. You tell yourself to stay in the moment and not wish it away because the kiddo laying in your arms, still and rosy-cheeked, is beautiful. Remember, he isn’t going to want to take naps while you hold him forever. Someday, when he’s sixteen, say, he might not want you to hug him or, for that matter, even look in his general direction with love in your eyes. You try to be thankful that babies are very sweet when they are sleeping and that your climbing arms will be strong enough to hold him for an hour— but please, for the love, no longer than that.

~*~

You occasionally find yourself too scared to climb. At random inconvenient moments— like in the middle of a rock climb— fear creeps up on you, slowly but surely, and then sits, buzzing like an angry Yellowjacket, in the space between your ears. It makes it hard to think or breathe, much less move. Then you have to ask your partner if he’ll finish it. He asks you if you’re sure, and when you holler a little too loudly, Yes!, he gently, if not kindly, lowers you to the ground without saying a word. He doesn’t say, It’s okay, I totally wanted to do this one again. He also doesn’t tell you how much he didn’t want to have to climb this one again. But no matter what you still feel defeated. You feel self-induced shame when you cannot finish a climb yourself. It means you’re not strong enough, and if you’re not strong enough, it means you’re weak. You tell yourself, It means I’m a weak woman, a weak person. This self-induced shame can be paralyzing. It can make you want to quit climbing. It usually makes you cry too. Self-induced shame is the worst.

~*~

One of your young offspring is belting out the ABC’s somewhere nearby while you are in the midst of topping out a boulder, and your friend, who is spotting you, yells at him to, Please be quiet! Can’t you see your mom is trying to climb? You aren’t sure which is more distracting. You’re really glad your little guy finally knows the ABC’s though, now that he’s eight.

~*~

You’ve been doing tons of pull ups in preparation for your climbing trip. Now here you are at the feet of the enormous and snowy Sierra Mountains outside Bishop, CA, working on a stout, powerful boulder problem that makes you feel like all the pull ups have paid off. Then your husband, who has completely given up climbing for the past 18 months to focus on racing his bike, tries a problem on the same boulder that is three times as hard— and does it, first try, without working on it at all. This proves he will always climb harder than you, no matter what; there’s nothing you can do about it. You feel the sharp bite of envy coupled with resentment and the tiniest puff of hatred for him right then. It’s probably fortunate you aren’t on the top of the boulder with him harboring these dangerous feelings. The tiny cloud of hatred quickly evaporates though because he looks really good when he is climbing. You remember that watching him climb is what made you want to try climbing in the first place. Watching him climb inspired you to get better at it when you were still a weakling “noob.” Watching him now makes you want to kick a little dust into his sparkling, gray eyes, sure— but it makes you want to try harder too. And he’s your favorite person to go climbing with in the whole world.

~*~

When climbing a route, it isn’t advisable to let go in order to shoo bugs away. So when biting flies or mosquitoes begin to land on you, you have to suck it up and let them. Hopefully you are so enthralled with the rock climb that you don’t notice all the mini feasts happening until you are back down on the ground. On the ground it’s safe to shoo or scratch with both hands. But that’s when you’ll feel it; all the bug-munching that happened on the exposed skin of your back and arms and calves while you climbed will make itself known to you. And it will drive you mad.

~*~

When people smoke in beautiful climbing areas, it kind of ruins the environment. This coming from an ex-smoker who understands the desire to smoke, and who is still enticed by the smell of it, sometimes— but never when climbing. What’s worse than being on a climb and breathing hard when someone below lights up a cigarette, and the smoke wafts into the very air you are desperately sucking in? Being on a climb when someone lights up something else. Then, not only is the air you are breathing extra heavy and stifling and very stinky, it also makes you feel a little lightheaded— and extremely hungry for Doritos.

~*~

A climber wants their climbing partners, friends, people, to call out occasional words of encouragement. A climber wants to hear, You’ve got this! or Allez! or Go for it! or better yet, Don’t forget to heel hook! Climbing isn’t golf. But sometimes the words are used at the wrong time, or too often, or just are not what should be said. Like “calm down” for instance. Please, do not yell Calm down! at a climber. It does not help them calm down, if, in fact, they need to calm down. It actually makes them want to yell, No! You calm down! right back. Or it makes them feel like they weren’t as calm as they thought they were, and now they definitely aren’t calm anymore. Or sometimes all the people watching the climber are yelling different things at the same time, and it’s just a lot of noise, and the person climbing is already stressed out and kind of high off the ground. Or they are each shouting out a different direction the climber should go, and the climber gets confused and goes the wrong way and falls. Maybe climbing should be more like golf.

~*~

The worst is when you climb through the red-point crux of a rock climb (Yes!) only to fall later on an easier move because your insouciant foot slips (Noooooooo!). It’s so horrible when this happens that it can actually make you want to give up climbing forever. Or at the very least scream Motherbleeper! at the top of your lungs before trying again.

~*~

Rain and climbing do not mix. When rock is wet, it’s slippery. Sometimes, though, you have to defy the weather forecast of scattered thunderstorms and go climbing anyway. Especially if you live on the east side of the US. What’s the worst that could happen? One of those scattered thunderstorm clouds could zero in on you and dump a bunch of precipitation all over the cliff when you are in the middle or near the top of a route, and the hard moves are still ahead of you. Well, getting struck by lightning while you’re up there might be worse.

~*~

It’s your favorite time of the day. The sun has lowered behind the hills and is no longer harassing you with its heat or casting strange shadows. The texture of the rock is easier to read. A breeze cools the sweaty parts of your body. The cicadas buzz languidly. The crickets and the tree frogs begin their evening songs. But all at once it is hard to see. Damn, you have climbed too long, too late. By the time you reach the ground, twilight has set in and the shadows are deep. You pack up all your gear and throw it on your back to start the hike out, but now the woods are indecipherably black even though the sky still glows. The stars peek out but do little to light the trail. It would be really convenient if you had your headlamp, so you take your backpack off and dig through the pockets looking for it. As you are searching, alas!, you remember: your headlamp is sitting in the center console of the car. You will have to hike out in the dark. You hope you won’t accidentally step off the side of the trail in that one spot where it narrows and drops off ten feet into a shallow creek. That would be the worst.

~*~

The weekend of climbing is over and you’re driving home. You’re exhausted; you’re holding the steering wheel with only two fingers and a thumb because the skin on your hands feels so tender and your fingers are claws; your forearms, elbows, and shoulders are jelly-like and crying out for total inertia; your brain is fried. But these aren’t the worst parts of the end of a climbing weekend. The worst is that your body would rather be dead asleep at the moment, but thoughts are twirling, playfully, a little obsessively, around the crux move of that last climb. You can’t stop wondering why you couldn’t do that move without falling, why that move felt so awkward. Your eyes are open and you appear to be paying attention to the road and the cars you are systematically passing, but your mind is back on that climb, back at the crux move, feeling your fingers crimp those credit card edges again, feeling your foot come up to that tick-marked2 hint-of-a-divot, feeling your butt stick out too far and throw you off. And so mentally you try again; you visualize other options for your right foot— maybe you missed something. Your inner eye spots another foot hold that is lower and smaller than what you had been using. Eureka! It’s barely a wrinkle, but you know it will be just enough. When you re-imagine the sequence with that new foot hold, you can actually feel the difference it will make in your body, right now, at this very moment, though you are sitting in the car driving home. You can feel what it will do to your hips, that your butt will remain an unmoving fulcrum, if you use this newly discovered foothold. Damnit! you yell out loud, smacking the steering wheel to the dismay of your sore hand, startling your sleeping passengers. I want to go back! And so this is the worst thing about climbing: when it comes to an end— for a week, a month, a year?— and all you want to do is go back and try that move one more time.

After we lost the van, I wrote this:

I’m trying hard not to think that this van going up in flames isn’t a bad sign for #brian&jen2.0. That would be dumb. But now that this van is gone, we’re back to the drawing board, trying to figure out, how does #brian&jen2.0 move forward, so to speak? It’s an important question. We are climbers. We like camping. We like going on long trips to camp and climb. We tried a Eurovan do-over, and well, that just exploded. I don’t think we want to join the ranks of 90% of the US outdoorsy population who own crazier and newer and more expensive camper vans than ours. Do we look back to the days of our youth and start tent camping again? Sleeping on the ground, again? Or maybe we’ll get a truck and build out the back of it for sleeping and storage. Maybe we’ll get a super small and light trailer we can tow with a smaller car. Maybe we’ll talk about this forever and never truly launch #brian&jen2.0 because of decision-making burnout.

I feel like I owe a quickie on the version updates of #brian&jen2.0.

Last fall we bought the red Toyota Tacoma, #brian&jen version 2.1. We did what I thought we might— we put a cap on the back and built a platform and ordered the most amazing 6 inch mattress to sleep on. We also purchased a tent to enclose the back with the window up and the tailgate down so we had enough leg room to lay down. This set up feels very much like regular old camping and is perfect for weekends. It even worked pretty well for our 10 days in WY this spring.

