For all the climbers out there struggling with this long and tepid stretch of wet weather, here is a piece of fiction that might just dry up your blues for a moment or two. Hope this helps you out.
I could feel the light through my eyelids before I opened my eyes. The night had been so silent, wrapped in a swath of black velvet for nine hours. Vans are like sensory deprivation chambers during a long, cold desert night. I had no idea how early it was, but as I opened my desert-crusted eyelids, the windows shone back a dark indigo blue, a few pinpoints of starlight near the western horizon. Instantly, I begin my extrication plan, how to get out of the van without waking my road-weary spouse and an ever-ready four-year-old? Carefully.
I fold back the feather quilt and slide as silently as possible out of the sheets. The van bed is narrow, so I have to hold an L-sit and eventually a tight V-sit as I slide out of bed and flip 180 degrees. I grope for my ball of rumpled and dusty clothes deep within the bed. I reach above and touch my headlamp, unhooking it and slipping it around my neck. I realize I鈥檝e been shutting my eyes as I do this, it鈥檚 so dark in the van. The down jacket will be the first crux, the damn noisy nylons fabric likely to wake my slumbering team. Luckily, I stored it underneath the passenger seat for easier access. I鈥檒l dress outside, away from the family. It is quieter that way. With all the strength I have, I pre-load the door latch spring and shift the handle, trying not to trigger the metal click of the mechanism unlatching. A faint plastic pops deep within the door, and it swings open. Before even the juniper-infused oxygen can tumble through the doorway, I鈥檓 out like a shadow and shutting the door.
聽I鈥檓 standing in my underwear under dying stars in the frosty pre-dawn cold. I unfurl my ball of clothes.
Cursing my inability to find my shoes, I slip on flip-flops over my socks and don my dusty pants, dusty shirt, dusty fleece, dusty down jacket and dusty toque. There鈥檚 grit in my hair, sand in the corners of my eyes and my clothes are stained red from the sand.
That is all just fine with me. Like a shadow, I move silently around the small campsite: dusty mug, coffee press, headlamp. Filling the kettle, I ease it onto the stove grate, the metal contacting with only the slightest clink. I light the stove and turn off the headlamp. I sit in the dark and cold in ridiculous dirty clothes listening to the hum of the propane and watching the blue flame dance in the dark.
To the East, the sky blues up just a little as I pour hot water over grounds, wait, stir and pour. I switch off the headlamp for the last time and sit in the bluish dark warming my cracked hands on the burning cup. To the East, South and West of me are the looming lines of cliff, snaking away into the darkness. The Eastern canyon rim is blue-green with the coming day as I slide the guidebook over the table to myself, like a bartender offering an unintended drink. The chapters, the walls, the approach details, the lists of names and grades and stories of boldness, courage and stupidity are all contained in these priceless, useless textbooks of challenge. I sit hunched in the cold as the sun comes up, hand on cup and eyes glued to the pages that will make up my next eight hours, my next glorious, painful, beautiful, radical hours lost in the pages of sandstone cliffs along Indian Creek, Utah.
Dedicated to us all stuck up here in the rain and snow, all dreaming of voyages south.
