Born to Climb, Part 3
A read-aloud, the last bit
One reason I’m reading it out loud instead of posting the text is because the only version of this published essay I have is the one I submitted to Stymie back in the day. Since then Stymie has gone the way of many literary mags and journals and ceased to exist— which is a huge bummer because I thought they might have become a go-to publisher for my work that tends more toward the creative, too creative and too long for the climbing mags.
The journal was published in PDF format via some PDF-format-publishing platform. The PDF of my particular issue no longer exists on the internet. I thought I saved it somewhere. I might have, but I haven’t been able to locate it in the squirrelly digital archives I have haphazardly and sporadically tried to keep. What I’m reading isn’t officially the version they published, though I don’t think they made many if any editorial changes. It’s probably pretty close. So now I will have record of it here, in my voice, as long as Substack lasts, which also probably won’t be forever but might be long enough.
I also want to remind you that I wrote “Born to Climb” a REALLY LONG TIME AGO. It definitely is in the writing voice of a much, much younger me.