This summer we began planning a fall trip to KY to climb at the Red River Gorge. No, we do not plan to go off-roading! As we thought about what KY is probably like in October, we thought about rain. It’s going to rain; rain is a given in KY in October. You can climb in the rain at The Red because much of the rock is so steep. But I wondered if we wanted to be stuck hanging out at the campground when we weren’t climbing in just the truck and not having a dry space to cook. I decided I did not want to be stuck in the truck when it rains. There was money left over from the insurance pay-out from the van. We revisited the super light trailer idea from previous brain-storming sessions.

Brian, who is better at researching things on the internet than I am, got to looking. Very quickly he found a local couple who was selling their used tiny trailer, called the Taxa Tiger Moth. On “paper,” this trailer didn’t sound that appealing to me. The Tiger Moth is basically a place to sit that folds down to a place to sleep with a cooking galley on the outside. This older model doesn’t even have a table inside. I wanted something that had a little more space inside. I wanted to cook inside. I really wanted a little Scamp, which is a different kind of mini-trailer with a kitchen and a bed and a place to sit inside. Scamps are very cute. The Tiger Moth kind of looks like a trailer you’d tow a 4x4 in.

Since the Tiger Moth was local, we decided that we’d go ahead and look at it. Brian was interested in this one because of the low price it was being sold for and didn’t really want to look any further. Everything else was much more expensive and heavier.

The Tiger Moth was a pleasant surprise. The couple had it all set up for us in their driveway. It’s all the things I said it is, plus more. There is a good-sized awning that rolls off the back and shelters the cooking galley. There is lighting under the awning so you can cook with more than a head lamp when it’s dark. The couple had also purchased a tent that connects to the awning which completely encloses the area. It’s as close to being inside to cook as you can get without actually being inside. The tent has a floor too, so if it’s rainy, you aren’t just standing around in the mud. The enclosed area is big enough for us to have our chairs to sit in and even enough space to hold other sundry things like a cooler and our luggage, if we want. We could also have people over!

It’s a place to hang out! It’s a place to cook! On sight, I was convinced, and we decided to buy it and picked it up the following weekend. Done.

I consider the Tiger Moth #brian&jen2.1.1. Brian disagrees. He thinks it’s just part of #brian&jen2.1. Whatever. I’m the author, so I win. We took it to The New in WV a couple weeks ago to shake it down. We camped in it for two nights. It’s almost perfect. It’s exactly what we need, for now. Now that we’ve been taking more trips. Now that we’ve been venturing out further from home for longer periods of time since we started empty nesting more than a year ago. It’s been a slow emerging. It took us longer than I thought it would to want to leave home without our boys, to take the kind of trip we’d need a trailer for. We’re feeling less grief being out there on our own.

And so begins #jen&brian2.1.1…. We leave this weekend for 2 weeks in KY, for the great first testing of the Tiger Moth, and of ourselves climbing at The Red for longer than we ever have before.

THERE IS SO MUCH POTENTIAL HERE!

By 2017 Steve had already launched one of the first climbing coaching programs in the country, and we’d arrived to have our personal climbing strength evaluated. Brian and I were in our mid-40s, and Steve was the ripe old age of 50. He was and is much more of an avid climber than us with the added benefit of having a degree in physical training and living minutes away from some of the best sport climbing in the US, if not the world. He climbed a ton, he read a ton, and he had been coaching a ton of climbers for a while. For us, Steve was The Climbing Guru, and we were on some sort of pilgrimage seeking enlightenment.

Well, mainly Brian was. I had been injured since the previous year, so I already knew I wasn’t my strongest. But Brian had been questioning his strength for a long time. The past few climbing years hadn’t been kind to Brian, whereas, before I injured my shoulder, I’d seen a lot of personal success and increase in strength. He was basically there to find out if he was too old and physically weak to keep sending hard stuff. He was there for the cold hard facts, numbers, and data.

To make a long story slightly shorter, Brian was fully evaluated and found to be super strong and fit. I mean super strong2. His grip strength in one hand was more than 80% of his body weight. He was also able to heave and fling some serious kettlebell weights around.

I think Brian was a little disappointed, actually. It might have been easier for him to learn that he was indeed too old and too weak to climb hard. Then I think he could have relaxed into climbing 5.8 trad routes for the rest of his days. Getting confirmation that he was as strong as he probably ever was, and that the only reason he wasn’t climbing hard is because he was telling himself he couldn’t, was a bit of a blow.

But getting the news from Steve softened the impact, and definitely put it in perspective. Steve is very gracious and honest when talking about his own climbing journey, and he could acknowledge to Brian that climbing as an old(er) person took on a new mental challenge, especially as life and kids were beginning to pull us away from climbing outside as often as we had in the past.

Jump ahead eight years to 2025, and we were back in the Lander area for ten whole days, this time to climb, as you know. We had no thought of spending time with Steve, except for the hope of maybe running into him at the crag. We doubted he really remembered us, even though he had written a personal note in a book we ordered from him in the past year. Since we last saw him, he’d become more of a super-star in the climbing world.

But then Brian posted some pics of our first cold, foggy climbing day at Wild Iris on InstaGram, and one of the ClimbStrong coaches who had been my coach for a couple of years3 saw that we were in the area and texted me. We made plans to meet up with him at Elemental, Steve’s gym, on our first rest day. Ken had coached me long distance over the phone, so it was fun to finally meet in person. It was also super short and quick, only fifteen minutes. But since we met at Elemental, Steve walked right into the middle of our huddle. He did remember us! It was a big old-time climber reunion! Then we said our goodbyes4.

Afterwards I kept thinking of all these questions I wanted to ask Steve as we embark on climbing into our 50s and 60s. I wanted to ask him specific questions about what he’s observed of the difference between men aging and climbing and women aging and climbing. I thought about these things as we hiked the long, long trail to the crag the next day.

Personally, I get frustrated quite often because of one thing in particular— Brian always, always, always5 climbs harder than me. This trip was no exception. I get so frustrated about it because I’m the most diligent and most consistent when it comes to, not just climbing, but also training for climbing. I am dedicated! Brian is the opposite; and yet, still out climbs me by far, even off the couch. He warms up on my projects. I’m pissed at him most of the time, really6.

I wanted some answers— if there were any answers to be had. I voiced all this to Brian and he said, “Why don’t you just email him and see?” Probably just to get me to stop yelling at him for climbing harder than me. So I did, and Steve enthusiastically responded, “For sure— I would love that!” Aww.

And so we finally arrive at the whole point of this post7— our recent conversation with Steve Bechtel. Much of this was transcribed directly and are Steve’s exact words. Where our natural dialog got sloppy and mucked-up with totally-s and likes and supers, and where I wanted to have more control over unwieldy or vague content, I felt the freedom to edit. Steve can correct me if I get anything wrong— I’ve been trying to get him to subscribe to my Substack anyway!

As older climbers, we wonder how to maintain a high level of athletic performance. If you’d have been a gymnast, you’d have been retired for 35 years by now. Cyclists do pretty well at maintaining a high level of performance because it’s a non-weight bearing sport. But if you were in many other sports, you’d be lucky to be “climbing at the 5.7 level” in that sport.

So, Steve told us, the fact that Brian and I are in our 50s and climbing in the 5.12 range, means we’re doing alright. Yay!

When we lose strength and aerobic capacity, we think it must be because of age. But the reason they decline is because we quit addressing strength and aerobic capacity in our 30s and 40s. Maybe it’s because you’ve got little kids, maybe work is getting more intense, maybe you bought a house in those years— maybe it’s the combination of all three and a multitude of others. In those years, overall training time starts to decline for many climbers. We can regain our fitness and performance level once some of those other responsibilities take less of our time, but the way to do it is finding the volume again— getting back to doing the work for the same amount of time that we used to, not worrying about the intensity of that work at first.

Older athletes might go too hard too fast when trying to get back to a high level of performance. Ideally, you buy back low intensity, high volume, very easy work at first. Then you can add intensity. It’s important to know and remember that soft tissue adapts slowly, and bones adapt even more slowly. Tendons adapt seven times slower than muscle and bones three times slower than that. You need to be patient and consistent.

Another key is that recovery is everything. The quicker you can recover the better the work you can do. A lot of people don’t realize that the thing about steroid use back-in-the-day wasn’t just that it made your muscles bigger. Steroids let you recover very quickly because it kept inflammation down, and it’s a metabolic (increasing your body’s ability to burn calories). Especially as women age, hormonal changes, the inability to hold onto minerals, hot flashes, loss of sleep, etc., keep your ability to recover down. It’s harder in general to recover as you get older.

