After all, God is love. Posted by Luke Mehall at 7: Thursday, March 14, Eyes on the Prize, Trying to keep the focus into spring. The Highway is for gamblers. I am a man of seasons, my behavior is defined by the outside conditions, and I can smell, feel and taste spring in the air. Clothes come off, and an awakening stirs within.
climbing zine -- printed version
I am no longer trying to become a writer, I am a writer, I just need to channel my gift and be patient with it. Now that spring is here I get a little more antsy. The mind drifts towards simple sinning a little quicker. My routine of early to bed, early to rise will be interrupted more and more. When I was a child I was full of angst, and something about warm weather, more sunshine, women wearing less clothes; well, a storm brews up when all these appear.
Last summer I embraced the angst, the openness, every woman that came my way, but this season I hope to be more disciplined. Routine can be boring, dreadful, but routines can create health, which is wealth. Health is the altar I will pray to this spring and summer while embracing the ecstasy of the warmth. Life is about to be action packed.
I have four weddings to attend in the next five months. The next Climbing Zine is coming out in April. When there are new things to do it sparks my cells and I feel alive.
A writer must live an interesting life or else there is nothing to write about. I hope the spring is awakening something beautiful within you. Four climbers pack into The Freedom Mobile, a graffiti-ed vehicle, spray painted red, white and blue. The sun is shining so brilliantly, its impossible not to be intoxicated by the Vitamin D it provides, even before climbing.
The commute to the crag is filled with excitement, and hip-hop, the music of our generation.
The Dirtbag Diaries
We are in Indian Creek, Utah, the red rock desert, our home away from home, or home to those that choose to not call civilization home. Red rock walls all around are where we spend our days. The energy of hip-hop is where its at. He told his story about going to war and how climbing saved his life. I think that's where climbing truly has its deepest value, how we can use it as a tool or a metaphor to overcome adversity.
Seems as though climbing has been used as a metaphor to overcome adversity in your own life.
USA Climbing, Hiking, Travel, History :: Chessler Books
Well, I got into climbing at just the right time in life, when I was a lost, depressed year-old. The first climbing trip I ever went on was with two buddies and these three other guys who were heroin addicts. I wasn't addicted to hard drugs like that, but when I started climbing I was addicted to substances and had no exercise regiment. Climbing really came in and gave me something to live for. I think I'm the type of person who can naturally lean towards depression, but when I'm climbing regularly I feel like the happiest person in the world. When Stacy Bare, the author of that story, and I met we talked about how both of us "would be dead or in jail without climbing".
I think that's true for me. Can you explain that term? Well, that's just a joke, but climbing does take that path of fanaticism. I did think of giving up on the live to climb lifestyle for a couple years and got a Then I realized I couldn't do that, so now I'm back to that life of living the climbing life, while working a creative schedule with flexible jobs. So on the thread of dirtbags, you seem to know a lot about them. I mean you authored a book called "The Great American Dirtbag"! So, in your opinion, is the climbing dirtbag in decline? Are there any true dirtbags left? Well, in reality the dirtbag lifestyle is probably growing.
The thing is gym climbing is the dominant force in the climbing culture. So dirtbagging comes later, not first. If you've been to places like Squamish and Indian Creek its apparent many people are still chasing the dirtbag dream. As for if there are any true dirtbags left, I think for sure there are. It's like asking if romance is still alive, or if hip-hop is dead. We can debate it online and people can lament the good 'ol days, but the reality is many people are still living out of a bag, in the dirt. How does climbing and its lifestyle meld with writing for you? I think climbing gives me the headspace to be able to continually create.
These lyrics are beautiful, infinite, hinting at meaning, yet leaving the listener space to interpret her or his own thoughts on the song. Something is different each time, depending on my mood, or how much I try to analyze. The characters of the city are tired of the day-to-day consciousness, they want to be somewhere else, they climb into the night, buzzing like bees. Where does this buzz lead them? Nighttime is when the things get heavy You feel alone and you want somebody Loneliness whispers desperate measures And your frantic all by yourself.
For Mos Def, climbing into the night, leads him in the arms of a woman, perhaps one he does not know well. There with the woman is that possibility for change in consciousness, yet he is aware of the loneliness, the desperate measures that led the two together. And, then he pauses, wanting to bask in the safety and simplicity of the moment, having a woman in his arms as they sit in the green tree of love that they have climbed into.
Where does our desire to climb rocks and mountains come from, and why do we do it?
- The son of Kasaka!
- Dirtbaggery, Vol. 2: Saving Time, Wasting Time and Explaining Climbing on the Internet?
- Strange Things Happen?
- Fringe's Folly!
Simplified, climbing makes us feel good. No one could argue with that. It is an uplifting activity. We take our existence in the horizontal, and go vertical. Like ice, rock, snow and plastic there are several canvases on which the hip-hopper performs their art. When it began there was graffiti art, the music, and the dancing. B-boys and b-girls, more commonly referred to as breakdancers in the mainstream, also get vertical, by performing an endless repertoire of moves, and they started this still popular art form on the horizontal stone of the city, the concrete.
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- Rick Nelson, Rock n Roll Pioneer.
- Stacy Bare (Author of The Climbing Zine Volume 5, The Dirtbag Issue).
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- Tinseltown.
Hip-hop music is easy to be engaged with, just pump up the volume and there you are; breakdancing, on the other hand is difficult. My climbing crew has always been infatuated with breakdancing, and five years ago, during a raining Thanksgiving at Indian Creek we decided to have a dance off. There were only two entrants to the competition, myself and my good friend and climbing partner, Mark Grundon.
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Both of us had learned our moves from watching breakdancing movies, and had a total of two or three each in our repertoire. The competition ended when I tried to jump over Mark in the middle of one of his moves, and he stood up. I kicked his neck with a brutal blow, and the competition was over with a major buzz kill. Despite its humble beginnings every year at Thanksgiving we have a dance-off. Some of the climbers in our posse may be 5. We have a couple dance studios so I called them up searching for breakdancing classes.
The last one I called did in fact have a class, and at that studio I met my first real breakdancer, Skyhawk. With Tim Foulkes, one of my top climbing partners and fellow aspiring b-boy, we took some lessons from Skyhawk, and fumbled around on the floor to learn some basic moves. When Skyhawk would show us his moves we saw the dancer we wanted to become. After three months of classes I had maybe four solid moves in my repertoire.