The Subtle Landscape

  Wife out of town again.  This time ministering post appendectomic daughter.  Interesting that these days doc doesn’t make one big slit, but several smaller ones instead.  Shoves flashlight into one, looks in another, and fishes vestigial organ out with a coat hanger or something through a third.

  Anyway, home alone one night and took a call from a friend I’d not seen in thirty-five years.  While talking about past exploits and future plans he reminded me of the ground breaking 1972 Chouinard Equipment Catalogue the cover of which you see above.

  It was a paradigm shifter for many reasons – not least because of its rich production values.  (Speaking of value, copies sell today for $250!)  More importantly it was an exhortation for conservation of the vertical environment – “clean climbing” as well as the proclamation of a new moral imperative to retain real adventure in the experience of it.

  What though does this have to do with my friend’s and my considerations of next moves?  Well, open the cover and the first words one reads are Einstein’s: “A perfection of means and a confusion of aims seems to be our main problem.”  Said differently, a typical life from zero to sixty.

  Takes that long to take care of business, shake things out a bit, and begin to see through the lens of your own specs, not someone else’s.  To realize as Jung wrote: “The more a man’s life is shaped by the collective norm, the greater is his individual immorality”.

  As the conversation drew to its close with warm wishes and promises to keep in touch I pulled my copy from the shelf and paged through.  I was transported to a place long gone and paths not taken.  Not yet anyway.  I turned to the last page and a lyric courtesy of the Stones: “Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind”. 

  I was electrified.  I dumped out the rest of the wine in my glass (seriously) and took dog outside to look at the stars.  One fell.  Our walk around the block felt like an airborne perambulation.  Had my friend not had me by the leash, I would have floated away.

*In case you don’t know, Chouinard went on to found Patagonia and set the pace for corporate environmental activism as well as outside cool.

**It’s never been lost to me that I was in that place long gone when my now roommate began to take serious interest in me (even though I didn’t use deodorant!).

  Ok, it’s spring, and, uh, well, you’re not going to believe this, but though I’m at my office, my mind is not.  Wife knows where it is, or at least could relate the nature of the topography.  Somewhere on that divine razor’s edge.

  Memory of an exhilarating perch on a narrow ledge high up something tall and steep has never left me.  It constellates sporadically, but early every spring without fail.  Dang.  Much has changed in my life as well as in technical aspects of an ascent, but I’m fit and confident that I’d have no problem, at least not with the kinesthetic cerebrations.

  On a mid-cliff ledge looking out, eye to eye with the clouds and swallows, an exuberant solemnity wells up – especially if you’re with a good friend (or kid!) and the route is challenging, but not several grades too difficult.  All distraction falls away.  There is no thought of anything else.

  Indeed, there is no thought.  Thinking would just get in the way.  Each line has its own rhythm into which one naturally falls.  Necessary details of the task could be no more apparent.  At the ledge, as gear is rearranged, words seem superfluous and few are exchanged.

  Sometimes you linger for a glance, snack, or drink, but not for long and not often because all know there is an inverse relationship between time spent on the edge and well being.  Rocks fall, storms brew.  Less time given for shit to happen the better. 

  Quite the paradox, eh?  Visited with otherworldly elation while knocking on heaven’s door, one’s intentions lie just this side of the nave.

  That’s Jyoti Raj in a series of youtube videos gone viral.  It’s an incredible display of bold athleticism performed upon an interesting bit of topography.  From this point of remove, it is impossible to judge the size of the holds or texture of the stone so as to develop a sense of the difficulty, but the ground would come up pretty fast regardless.

  I’d seen the video some months ago and have thought of the fellow occasionally since.  I wrote an essay in high school about the motivational question behind alpinism and am always interested in new inflections.  “Because it is there” never did much for me.

  I was thus thrilled to find in the January 2010 issue of Climbing Magazine* that someone had tracked the climber down and asked a few questions.  Turns out that the footage was shot at sixteenth century Chitradurga Fort in southern India.

  Mr. Raj was a wild child and ran away from home at age 7 after having been kicked out of school.  He somehow made his way to a larger metro area more than 500 miles away where he found work at a ‘sweet shop’ which he left after five years of abuse. 

  Thence to Chitradurga where a family took him in and for whom he ran errands in turn for his keep.  At about age eighteen he was accused of theft and decided to leap to his death from atop a large cliff.  He made it to a perch about fifty feet up, but decided  to get more air to ensure that impact would do more than break bones.

  To his astonishment, as he continued up, people began to gather and cheer.  Heartened, he also found that he enjoyed the vertiginous kinesthetics and returned the next day to begin his exploration of the  seven story fort walls nearby.

  Had he taken the stairs, his would have been the only and last hurrah.  But just as important as his first applause, the concentration necessary to make the upward progress extirpated the negative cerebrations long enough for his mind to clear and absorb the new view.

  That was three years ago.  Now a local celebrity, he has become reacquainted (if not reunited) with his family and teaches climbing to young people.  Why climbing?

  “It gives meaning to my life.  It’s the only thing I’ve ever enjoyed, because life has otherwise been full of hardship.”  Funny how things sometimes turn out…

*Article on page 28 by Dev. S. Sukumar