This is a good big picture way to approach climbing for the older athlete:

1. Two developmental days per week— these days are for improvement. You push your maxes and performance numbers up— you want to improve a number on something. It could be your pull-up with added weight; it could be the number of reps you do; it could be your average bouldering grade across a session in the gym. It could even be a session where you just do something that you’re proud of— pushing yourself past a crux move. Taking a fall. The hero effort is important to consider. Maybe you try that deadpoint move four times and fall every single time. But you were working on emotional regulation; you were working on drive and your will to succeed.

2. One to two reinforcement days per week— these days you’re not doing anything harder than moderate climbing. You’re stopping at 20 boulder probs. You’re going to do a lot of exercise that’s well within your realm. You're just proving what you can already do and maintaining what you’ve got.

3. Ideally, six days of active recovery per week (30 mins a day, 3-4 hours a week)— Recovery doesn’t mean no activity. It means easy cycling or swimming or going for a walk at an intentional pace. Thirty minutes of walking a day is better for recovery than taking a total rest day. Even easy climbing, easy weight circuits, heart rate below 130, never gasping— this is restorative and enhances recovery. You can also do a recovery workout the same day you do a developmental workout. You can go boulder super hard and then go for a walk that evening. Or, you can climb in the gym and then go for a 90 minute bike ride— you’ll feel restored after that.

Reinforcement and recovery are more important as we age, but don’t skimp on them. They really are the key.

Steve is in his mid-50s and has been going through Wild Iris recently to repeat a bunch of routes that he onsighted or did quickly when he was in his 20s. For example, Two Kinds of Justice is a 12b that he did second try back in 1994. Last year it took him four days of work to send it. He loves approaching the easier grades now, being tactically smart and fighting the fatigue. When you do this, you’ve still got that feeling of really having to put the moves together if you want to make it to the anchors. It’s valuable even if it’s a route you’ve already sent before. Knowing this particularly made both Brian and I feel good about how we approach climbing now, especially when we go outside. In the future we will feel less like losers when routes we’ve done in the past feel really hard. It will help us try hard even on routes that we would consider “easy,” or felt easy the first time we did it.

It was hard to have a specific conversation about the difference between men and women athletes as they age. We talked about a few of the highest level climbers in the world like Lynn Hill and Bobbie Bensman and Ben Moon. The women have maintained a lower level of climbing compared to their hardest-ever climbs. However, Ben Moon achieved his second hardest-ever climb as an old guy— well, at 49 years old, that is.

But what about ordinary humans, not necessarily the top climbers in the whole world? Steve started to tell us about this ordinary guy, who has a family and works, and at the age of 49, trained and sent his first 13a. Yes, yes, yes, of course.

“But what about the female side of that anecdote,” I asked? I want to hear about the 49-year-old woman who trains and sends her first 13a— first, being the key word. People of that age who already climb at that level can probably maintain it. A few years ago, I wrote a post in response to a story of a 49-year old woman repointing 13d.8 But Steve didn’t know of an older woman sending her first 13a9. So I said, maybe I should be that anecdote, jokingly. I sent my first and only 13a when I was 38, is it completely unreasonable that I could send another one at the ripe old age of 5210?

Oh geez, I don’t know. It might take more time and effort than I want to spend at this time in my life. And maybe that’s the thing. Maybe by the time most of us get to this age, there just isn’t enough time or energy or gumption to devote to such an endeavor.

I don’t know, I really don’t. Maybe there is. Maybe I’ll find out. Hmm, I don’t know. I really, really don’t.

We decided on Wild Iris as a destination this year because our younger son, Oren spent a couple of weeks there with friends last year after he graduated from high school. The photos we required him to send to us as proof of life made us drool. Brian and I had been to this part of WY before in 2017, but only for one day, and one of Oren’s photos reminded us why we needed to return and spend more time.

Brian and I would have gone out there on our own, but what solidified our plans was that both our boys and some of their friends were planning to go too, this year. Us-old-folks didn’t want to go with them/with them, but we thought it would be cool to be out there when they were out there and maybe run into them here and there. This sounded to me like a cool way to do a family vacation without doing a family vacation. It could be a new model for how to spend time off in the great outdoors, and maybe even climb, with our adult kids who don’t live at home anymore.

As I’ve written before, it’s important to me, and I hope at least a tiny bit to the rest of my family, that we continue to take trips together, to do things together outside of the norm, away from Pittsburgh. Especially now that we are Empty Nesting.2 Last summer, Oren went on his trip, but as a family, the only thing we could muster due to illness and bad weather was an overnight in Cleveland for a visit to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

This summer needed to be different! We needed a good trip! And so our trip to Wild Iris came into being.

Along with the tantalizing photos from Oren’s trip last year, there were logistics that made us-old-folks going a necessity this time.

Here are the logistics:

Brian and I drove out first, leaving here six days in advance of the young men: Seb and Oren and three friends followed. Thankfully another set of parents, also wanting this trip to come to fruition, lent them their truck, so that a) there would be enough room for all of them and they wouldn’t smother each other, and b) Oren’s car wouldn’t fall apart and leave them stranded out there, and c) there would be space to bring another friend home along with all of his stuff from college. The plan for the young-folks was to stay in the Lander area climbing, camping, and cavorting for two weeks. Seb couldn’t stay as long as the others on account of work, so he planned to come back with us-old-folks earlier, giving the additional friend a space in the truck on the way back with the young-folks later.

The minutiae solidified around this scaffolding of time, and this is basically what we all pulled off. Success!

The minutiae is as follows:

The young men came up to climb at Wild Iris on their first full day in the Lander area. Brian and I had already been out climbing since the morning at The Erratic, where it was shady and cool, and were hiking over to the Main Wall when we spied the crew trudging across the meadow on the Aspen Glad trail, moving slowly in the sun and heat. It was a joy to see all of them there in person, finally.

When we caught up with them, we shared pleasantries, and they told us stories of their drive, and in general it was a pretty raucous meeting, as you can imagine it would be meeting up with six boisterous young men. They argued for a good bit and loudly about who was the most responsible— the ones who remembered to bring back packs with climbing gear, or the ones who remembered to bring food and water. Hmmm, safety vs. sustenance? Who’s to say?

When they began preparing to climb, and one of our sons pulled out his new rope, not yet flaked and completely tangled, from the giant blue Ikea bag he’d forced one of his friends to carry since he (the friend) had forgotten a backpack, we decided it best not to witness the shit-show of them climbing together and wandered on down the way to do some (quieter, more organized, possibly safer) climbing on our own. If we had stuck around, I might have shifted into the dreaded Mommy Mode, and nobody and no one wanted that. We prayed not to hear any hollers of dismay from them— a few, but not all, of them were seasoned-enough climbers, but none of them were very organized. We never did hear anything from them the rest of the day, so we assumed they’d been safe. Safe enough.3 On the hike back to camp, I picked up the trash that my son must not have seen laying in the dirt where they climbed. Ahem! I could act like a mom as long as my sons didn’t witness it.

Brian and I camped in the same campground with them for two nights, and that was enough. We gave them as much space as possible. We did not want to hamper, or really witness, their freedom. We spent just enough time with them. We watched them play round after ever-loving round of spike ball, posturing and shit-talking galore.

Probably my favorite thing was sitting around the fire with them after dinner, gabbing and bragging (some of us anyway) after the one day of climbing we spent together. One day of climbing with them was enough.

To be clear, I’m saying all of this with much affection. I love these guys, and I love hanging out with them. Brian and I enjoyed belaying some of them and listening to them harange and goad each other. At one point one of them challenged another, “If you can send this climb without falling, I’ll kiss you!” The challengee went on to climb said route without falling, but I didn’t get to see if the challenger actually followed through with the kiss. It’s probably better that way.

Brian and I said to ourselves and to all of our friends who asked about the trip, that if we had come across this group of guys out climbing and didn’t know who they were, we’d have hightailed it out of the area. Being in the messy, noisy middle of it was part of the fun for me though. And yet, one day was enough. They had their fun— wild and obnoxious— and we had ours— prim and by-the-rules. And, well, we probably had a lot less fun.

I think we might do this again next year. Stay tuned.

Another thing I’m realizing contributes to this overall feeling of oppression is that people, at least our family’s people, tend to die in the summer. Brian’s mom, Brian’s dad, Brian’s Aunt Marianna, our nephew, Evan. Isn’t that enough for me to feel this way?

It is already enough, but I’m not done yet. My sister died at the beginning of the month after a Stage IV breast cancer diagnosis a little over two years ago. This one’s a doozy. This one has floored me. Therefore, I am embracing my feelings of hatred for summertime all the more. I hate summer. I think I always will now. I’m fine with it.

But Loey loved the summer. It’s a time for gardening and going to the beach, two of her favorite things, so I’ll try not to harp on my negative feelings too much. I’ll find air conditioning, and I’ll go climbing indoors and work through my emotions on the wall, using my body to ease my soul. Okay, not completely floored, since I’m climbing the walls.

