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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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May 13, 2010 - 11:54pm PT
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i usta go to a monthly poetry reading in santa monica. the rule was, you had to sit through the whole thing and listen to all the other poets if you wanted to come back and read again. as the moderator said,
"if poets don't listen to other poets, who will?"
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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May 13, 2010 - 11:59pm PT
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error is enveloping.
enlightenment is ellusive.
and my bliss is pissed.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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May 13, 2010 - 11:59pm PT
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alcohol echos.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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May 14, 2010 - 09:21am PT
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beautiful prose. for me, it was a latent variable model, today. with figures!
When the party turns to poems, as it might, you and I can swap modeling epics.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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May 14, 2010 - 11:48am PT
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Godot ain't gonna show,
Where are they now?
What do you name an emerald Green Swedish car?
waiting on a phone call
Ironman II?
Valley?
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MisterE
Social climber
Across Town From Easy Street
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May 14, 2010 - 12:12pm PT
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Breathe
just right
and every cell
flops over
grinning.
-James Bertolino
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Topic Author's Reply - May 14, 2010 - 01:26pm PT
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Defeat is a bitter tasting brew not suitable for toasting friends with.
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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May 14, 2010 - 02:55pm PT
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Spring Creek Tower, Gunnison - dead of winter.
The adrenaline was certainly flowing that day. I led the last pitch, normally 5.6 or 5.7 about 45 min. after sunset. The rock was covered with about 1/4 in. of verglass and I was chipping ice off of footholds (no crampons) by swinging that big hex and using the old "wool glove sticking to the ice" trick for my hands. On the last pitch I got one stopper (I think about a #5) in a shallow ice covered seam and then ran it out to the top. When I brought Mike up, his eyes were as big as saucers and he whispered through gasps "nice lead Moss".
We topped out in the absolute dark with 4 ft deep snow drifts on top, it was 5 below. We had to dig around through the drifts to find rocks that we could sling and rap off, in the dark with no lamps. Once I stepped on a snow bridge that broke away below me and I could see the creek 100s of feet down through the hole...almost sh*$ my pants on that one. We finally rapped off and skiied out in the dark. 3 months later in the Spring, we retrieved our slings and one big hex we left for the rap.
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cowpoke
climber
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May 14, 2010 - 03:21pm PT
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When the party turns to poems oh boy, that is funny...and true.
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Anastasia
climber
hanging from a crimp and crying for my mama.
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May 14, 2010 - 04:20pm PT
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all the stats are in
it's a picture ending
and standing on the side
I am left alone to catch my breath
knowing my best friend and my ex-boyfriend
are to exchange vows of marriage
a romance grown in the shadows of my back
now a truth that bruises my sight
yet I am no longer confused
over all that was strained when it was once so free
I am relieved from a burden of lies
knowing with certainty
they are right for each other
I find myself smiling
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Topic Author's Reply - May 14, 2010 - 05:54pm PT
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"Hold down the fort" he said.
I said "I don't think zepplins make good forts".
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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May 14, 2010 - 06:12pm PT
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anastasia, im glad that you are smiling for that difficult and twisted journey.
when i read your post, for some reason, i didn't see the smiling word,
i just read,
"i find myself"
and i mentally fled, just over there, chewing on that sentence.
i find myself.
good for you. that's a tough search.
and you were smiling!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Topic Author's Reply - May 14, 2010 - 08:16pm PT
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Anastasia your words are rocking my heart.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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May 14, 2010 - 11:10pm PT
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Love the fishing stories! Thank you for posting up!
Just at dark: I climb onto the pile of logging slash, and start pulling out pieces and tossing them to Wally for our campfire.
Shortly, something flies near my face. I have a premonition of evil, and I look down to see what might be happening. I am black from the belly down with incensed, but cold, black-hornets that are crawling up me with malice in their demonical little minds.
“Hornets!!” I scream, as I leap off the slash pile and start running towards the road (and Wally) while peeling off my shirt and flailing at my pants. About that time the first hornets start stinging me through the shirt and on my head.
I blow by the slightly stunned Wally and start running up the road at just below light speed. (the truck was not an option, since I was still covered with hornets.)
Meanwhile Wally is standing there trying to figure out what is going on.
He later told me that the only thing he could think was: Fritz had finally gone insane.
About that time the first hornet stung him.
We both ran about 100 yards up the road in the dark: slapping and getting stung, cursing and screaming: until we felt safe again.
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hossjulia
Social climber
Eastside
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May 15, 2010 - 07:03pm PT
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The plan had been hatching and morphing for days in all of our minds.
On the silent bike ride home at 10pm, with Mono Lake a (large) presence to my right, I could hardly think of anything more than (traffic), laying on the floor with my feet up, a glass of wine and stretching. let alone packing to ski the next morning.
I open the door to a split board hardwear yard sale. I had to step over and on things to get across the room. Roomie is cobbing together bindings and parts for his split.
He goes off at 10:30 to borrow stickboys wax iron. (A near neighbor) I'm contentedly falling asleep on the floor, feet up and glass of wine near at hand.
At 11pm or so, roomie comes back and goes, "Were leaving tonight, you wanna go, get your sh#t packed, stickboy is on fire!"
