The Joy of Sharing Mountains

Emily burst into my class on the first day of school. "Mr. Butterworth!" she exclaimed, "my dad and I climbed the First Flatiron this summer!" The words sputtered out before she put her backpack down. I showed her the pictures where I also climbed the First and we spent several minutes bonding over our shared experiences on the same huge piece of rock some 1,300 miles away. Lots of people climb the Flatirons - large, orange, sandstone fins on the Colorado Front Range, loaded with long 5.easy routes - but not that many, and certainly not many teenagers in Tennessee. Emily and I were part of a special club; our own little society of mountaineers.  

With a rope and a rack, you can go to places few others have gone and despite climbing's ever-growing popularity, even fewer have stood on top of. “Climbing,” we are warned by the tiny labels on cams, quickdraws, and carabiners “is an inherently dangerous activity that may result in serious injury or death.” The alpinist RLG Irving likened the person who claims to love mountains having never risked anything to climb them to one who claims to be a sailor but who's never left the shore. And unless you're Alex Honnold, you almost always have to climb with somebody else. Rock climbing and mountaineering, for me, has always been about the shared experience: the memories and miseries made with close friends in beautiful places.

I've had the privilege of sharing fine places with great people over the years. Every summit is mentally cataloged not by its elevation or its difficulty, but by the people I was with: Eli, Paul L., Joy, Julia, Vance, Jamie, Logan, Leah, Barrett, Robin, Daniel, Josh, Becca, Evan, Andrew, Paul H., Ben, Russ, and a hundred or so teenagers I guided in Colorado. 

When asked, "what are your most cherished memories?" These are them.

The mountains belong to us all yet no one can claim them as their own, so too are our memories shared belongings. Rebecca and I still smile as we remember our time getting off route and blown off by a storm in the Canadian Rockies. And I know that the next time I see Josh we'll remember that belay ledge that was the size of a bar stool, the wind whipping our rope around, my truck, a tiny red dot in the valley below, and debating who led the next terrifying pitch. One of these days, I'll see my buddy Vance again and we'll recall that time we woke up thinking a bear was clawing at our tent but it was Barrett having another night terror. 

Psychologists say shared memories are crucial for our ability to interact with others, to form important, meaning-making social groups, and even our perceptions of the self. Many of my climbing partners are now spread across the country, but our collective memories made in the mountains preserve already established bonds. Therefore, even if I haven’t seen Eli in a long time, I know when I see him again that meaning is held between us through the conscious expression of shared memories in the mountains. That’s part of the special bond of tying into a rope with your partner. It is as if that rope becomes some kind of sacrament; the mediator of a deeper, almost transcendent, relationship. 

Shortly after Emily and I convened our meeting of mountaineers in my classroom, she went on to help start our school's first rock climbing team. It isn’t scrambling in the Canadian Rockies or jamming up splitter dihedrals at Tennessee Wall, but it is tying into a rope with another person and, to some degree, trusting them with your life -- even if the holds are plastic. Paul and I were asked to coach the ragtag group of teenagers--they were band nerds, soccer jocks, thespians, the valedictorian, and a young punk who listened to Black Flag and read Kropotkin. Kids who never talked to each other in the cafeteria were now convening between classes to discuss “the pink 5.11” in the back corner of the gym. The only thing they had in common was this shared experience of climbing rocks. It was so much fun watching them belay each other, figure out beta, and then go to Burger King together afterward. 

 

The school climbing club reminded me of all those Friday nights spent flailing at the bouldering gym with friends and then heading to Las Palmas for mango margaritas. They reminded me that I didn't have much in common with Josh when we loaded up for a multi-month road trip together. And they reminded me of the pure joy of seeing someone accomplish something they thought beyond them. The students made me hopeful that as they graduated and went their disparate ways, that one day they might crawl into a corner booth somewhere and spray about micro crimps or remember airy belay ledges. Those kids made me hopeful that they too will have the collective memories --the transcendent relationships-- that I have had the joy of having. The shared experiences of climbing connects strangers who climbed the same route in the Flatirons and deepens the bonds of friends who shared a remote summit all to themselves. 

 

This is the joy of sharing mountains, so pass it on.

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