I don’t usually widely share something this personal, but I want to leave you with this eulogy I wrote for her and read at her memorial service just a week ago. Only a week ago….

Loey and I have been sisters since I was born. When Loey was a teenager, I’d hover around the basement near her tiny, cluttered bedroom, which sometimes she’d allow me to enter. I’d watch her transport her boom box from bedroom to bathroom to car, listening to Madonna or Duran Duran or the Beastie Boys or Aerosmith, and whatever I heard became my music too.

We didn't become sister-friends until I was 13 or 14 and she was 17 and a rising senior in high school. She got into trouble A LOT that summer and fall and was often grounded. But my parents would let her out of the house with her little sisters in tow. She at least knew she was safe with me-- I wouldn't tell on her-- though I can't vouch for Jackie at the time. Jackie was a formidable tattle-tale in those days. At some point, Loey became happy with my company even when she didn't have to settle for it. And so began our friendship.

Loey wasn’t perfect-- she was a terrific slob, she left her ice-milk glass on the piano bench which made a ring, she took long showers that used up all the hot water, and at least once got me rebuked from the pulpit in church on Sunday because of a picture she drew that made me snort loudly in the middle of Daddy's sermon. But out of the four of us-girls, she had the softest edges. She was a lover not a fighter.

Her super power as an adult became hospitality-- the houses she and Craig kept were always— shockingly— clean and tidy and open. She wanted the people around her, especially her family and friends, to feel cared for, comforted, and loved. She wanted people to be at ease. She delighted in cooking and celebrating even the small things. Very few people have the knack that she did to make a pre-dinner glass of kombucha or eating kale salad into an occasion.

Over the decades, I visited their home when I could, at first with Brian, and then with our little family, and once Seb and Oren were older, my often solo visits to her house some weekends were a special event for both Loey and me. I loved being ensconced within the Weggel family, doing ordinary family things for a day or two-- shopping for meals, cooking meals, eating meals, talking and watching TV and talking and watching TV and talking some more.

Maybe because of Loey's and my own desire to please, or because we were both “avoiders,” or because we had some special sister-mind-meld thing going on, we rarely fought. If we disagreed about something, it wasn’t worth a fight. We agreed on the most important things anyway. We shared our motherly cares and worries and delight for our kids and gave each other comfort and encouragement. We laughed, a lot.

I have no resentments or regrets that will fester now that Loey is gone— aside from that she up and died, and I wasn't ready yet. Jerk. Jackie and I had the privilege of spending parts of the last of her days with her and Craig at the hospital, and though she was mostly out of it, we were often able to say "I love you" to her and get a response or a look back. There was nothing left unsaid between us.

This was a word from the oldest of us-girls, Melissa, after hearing of Loey's death. From Psalm 30 "weeping might last for the night, but joy comes in the morning." Joy came for Loey in the morning.

Indeed there is joy for Loey in her release from suffering. I read somewhere, "Suffering ... is a badly lit corridor outside of time, a place of crushing weariness, the only thing large enough to bully you into holding the door for death." (Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home) Because of cancer Loey suffered a great deal in the past two years and acutely in these last few weeks, and now, thank God, there is joy and rest for her in the arms of Jesus.

We who are left here without Loey are filled with sorrow though. We are storm-tossed and uncomforted in our grief. My mornings so far come with a sharp reminder of her absence; I wake up with the feeling that something is dreadfully wrong. But I don't want to numb or escape the pain. Let me remain storm-tossed because it keeps Loey at the front of my thoughts. I’ll be ready for comfort later.

I read somewhere else, "Sorrow is noble and gracious. It enlarges the soul until the soul is capable of mourning and rejoicing simultaneously, of feeling the world's pain and hoping for the world's healing at the same time.” (Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised) May the sorrow of losing Loey open us up to witness and feel the sorrow of others, to weep with those who weep; and eventually, may this sorrow help us to find joy, to rejoice with those who rejoice. Loey’s passing is not the only tragedy that occurred the weekend of July 4th. The flash flooding in central Texas took a slew of lives, mostly very young, and I want to end with the words of someone who wrote from the middle of that horrible event because when I’m ready, this is what will comfort me ​​(from “The Blanket By the River”).

“...as we find ourselves in the midst of things we cannot understand or … fathom, we trust that even as death and darkness bring us to our knees, we are not alone. God is committed to the people he made. He does not look away nor abandon us. We remind ourselves that, in love, [Jesus came] into… the deluge of sin and death — not to watch from a distance, but to be swept into it himself. And because of that, we hold fast to the promise that [death] isn’t the end of the story. A day is coming when the sea will be no more, and death will be no more, and every tear will be wiped from every eye.

And in that coming day, beneath a new heaven and new earth, we will sit again by the water … the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God. We will rest beneath the cypress trees in a natural cathedral, and there … Jesus will join us … and gather us all… He will draw us close to his bosom, as a mother soothes her child, and we will be held in the arms of the One to whom we have always belonged.”

It’s mid-June and already Brian and I are home from both of our planned vacations. Two trips this year to make up for last year. This year we flew to England mid-May to visit friends who had moved Across the Pond. We had two climbing days while we were there, and decided to only go bouldering so we didn’t have to travel with a lot of gear and pay exorbitant fees. All we brought were shoes and chalk because we could “hire,” as the English say, a bouldering pad for a day.

Climbing on hard gritstone, similar to what we find at Coopers Rock State Park in WV, was “loov-leh” and humbling. Also, the UK was in the midst of a significant drought, so every day was dry and sunny and mid-60s Fahrenheit. Stanage, outside of Sheffield, held a special shine for Brian who has been reading about and looking at pictures of the iconic boulders there since he was a young climber. I was stymied by Stanage since I haven’t been bouldering much in the past year. I think I topped out a V0. But on our second day out at Almscliff, local to where we were staying in Yorkshire (Yawk-sheh), I felt more myself and topped out a few boulders, including the classic of the area, Morell’s Wall.

We were home for about 10 days and then headed out again, this time, on a total climbing road trip to Wyoming.

For a summer time road trip, I’ve decided that Wild Iris in Wyoming is the best sport-climbing area to go to. Though we encountered every kind of weather there except extreme heat and humidity, we brought proper attire, so even when it was cold or rainy, we still went out to the crag and didn’t suffer over-much. Or, the discomfort was made bearable by the sheer beauty of the place. Wild Iris, just outside of Lander, has to be the prettiest place we have ever climbed in the US, and we’ve been around a fair bit.

We camped in town part of the time at an RV park— not ideal, but we could pull into a grassy tent site and sleep in our truck. We ignored the ugly, gravel parking lot for the RVs. The perks of staying there were 1) the bathrooms, 2) showers, and 3) laundry— creature comforts for sure when you’re living in your vehicle. 4) There’s a lounging area indoors, which we definitely utilized on the rainy evenings.

The first few days the weather was unpredictable and rain kept popping up in the forecast, and we didn’t want to be caught in that at a higher elevation. Once the weather settled down and got warmer, we moved up to the Aspen Glade campground. The only “creature comfort” up there was the pit toilet and toilet paper. We had to bring our own water and everything else we wanted or needed.The perks of this rustic campground was 1) the trail leading to the climbing areas started right there, and, 2) man, it smelled so good— wind and pine trees and sun and dirt and grass and rocks— the smell of the mountains. 3) It was also the start of wild flower season up there, and the meadow we hiked across every day was bursting with color by the time we left to drive home. 4) There was never not an insanely beautiful view— okay, except when you used the pit toilet.

Which brings me to the point of this essay: why do we need time away?

I pondered this question while we were gone and have continued to reflect on it now that we’re now home and plugged back into so-called Real Life. I’ve read somewhere in my deep dive into play that we as Westerners, and definitely as Americans, don’t know how to be at leisure. Even the word leisure brings with it a negative connotation. It might make you think “lazy,” or, it might make you think “elitist.” Leisure, we think, is only for people who can afford it. In his book Leisure the Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper writes, “the original conception of leisure, as it arose in the civilised world of Greece, has, however, become unrecognizable in the world of planned diligence and ‘total labour’...” More than a healthy conception of leisure, what we understand is “one does not work to live; one lives to work”. This shows in our work-a-day lives— we have trouble being happy or feeling successful unless we are useful and productive, unless we are making a healthy paycheck, unless we are busy at the very least— but it might be more starkly seen in how we take time off, how we practice leisure. Our American concept of the perfect get-away often means being busy and occupied, or it’s boring. God-forbid we are bored. So we even over-program our time off.

The way Brian and I have structured our work lives and our play lives is both very typically American, and somewhat atypical. Climbing has always been the scaffolding of our work time and our time off. Rarely do we go on vacation and not climb. I’ve always wanted climbing to be more restful and rejuvenating than it is. The truth is that we’d come home from a climbing trip needing a vacation from our vacation. We’d come home tired. Our oldest son recently reminded us that our vacations were more like work than our regular at-home lives were. In a way, we don’t really know how to be at leisure either.

