Before I fell in love with my wife, I thought it was okay, noble even, if I died while rock climbing. At least that's what I thought when climbers and alpinists I admired lost their lives in the mountains. "They died doing something they loved," or some nonsense like that. Nowadays, I'd really rather not die doing something so silly. And rock climbing is silly. There are, however, still some hills I am willing to die on.
Though technically a mountain, Lookout is not only a hill I am willing do die on, I'd actually prefer to die there. Not in a "my belayer and I miscommunicated about how I was going to lower from the top of a rock climb" kind of death. Lord, no. I'm thinking more of a, "I have one hour to live so I am going to the top of my favorite mountain in the world to say my final goodbyes" kind of way. Is that morbid? I don't think so. Spread my ashes from these sandstone cliffs, okay? (And pour some out at the Wacissa River back home).
Don't tell my employer that the coach of their rock climbing team doesn't think so, but it's not. I mean, it definitely is. Rock climbing is in the olympics now. But it shouldn't be. Why? Because rock climbing, at its best, is a mystical union between human and stone; "the freedom of the hills," if you will. It is, at least, an act of rebellion, an eschewing of societal norms and constructs to retreat to the mountains or woods, doing something that has absolutely zero productive value. Grades and points and comps ruin all that. There's a reason John Sherman, who developed bouldering's V-Scale, later lamented grades as "the excrement of rock climbing." I want the kids on my team to fall in love with the activity and, more importantly, the outdoors. That's it. Seeing former students getting out there, sleeping in the dirt, eating Vienna sausages like a dirtbag, and sending the gnar, whatever "the gnar" is for them, is one of the things I'm most proud of. I don't care about winning competitions or "making the playoffs;" I've never even looked at our scores. Leave points and scores to the meat-headed, thick-necked jocks. Go rock climbing for the sake of climbing a rock.
Relax, e-commuters. I'm talking about six-figure salaried, able-bodied goonies taking the easy way to the top of the MTB trails so they can blast back down. The only acceptable reason to ride an E-bike on trails is if you're eligible to receive Medicare and Social Security from the federal government. Otherwise, learn how to pedal uphill. Or get off and push it, like me.
Refusing to leash your dog on public trails is anti-social behavior. You are a trail-runner. I am a mountain biker. It is our common interest to be outside. We are responsible to one another. That responsibility is our freedom. To avoid it is to lose our freedom. (Yes, I'm plagiarizing Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed.) We should build a giant crane big enough to hurl all the people who don't leash their dog into the ocean. Simple as that. Keep the dogs. Fling their owners into a deep watery grave.
Politics and religion. The best burger in town. Hurling selfish dog owners into the sea. "I reserve the right to be wrong about everything." The highlight of my teaching career is a graduating student using this as her senior quote in the yearbook and attributing it to me (I heard it from Will D. Campbell).
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