After spending 9 weeks in Africa taking bouldering too seriously spending much of our time on other climber's agendas, there came a day for my friend Cedar Wright and I to just get out, get high, and be unexpected for dinner. We just left the house that morning on foot. Jacked up on caffeine, we headed miles into the fields behind our farm to what seemed to be far enough away place from home. We figured on developing new boulders and taking it easy. To unwind our cluttered minds and personal agendas.
Cedar is a big-wall climber with a big-wall kind of appetite for excitement. Climbing on small boulders, despite the physical challenge leaves him mentally hungry. Cedar lives his life as a professional climber, and believe me, there is nothing professional about it. For Cedar it is just how he wants to be, mostly just left alone. He struggles to find a kind of self-freedom from society. Always playing his guitar, he sings and writes his songs as they come on the wind, but he is always just a second away from freedom. This is true of his climbing as well. He often scares me in dangerous situations on the rocks as I wonder how much he has to live for. I learned to trust his judgement. I had to learn to respect his choices. We shared many close calls, if only in our minds, in search of freedom. He is closer to finding it than I am.
Cedar fell from this problem and landed in the space between the pad and the rock a foot behind it moments after I snapped this photo. "Help" he said before pitching off. "I can't help you Cedar", I said on our long hike back by moonlight. And we smoked.
photo: me
No comments:
Post a Comment