However, a climbing road trip does get some of its virtue from the still parts, the leisurely parts, as much as it does from the activity. While it is work some of the time— including regular conflict resolution, and cooking and doing dishes, taking out the trash, because a family doesn’t get a break from these things when they’re on a road trip—the fact is, if we don’t do the work of getting ourselves away from home to another place that is a little bit remote, a place where we have to lug water and food and sleep for the most part outside, a place where we maybe aren’t super comfortable and a little unsettled, we don’t get the opportunity for the spaces in between, those moments of leisure which include bearing witness to the beauty of the “wilderness,” the beauty of creation. To be able to sit back slackjawed and soak it in, receive it. To be bored with our eyes open. A climbing day isn’t all hustle and bustle. It isn’t all climbing. To climb well, you have to rest well, and in those moments of down time, you get to look around. We just need to be better at the resting parts.

The answer to “the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest,” Annie Dillard writes, “must be… that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.” Beauty exists so that we humans will witness it and rejoice. Of course, Annie Dillard wrote these lines in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which she worked on at her home in a suburban development in Virginia. She didn’t have to go far to see what she witnessed and testified about in those pages. And I agree that there is value to finding beauty where you are, in your every day, ordinary life. We need to take a minute to open our eyes and see what is right in front of us.

So yes, the climbing part of our trips sometimes feels like work, but it has taught us another way to experience the world that includes our whole bodies and minds. You get to know a place when you pay close attention to the ways your body experiences the landscape. You get to know how you fit into that place at a specific time with specific light and weather. You learn how to be completely in the present moment.

It took Brian and I a whole week at Wild Iris to figure out which areas the sun was blazing at certain times and therefore, the areas where we should go and the routes we should try if we wanted to avoid said blazing sun. We had to learn that just because it looked like a gigantic thunderhead was speeding up behind us, ready to dump some sort of perdition onto our heads, didn’t mean it was. It could mean that it was miles and miles away, actually dumping perdition on the next ridge over. We had to learn how to climb using pockets and slippery foot holds, how that changed how we held and balanced the weight of our bodies.

Paying such close attention drills a place into you, and we come home holding a part of the place in our bodies and minds that the pictures we took have no way to document.

“Leisure,” Josef Pieper goes on to say, “is a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude, and it is not only the occasion but also the capacity for steeping oneself in the whole of creation.” Annie Dillard calls it innocence: “Innocence sees that this is it, and finds it world enough, and time…. the spirit’s unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once receptiveness and total concentration.”

So this is my argument for vacation, for traveling away from home, or even for taking time off and staying home— a “staycation.” Going on vacation can put you in the path of new and glorious things that might remind you of the goodness of the world and God, something you might miss in Real Life. It doesn’t necessarily require a lot of money, or going far away, but it does require the desire to stop being busy and productive. It requires stillness. It requires being okay with boredom so you can wait and see what comes.

“These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.”

My younger son is taking the driving test today, for the second time, with his dad. My husband went with our oldest son, too, who passed his driving test— first try. I went with my younger son the first time when he didn’t pass. He blames the instructor, who seemed to expect the teenager to read his mind, but I wonder if it was me. I wear my heart on my sleeve, as they say. This time it’s better that I await the news at home because I’m nervous enough from a distance.

~*~

Theoretically, I looked forward to teaching my sons how to drive, until I actually slid into the passenger seat. When each son, in turn, took his place behind the wheel for the first time and cranked the key, it went from being a cool abstract thought to totally uncool and way more concrete— concrete like a cement wall that he was going to careen into, headlong, full speed. I realized I was placing my life into the hands of a relatively unpredictable, sometimes belligerent kid, who on occasion acts less mature than he did as a seven-year-old— ah, the charm of the teenage temperament. Other people’s lives and vehicles were placed into those sweaty hands, too, out there on the busy, unpredictable city streets. Everything in me rebelled against relinquishing this control to my kids.

~*~

Let’s shift gears, and look at this from a different perspective.

The most straightforward way to communicate in the English language is using the active voice. When we use the active voice, the subject of the sentence does the action. We know who’s in control.

I am driving.

When the passive voice is used, which I was taught to avoid at all cost by my highschool English teacher, who’s doing the action, who’s in control, is vague. As a teenager, I couldn’t comprehend that in the passive voice the subject receives the action, that passive voice is weak, lacking in power and agency. Decades later, I better understand the problem my teacher had with passive voice. When I slide into that passenger’s seat, I’m the passive object who receives the action.

I’m being driven by my son.

I’ve lost control. And, as a new driver, it’s questionable whether my son is truly in control instead. Does he realize it?

I don’t like being out of control, so in the passenger’s seat, I struggled to find a way to remain active.

I’m teaching my son to drive.

This is a murky area to inhabit, between the active and the passive.

I’m being driven by my son.

~*~

Now let’s circle back around.

Parents try to stay in control of things for as long as possible. Maybe we clutch that control and have to employ the help of a therapist to wrench our claw-like hands open in order to allow our children freedom— license, one might say— to become independent. Even in the passenger’s seat, we try to control the situation.

We came up with a rule when our oldest began learning to drive, and it remained intact for the youngest: Only the parent in the passenger seat gets to advise (yell at) the driver; the backseat parent needs to remain quiet, a twist on the no-backseat-drivers rule. It’s an impossible rule for me to follow no matter where I am. I can’t help but give the driver tips (commands). Even when I’m in the backseat in the car, my voice tries to maintain the action.

I’m teaching my son to drive.

For a time, the student driver needs directions on how to get places, to be taught all the steps that are involved in driving without creating mayhem, hitting other cars, and killing everyone. But then gradually, and certainly before the parents notice, the student understands what he needs to do and how to do it. He doesn’t want to hit anyone or anything. He knows where to go— these streets are mapped on his bones. If we don’t stop telling him when to use his blinkers and brakes, when to shift and when not to, how is he going to remember to think of it all on his own?

I know, Mommy! I’ve got this!

Did he just yell at me?

Wait, when did his voice get so low?

~*~

Or perhaps we can consider that getting one’s driver's license, which most teens still do, is a rite of passage. Simply put, a rite of passage is a celebration of a person’s movement from one stage of life and into another.

Becoming an adult is a confusing time and slow process. “Childhood fades gradually in some ways, never ends in others; adulthood arrives in small, irregular installments if it arrives; and every person is on her own schedule, or rather, there is none for the many transitions,” said Rebecca Solnit in a coming of age essay. The rite of passage gives us the opportunity to celebrate, imbuing this discombobulating stage with lightness. For parents, a rite helps us know where we stand, that our role is changing, and to settle into this new posture without freaking out. Or at least, it gives us a chance to get the freaking out over with ahead of time.

There is quite a bit of adult-like independence and maturity required to be considered a good driver, a hint of what it means to become a responsible adult. When learning to drive, a young person takes a step towards the threshold of living and surviving independently.

For me, this early rite of driving is a bright sign post in the fog alerting me that parenting is changing. I must start the slow, agonizing at times, process of morphing into a more passive mother, gradually retreating to watch my sons live their own lives. They need me to wear my heart on my sleeve less, and shut up when I’m in the backseat, for the love.

~*~

But doesn’t this new view from the passenger seat have its own rewards? From here, I observe how grown up my oldest son looks in his high school uniform— shirt and tie— and that he’s suddenly taller than me. How he likes to chatter when he drives, just like I do, and that he’ll talk about almost anything. How those irregular patches of whiskers have started sprouting on the tip of his chin and the creases of his smile. When did that happen? From here, I wonder, as the fruity aroma intrudes on my nasal passages, when did my younger son start using the Old Spice body wash that his older brother likes? Et tu, Brute? When did his hands get so big? And where did his soft baby cheeks and button nose go? From here, I allow myself to be schooled by my boys in the ways of current teenage culture, music, their separate lives, these my man-children with their deepening voices, who still call me Mommy.

~*~

While I was pondering these things in my heart, my husband texted me that my younger son passed the test and now waits in line to receive his for-real-legit photo driver’s license, an indication that we successfully taught him how to drive. Later today, he’s going to want to drive somewhere alone for the first time. When he drives around on his own, I won’t even be parenting in the passive voice anymore. I’m not going to be in the sentence at all really— except as the (nagging?) voice of reason in his head. Now, he’s the subject of the sentence, imposing the action of driving, using his one-step-closer-to-adult power, hopefully, in a reasonable, responsible, safe way in the world— the way we taught him.

My son is driving.

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In my imagination, my Year of Toproping would go like this: Brian and I would climb outside frequently, and I would toprope (TR) whatever routes he put up, even the hard stuff. I imagined myself doing laps and laps of hard pitches, safe and secure on TR. I was super-excited. It was going to be super-fun, and I was going to get super-strong.

Super-duper.

Embracing my inner toproper is a big step for me, especially when it comes to climbing outside. To me, lead climbing has always been “real climbing.” When I was a beginner in 1994, I started leading within the first month of Brian and I becoming weekend warriors at the New River Gorge3 . Some might say this standard is too high, and they might be right. 

But let me explain. 

It didn’t take long for me to dislike that Brian always had to put up a TR on easy routes for me. He didn’t complain about it, but I didn’t always want to follow, especially when I could only get to the top of his warm-ups. I wanted to put up my own routes like he put up his own. I was determined to work up through the grades by leading them myself. 

One benefit of having this high standard for myself, is that over the years, it eventually made me a good, solid lead climber. One downside of not TRing any harder-than-I-could-do routes all those years, is that gaining strength took longer, and I wasn’t very strong to begin with. Another downside is that I cried a lot because I was often scared to make moves above a bolt. I knew a few people back in the 1990s and early 2000s, who rarely lead-climbed but who were much stronger than me because they spent so much time TRing really hard routes.

So I hoped that one result of a year of embracing my inner toproper would be that I would climb harder on TR than if I forced myself to lead before I was ready. Because of breaking my ankle, I was extra scared of taking lead falls 4. I imagined that I would practice hard routes on TR, and then, when I was ready, I would lead them for the redpoint 5. Alas! Reality turned out so much differently than what I had imagined!

Therefore I have rescinded my Year of Toproping a couple of months early and am back on lead when we climb outside, even if it means that I carry a stick-clip6 up with me, even if it means I’m not climbing hard-for-me yet. This is not because I’m too proud to keep TRing. It’s more out of necessity. 

Let me explain.

From May until November last year, Brian and I went climbing outside about five or six times. That isn’t “frequently,” but for us it was a respectable amount. However, each day out was hot, at least 80 degrees, and/or extremely humid— yes, even in November, somehow. Were we cursed? Each time, we’d go somewhere familiar and do routes we knew well, but that didn’t even matter— conditions kept us climbing easy to moderate routes, nothing hard. 

Also, one important stipulation I forgot about in my own plans of TRing grandeur was Brian. He had to be willing to be the ropegun7. He had to get his own lead-head 8straight. And, he had his own feelings about what he did and didn’t want to climb. Putting pressure on him to put up routes I wanted to TR did not help. I have a long list of climbs I dream of, and he doesn’t. We also have very, very different strengths and styles of climbing we like. For example, just because I wanted to do Under the Milky Way on TR did not mean Brian was at all willing to put up said TR for me. Damn, he’s rebellious.

So, we didn’t end up climbing hard routes, and didn’t even climb anything we really liked— except a few 5.10s we’ve done a million times over the years— and didn’t climb anything new. Except for one day, I had very misguided hopes for both Muscle Belly and Ron Kauk Gets a Perm, hard 5.11s at Lower Endless, both in the full sun. I somehow persuaded Brian to rope them up, God only knows how or why. That was a full day of groveling up two dirty routes, a full day of whining and gnashing of teeth. We both lost 100 pounds of water weight from sweating and may have aged a year or two. I’m surprised we’re still married. It convinced us both to be way more picky. It also assured us that we both currently suck-ass at outdoor climbing.

My Year of Toproping pretty much backfired— except that I hiked a bunch, which was good for my ankle, and groveled on TR a bunch, which must have been good for my core, if not my own sense of humility. It made me realize what has always been true for me— that I should really just lead the routes I want to climb myself. 

Let me explain.

I don’t think that toproping is always the easier, safer, or best option. Okay, in certain cases, yes, it is. If the route is vertical or slabby, then toproping is absolutely the right approach, especially if the alternative is not climbing at all because you’re too scared. Who wants to take a lead fall on a slab climb? Not me. However when you are on steep, overhanging routes or routes with any sort of roof in them, TRing actually ends up being super hard and annoying, unless your plan is to not fall. If you don’t fall, good for you, TR to your heart’s content. But if you’re like me, and turn into a floppy rag doll and fall all over the place, and aren’t close to where the rope goes through a quickdraw 9, or your belayer doesn’t take up the slack 10 tight enough, you end up swinging far away from the rock and sometimes you can’t pull back on. Or, the rope might get in the way of important hand holds ahead of you— and then you fall and end up swinging far away from the rock and you can’t pull back on. Plus, yarding back in when the rope is stretchy (all lead ropes are stretchy) and the rock is overhanging ends up being, well, kind of undignified. “Thrutchy” is the word for that. If you’re lucky, the route isn’t so steep that your belayer cannot walk in close for you to actually grab their end of the rope and pull yourself back up to a place where you can reach good holds. But even this is problematic because of, well, gravity and physics, and you often end up twirling around and getting all tangled up in the rope. Also undignified.

I experienced all of this indignity in my (Slightly Less Than A) Year of Toproping. My argument is, when you are climbing steep routes, it’s better to lead them and learn to take the falls when the falls are likely to be all air. Or, as I said earlier, haul up a stick-clip, and clip your way up the climb. This is a somewhat-valuable technique for sport climbers to have, though only slightly more dignified than hang-dogging 11 on a toprope. 

But hey, it’s good to be humble.

So far this year, Brian and I have been climbing outdoors a few times already (yay us!), and I’ve been back on lead. I’ve climbed with our somewhat small stick-clip clipped to my harness sometimes, so that if I get freaked out and don’t want to climb above a bolt, I can stop and clip it from below 12. I practiced this method on a 5.10 that had a scary-weird move above a bolt, as well as on some easier 5.12s. Carrying a stick-clip on the gear loop of your harness is a bit awkward and definitely doesn’t look sexy, but it does what it needs to do— it offers a way for the wimpy to find courage— and who’s watching anyway, right? 

Hopefully, carrying the stick-clip up a climb is a temporary crutch. As I continue to go outside and put routes up myself, I will become braver, and the need for me to take the stick-clip with me will end. I really, really hope so. I’ll remember that falling on lead is safe most of the time, and that I don’t need to be so scared. It’s all part of the process— even after more than 30 years of calling myself a climber, I’m still finding a lot of ways in which I need to become better and stronger.

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This one is timely since, here in 2025, we just celebrated Fat Tuesday last week and Lent has officially begun. We forced this spring trip to Hueco in 2017, even though I was still rehabbing a shoulder injury. Hueco was calling… I had to go with my family One More Time. That was the justification for it at the time, anyway. It ended up not being The Last Time.

Since this is an outtake, it’s a little self indulgent and doesn’t have a theme or any sort of message. It’s just a bit of Hueco Tanks for y’all.

28 February 2017, Fat Tuesday at Hueco Tanks, TX

Today was Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras— a day to go wild before the Christian holy day, Ash Wednesday and the start of the Lent. During this season we meditate soberly on our mortality for forty days: “From dust you came and to dust you shall return.” The weather is supposed to contribute fifty-mile-an-hour wind gusts after one o’clock this afternoon. Sounds like a party. 

We started low on North Mountain in order to easily escape to ground level when the wind kicked up. This time both boys climbed with Brian and me on the Look Sharp boulder. I love it when we’re all climbing together as a family, taking turns on the same routes, which doesn’t happen very often. At first, I only watched while I neurotically went through each of my shoulder exercises with the Theraband— it takes me forever to warm up enough just to get on the warm up climbs. Oren topped out the short V2 called A Minor which we all celebrated with cheers and fist bumps and promises of pizza later. What would Fat Tuesday be without a feast at our favorite El Paso restaurant? Seb, never content with trying the easy problem first, threw himself at Be Flat, the stout V4 just to the left of A Minor. When I finally felt limber, I joined him and was eventually able to repeat it.

After Look Sharp, we crawled and then walked through the narrow corridor to Power of Silence, V10, a beautiful, classic problem, and a truly elegant line. This is Brian’s dream climb. We first encountered it, like many of the boulders here, watching the 1990s climbing video Free Hueco! Brian, a man who appreciates silence, has been lured to this problem every year we have come to Hueco since 2010, but it continues to stymie him. Today, he couldn’t make the big move off of the teeny tiny edges. He has big fingers, which means they are strong, but it also means that it’s hard for him to use those miniscule, greasy edges— although he still manages to pull on smaller holds than I can with my little fingers. 

His hands engulf mine. If we press our hands together, his fingers are more than an inch longer than mine and twice as wide. He has big, wide palms. He is best at using slopers or pinches. He also has trouble fitting his long limbs in the polished concave scoop of rock where the Power of Silence begins, using only tiny hand holds and tiny, slippery feet.

Once he’d had enough of failure, we hiked down to Sign of the Choss. Before driving away from Pittsburgh, I watched a video of a woman climbing Sign of the Choss, and she made it look fun. To be honest, she made it look smooth and easy, so I thought maybe it would be those things for me too. But first, I had to consider its name— sometimes the name holds a warning. While Urban Dictionary Dot Com makes it seem like the word choss could mean just about anything or anyone— in a certain community in England, for instance, it means penis— choss has a very specific meaning for a person concerned with rocks. Of course, for all I really know, choss could have meant penis in this case too, if other Hueco boulder problem names like Daily Dick Dose, or The Devil’s Butthole set any sort of precedence. 

But choss really means junky, crumbly, breakable rock, and Sign of the Choss must have been a chossy mess at one time to have earned this title. On some boulders at Hueco the brown-red patina is thinner and scabbier, more friable than on other boulders where it is tough-as-nails. Much of the patina, that once may have been better hand holds, has broken off of Sign of the Choss leaving muddy colored scars along the slightly overhanging face. The scars are the hand holds now and they aren’t great. I wouldn’t call Choss a pretty climb. 

Five tries and I was toast: fingers, core, skin, brain, everything. Why, why, why does this climb feel so hard? I pulled onto the shallow, barely-there holds of Choss carefully, holding my breath and moving slowly till I let go for a split-second to grab the next wrinkle or dish. The feet are equally bad and not where I wanted them or the direction I’d prefer them to be facing. I moved in slo-mo because if I made a sudden movement, whichever foot held most of my weight would pop off. Every try, I was always off balance, always fighting my body weight sagging the wrong way, always finding myself sprawled on the pads. This climb does not flow, and it never feels easier.

The V4 grade at Hueco is deceiving. Generally, V4 is a moderate grade and by no means easy, but I can usually figure it out and send a climb with this rating in a handful of tries— in one day, surely. For some reason, here in this park I have found that some of the hardest climbs for me are rated V4. Some take days and days and days to send (Bloody Flapper). Some even feel impossible (Greasy Kids Stuff), and I have given up on them. Instead of just accepting that Choss is another hard V4, I tell myself that Choss has shed all its good holds over the years, and maybe it’s actually harder now. I tell myself, maybe it’s V5 or V6 now, which is the grade it feels like to me— maybe even harder than one benchmark V6 here, See Spot Run, which I have done before. The question is, can I even trust my judgment, since I’m nursing a shoulder injury?  

I made a smidge of progress on the thing today though— one move higher than the first day I worked on it. One move higher is not nothing, so I slap myself an internal high-five. Now I have to allow the work to sink into my brain and muscles so that the next time I can go another move higher again. As long as I make progress, I’ll keep coming back to it. That is how this problem will get done, with some dogged determination, one move at a time, even if it is “just a V4.”  

As we hung around Sign of the Choss, we could see the brown wall of the windstorm heading for us from the direction of Fort Bliss across the desert basin. Before it hit, we packed up and booked it down the slabs to ground level. By the time we were there, it had enveloped us in dusty, swirling air, and our bodies were being buffeted to and fro by the wind. Desert grime flew into our eyes and up our noses. Dust to dust indeed. The boys scrambled around, and Oren tried standing on top of a boulder. He looked like a surfer up there with his knees bent and his arms flailing around for balance so he wouldn't get knocked down. His shirt flapped around his torso. His limbs are so long and lanky now, and the wind almost blew him over a couple of times. Seb stood behind him, sheltered, in a lower spot, holding up an old phone to take a video, bundled in a heavy red and black checkered flannel shirt, blue Hueco Tanks hat, sunglasses.

Then, when we realized we were likely not going to get where we wanted along this via negativa, we needed to turn around. But we had to re-navigate the ditches, huge rocks, puddles, and, what’s the opposite of a drop off? I’m happy to report that the truck fulfilled its purpose. It was made for this and got us out of there without breaking into a million pieces. The two of us were incredibly jostled but not hurt or dead. But just because we got out of there undamaged and alive, doesn’t mean we’re going to want to do it again. We bought this truck so that we’d be okay in case we got into situations like these, we didn’t buy it so that we could go get ourselves into them on purpose. And certainly, we will never again follow Google maps off the beaten, paved actual road in rural KY.

Even in play, there is a real sense of danger and risk. Some would say a thing cannot be defined as play unless there is real risk. Instead of risk, we could say in a more positive light, adventure. When play and life is risky, when we venture out to explore the unknown, we end up feeling precarious, unmoored, unstable. In her book Deep Play, Diane Ackerman looks into the way-back history of the word play, to one of its earlier versions in Indo-European, plegan, which means “to risk, chance, expose oneself to hazard. 

A pledge was integral to the act of play, as was danger (cognate words are peril and plight). Play’s original purpose was to make a pledge to someone by risking one’s life…. At its heart plegan reverberated with ethical or religious values. Soon plegan became associated with performing a sacred act or administering justice, and it often appeared in ceremonies. 

Looking into other languages and cultures, Ackerman writes that “words for play mainly gave rise to words used in love play, battle, or religious rites (feast and festival also trace their etymology to play). What do these activities have in common? They all require daring, risk, concentration, the ability to live with uncertainty, a willingness to follow the rules of the game, and a desire for transcendence.”

She goes on to say that the word precarious is related to the word play, emphasizing that an inherent part of play is risk taking, getting out of your comfort zone, feeling shaky. I looked up the word precarious myself, of course, to see if she was right. The more modern definition of precarious means that some thing is physically shaky and in danger of collapsing. Think, house of cards, rickety stairs, a Pittsburgh bridge. But the physical shakiness of something we assume in the definition now used to be more of a metaphor for the feeling of danger, of risk, of peril, of things being dependent on chance, or someone else's whim. So precarious has its roots in the Latin word prex meaning ‘prayer,’ and later precarius meaning ‘obtained by entreaty.’ 

Ackerman suggests, “The word ‘prayer’ derives from the Latin precarious, and contains the idea of uncertainty and risk. Will the entreaty be answered?” So I think if precarious is related to play at all, it is by way of prayer. Play feels precarious if you're doing it right? Maybe while we play, we pray… for endurance, for our bodies to do what we have trained them for, to win? Prayer, likewise, feels precarious. “Will the entreaty be answered?”

This winter, precarious is how I feel about life too, like everything could change in a second when you're the least prepared for it. Not “normal” change, but sudden unexpected change. I hold precarious in my heart as an almost constant flutter, like it is trying to take flight and leave my body entirely. I felt this intensely when we were off-roading in KY. I’d rather my heart beat steady. I’d rather feel secure and safe. I want stability and comfort, health and well-being to be a given. But it isn’t. The world is in chaos.

I think this feeling keeps us at home more than we'd like— Brian and I. We'd like to travel and climb more, but sometimes, more often than we want to admit, this precariousness talks us out of walking out the door. If life itself feels so precarious, why add to it with climbing and its inherent— even if limited— risks? Let’s just stay home and watch TV, read a book, crochet a bucket hat, climb at the gym. Be safe. It was easier to indulge our wanderlust when the kids were younger, when they lived with us. As long as we were together, there was a feeling of safety, of surety. As long as we were together, it would all be okay, and we could go anywhere. 

Part of why I’m feeling this way is that we aren’t all together anymore. Now that the boys live on their own, things feel so unstable. What if we go far away on a long trip and something happens to them? Not that they are helpless without us, but what if something bad happens to them? What if we can't get back in time? It’s like my own trembling heart is literally walking around outside of my body, who knows where, doing who knows what. My mother-mind is still on high alert. Being worried for my kids' safety is part of my nurturing self. Now that they don’t need me much, I think that part of my brain must be shorting out or something, on overdrive before it shuts down. Will this part of me shut down? Will it be a relief if it does? I kind of want it to. I’d really like to not care so much. It would certainly be easier.

Another part of this anxiousness, if I’m honest, is due to hormonal changes. Much of my life I’ve fought against naming my emotional states and moods as hormonal, to diminish them to mere chemicals. In my youth, I hated it when I was upset about something and my mother would ask me if I was about to get my period. Like, I wouldn't be feeling those feelings if I wasn't? My mother’s question felt very dismissive. However, in my older age— my middle age— I’ve accepted, even happily, that some of what I'm feeling could be hormonal— please, let them be— and that maybe these feelings aren't “true,” “real.” I hope feeling wobbly and shaky is hormonal, and therefore holds the potential of being balanced out. Then these feelings might diminish or stabilize so that I can just, please God, get a good night's sleep. 

But honestly, how can I worry? about sleep, about not having enough fun and joy in my life, about health and well being, about our next road trip? My own experiences with true, daily instability pales in the face of what many people in this country and certainly worldwide, are feeling as true and debilitating and life threatening instability. My life is a playground when I consider the lives of the poor, the orphan, the widow, the homeless, the stranger, the oppressed, and the persecuted. Their lives and livelihood is precarious in a way I will never understand. They are wholly at the mercy of often not benevolent people in power. 

Right now, I’m specifically thinking about the refugee families who have arrived in the US this month, several in Pittsburgh, who have suddenly been abandoned, cut off from aid. The very agencies who brought them here— legally, with a promise of aid from the federal government— have been hobbled for who knows how long. Ninety days at best. Three months seems like a long time to be here without anything.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to arrive in a country that was at the end of the line, supposed to be your refuge, a safe place to finally rest and make a life for your family. Here is the definition of a refugee adapted from World Relief immigration definitions: “Refugees resettled to the U.S. are identified by the U.S. government abroad, flown to the U.S. and then resettled in partnership with faith-based or non-profit organizations that partner with the U.S. State Department.” They are usually fleeing a place where life is unsustainable, brought here with a promise by the federal government to be cared for. The individuals undergo lengthy, in depth vetting. Some have been in limbo for decades. My understanding is that the recent executive order allowed for refugees already here to remain and be given the promised aid. And yet.

 It’s hard enough for me to imagine how these families could come and settle here when they were being given a helping hand— I volunteered through our church to walk alongside a few families that a local resettlement agency had brought into Pittsburgh. I could never do what these refugees did, what they needed to do to survive. I will likely never have to even consider that. 

Part of the reason they are able to do it is because they have this dazzling image of what life in the US will be like. They have such dreams and are so excited to come here. They are in love with the idea of the freedom they hope to, expect to experience. This country is probably feeling very disappointing and unfriendly and cold to these families about now. Maybe they dreamed too big, wanted too much.

The prayer is that there are a few people, maybe some small private institutions, churches, who will be willing to reach out and give them aid. Will I be willing? Will you? Will this cobbled together help be enough for them to dare have a life? Right now, they really just need groceries. I also pray that their own resilience kicks in and they weather this hopefully temporary hurricane. I do think the legality of the sudden cut-off of promised aid is being questioned, thank God. But wouldn’t you know, it’s way harder to get something started back up than it is to shut it down.

It seems right that the word precarious should have a connection with the word prayer. For me, feeling shaky and uncertain and afraid invokes prayer, in the religious sense. A call for help to a higher power. A lot of people respond this way to uncertainty, hardship, even if they aren’t sure what they believe in. A natural human reflex, perhaps. I pray to God because I believe he is, in some way, my constant companion. Maybe others pray to a better part of themselves or some other god. You say the prayer, and then you wonder, Will the entreaty be answered? Maybe you wonder, Did anyone even hear me? 

When I pray, I believe the entreaty will be answered, but when and how are really the questions that remain. It often isn’t the answer I expect or want: I have prayed for the healing of a dying nephew, and the answer ended up a heavy but gentle, No. And sometimes it’s right on the money: I have also prayed for the life of my own son after a traumatic head injury when he was three, and the answer was, after a seemingly long, silent wait, Of course. There is no way to reconcile the two, and so I chalk it up to mystery. It’s a cop out that I’m totally fine with.

That the words play and pray could be related is the icing on the cake for me. Both play and prayer pull us a little bit out of the present now, into the spiritual realm. I think that’s the transcendence Ackerman writes about. There, maybe we come into contact with our better selves, our truer selves. Maybe in both we can become more holy, or in closer contact with the holy. Prayer is an automatic part of this game of life that we play. The game of life is risky. We are players with no control over the game.  All we can do is submit to the rules, though we don’t get to make them. We ask for help, for a clue, for a map. Part of our life is about figuring out what the rules actually are. It’s a lot like that road Brian and I mistakenly took in KY— the Road Less Traveled, indeed— and you just make your way along it the best you can with the tools you’ve been given— like a 4x4 and an old flip phone that gets really poor reception in the best of circumstances, but that says No Service a good bit of the time.

Somehow, very, very loosely, the following quote seems to go along with this rambling, precarious essay. Indulge me because it’s a good one. Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: 

There is not a guarantee in the world. Oh your needs are guaranteed, your needs are absolutely guaranteed by the most stringent of warranties, in the plainest truest words: knock; seek; ask. But you must read the fine print. "Not as the world giveth, give I unto you." … Your needs are all met. But not as the world giveth. You see the needs of your own spirit met whenever you have asked, and you have learned that the outrageous guarantee holds. You see the creatures die, and you know you will die. And one day it occurs to you that you must not need life. Obviously. And then you're gone. You have finally understood you are dealing with a maniac.

I’ll end this here on more of a feeling than any kind of answer or conclusion. Writing has given me a chance to play around with ideas that have been wobbling about my brain, somewhat chaotically. Pray, I hope you don’t mind.

I was healthy all of November, but that month had its own better disruptions, like, travel! climbing! Thanksgiving and family visits!

But I’m finding myself at the beginning of a new month saying whining, Already?? December? Christmas less than a month away? ALREADY??

Realizing that I may not get something written here this month, I thought I’d bring myself back to your attention, good readers, by offering some things I have already written this year, elsewhere. This is really what a newsletter is for, no? It isn’t a terribly long list, but it is all the essays/articles I have had published by others and not myself.

Take a look. I’m sure there is at least one thing you might find interesting.

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For readers who are climbers, I’ve started writing content for the ASCEND Climbing blog— this is the climbing gym in Pittsburgh where I spend a lot of time. Here is what I have written for the blog this year so far:

“Competition Season, It’s in the Air.” 5 November 2024.

Perhaps the question I need to ask myself is, could I just go and climb some problems and have a little bit of fun? Competitions really are for everyone at any level of climbing. They aren’t only for the strongest, most practiced climbers. Would it be worse to always wonder?

I read somewhere recently that you can’t define a thing as play— aren’t these competitions just a serious form of play?— unless something is being risked. So do I risk it?

“Facilitating a Space to Struggle.” 8 August 2024.

Turns out climbing is liberating for people with many different physical limitations and disabilities. … The founding members of ParaCliffHangers are people with disabilities— Denny is one of them— and they believe that by sharing their disabilities and being active participants in their communities, they can change how people with disabilities are perceived.

“Is Climbing Outside Important?” 8 July 2024.

As humans progress technologically, we are increasingly isolated from nature, from air, water, and dirt. There is also the argument that if we are separated from the earth, we may care less about what is happening to it. Going outside makes it more likely that we will be better stewards of the earth. And vice versa, if we are separated from the earth, we may not be as healthy in our own minds and bodies as we could be. I think one of the points of Walls Were Meant for Climbing is that there is justice in making the out-of-doors accessible to every single person. Maybe a connection to the outside makes us more complete, happier human beings.

“The Soul of the Climbing Gym is Changing.” 5 June 2024.

While some of us can grieve with Miller about the loss of the small gym, or the smaller climbing community, we should remember that they also had their limitations. Gyms have to entice the masses to join and become members in order to make money and stay open and offer even more perks. We wish it weren’t true that they need to be money-making businesses to survive, that this means that climbing itself has become more of a commodity. I would say that modern gyms are more like a mall than Disney World, offering all the members’ felt needs inside of one space, and we climbers have a lot of felt needs. This is why there are all the other things now— yoga, cardio and weight lifting equipment, and training boards— we need them in order to be better climbers. We need foot washing stations. We really, really do.

Another post will go live any day now, which is an interview with two of ASCEND’s fem routesetters. Here is a teaser quote to entice you to keep your eye out for it on the socials:

A boulder problem or route becomes more than just a product when the climber interacts with it, figures it out, their own body making a way through movement set by another body. The routesetter is probably the single-most important job in a gym because of the relationship this creates.

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For any readers who are parents and/or Christians, I wrote an article for Christianity Today that was published around Labor Day and the start of the academic year:

“Christian Formation for the ‘Toolbelt Generation.’” 2 September 2024.

A certain intelligence is born from paying close attention while doing work alongside others. Whether or not he can articulate it now, my son is learning to solve problems as he builds stairs, lays tile, and makes repairs both adeptly and efficiently. My son’s work community shows him the beauty of a neatly framed window. He learns the necessity of taking care—perhaps especially when he’s required to redo a task done wrong the first time. In many ways, his work helps him grow “in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52).

I also wrote a personal essay that was published in an online literary magazine, Halfway Down the Stairs:

"In Stitches." 1 March 2024.

While he talks, I coax him upstairs to the bathroom to clean his hands without doing anything he doesn’t want: running water over the wounds or getting soap in them or touching them at all. If he were still a tousle-topped boy, I’d just tell him what’s best. Since he turned 18, he’s been throwing the I’m-an-adult-now card on the table to trump my mother-knows-best play. Now I need to tip-toe, hold back. I need to let him convince himself. It’s a new way to mother him, without him realizing, all smoke and mirrors, stealth and trickery. He moved out a few months ago, and since then, I’ve realized that he comes over to vent, to say his thoughts out loud and listen to how they sound. He is and isn’t asking for advice.

Also, browse my Substack Archives. Or, better yet, here are the top five “of all time”:

Things we lost in the fire. 17 September 2024.

In consideration of home. 6 October 2023.

After 30 years The Climbing Wall closed. 24 February 2024.

Oren moved out. 21 August 2024.

Henri Nouwen, hospitality, and why my son’s band still practices at our house even though he doesn’t live here anymore. 7 November 2024.

Thanks for reading, y’all!