"F*#k, dude, not tonight." is my whinny reply. I lay there for another few seconds, sit up, gulp down my wine, jump up and start packing. "I have no food!" I cry, then rummage through the pantry and fridge and come up with enough. (I do this climbing too, "I can't do it!" then 5 minutes later, I have.)10 minutes later, I'm ready.
While I'm waiting, I check my phone and find that Anastasia has called, she'll be in town over the weekend. I call her back, leave a message and plan on being around Sunday so we can get together.
Stickboy shows up around 11:20 or so and we're off. Err, so we thought. After roomie tears the front of his truck apart searching for his keys, he finds them in his pocket. Must be the Knob Creek kicking in.
It's now 11:30.
We hit my storage unit 5 minutes later and I pick up my hardware. Skis, check, boots, check, poles, check, pack, unpack the sh#t I don't need and go light, check. Double check that my skins are there. Bag, pad, pillow, I'm done! NOW we're off.
Up the deserted highway to spring ski heaven. No one in sight but a snowshoe hare that tries to keep pace when it is caught in the headlights.
On the way up the pass, roomie asks me what the old hippy will think when we pull in at midnight and wake him up. "I just hope he's not packing" Was my reply, but on second thought, "Of course he's packing, I don't think he'll shoot us though."
Roomie has a laugh that rolls out of him and drowns any bad thoughts. Stickboy is crammed in the jump seat a go-in on about the old hippy we will surely wake up. Then he comments on how this all came together at the last minute, how his plans had been totally different, and how none of us really had the chance to talk it over and here we were, on a deserted hwy at midnight, goin up to ride a place we all love more than just about anything else. Wondrous.
Midnight on the pass. We file out of the Toyota and start unloading. The liquor has loosened the tongues and we are loud. But we know there is no one else around besides the rock & roll hippy and take advantage.
The little skully boom comes out and we are rockin to Joe Strummer, Hayseed Dixie, and god knows who else. Sacred herb is smoked in abundant thanks.
The hippy gets up to investigate and is greeted with an ice cold PBR in appeasement. It works and he is happy to see us, proceeds to entertain and talk our ears off for the next 2 hours.
I check out the lodge and find it smells like a rat cage, so I decide to sleep outside. It's going on 2am so off I crawl into my bed.
I had noticed the sky earlier. My God I thought, what happened to the Milky Way! Straight over head, running north to south, the stars had aligned into a loose double helix. It wasn't the Milky Way. This sunk into my gut as something important. Roomie saw me craning my neck and looked too, giving me a puzzled look in the middle of whatever spray he was on about. He saw it.
After I get settled, I gaze up and marvel, this is the clearest night I have seen in a long time, every star is there, the sky is thick with them. New moon, no haze, no smoke, no high thin clouds, just a brilliant sky of diamonds sparkling in the cold. There were more stars than spaces between them. A coyote yipped and howled very close, reminding us we were never really alone, he was met with hearty laughter by the happy noisy crew. He did not appreciate this and yipped some more.
Just as I doze off, I hear a car and headlights shine on the snowbanks. Uhm, no, that's my roomie on his skateboard in the deserted hwy, with his headlamp. It's so quiet it seemed like a car. I listen to him riding back and forth, back and forth, hope he doesn't hit a rock and land on his head, then drop off.
Sometime later I wake, look up and realize that the sky is solid stars. I have never seen a night sky so clear and jam packed, and I have seen plenty of moonless starry nights in the Sierra before. I feel fortunate to have witnessed this. There is the Milky Way now, over to the E/SE.
The birds wake me up a little bit later with their cheerfulness and I wait for the sun to warm up my day. It does and chases me out of my bag, but it's too early! Only 7:30.
By 9 we're all up and more or less ready to go. I'm restless and know the snow is softening up fast. The party boys drag their feet, but we finally hit it around 10. Sierra start.
After 2 weeks on my bike, skinning feels great, it's good to be back in my backyard, the terrain is familiar and the sensual contours lead me with out much thought.
We climb to a ridge top @ ~11,000' have lunch and take it all in. It's noon. They proceed on to an objective worthy of hard young men, I ski back down the way we came, happy to be making turns on corn. A short scoot back to the lodge, and I bum a ride home to write this.
I'm bushed and nappy, but the past 16 hours have been bliss.
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R.B.
Trad climber
Pacifica
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May 16, 2010 - 01:36am PT
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Many times, in literary works ... a whole story can be told with one sentence, for example:
The sweatstained, thirsty and overheated big wall climber mantled onto the ledge and was elated for being done with the climbing for the day as he knew that soon, he would be able to take off the hot climbing shoes to air out his blazing hot feet, and soon be eating a fine meal of canned beans and swilling a lukewarm can of Ol' English 800 while he and his partner took in the scenery of the evening rainbow in its brillance.
Now don't that just put you right there!
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hossjulia
Social climber
Eastside
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Aug 15, 2010 - 07:36pm PT
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"Chris and the Pika's"
The employee area at TPR was once a cesspool we called poo-ville. Nothing grew, there was garbage and left over detritus everywhere.
fast forward a few years to after Mr. Bill's epic clean up effort, massive efforts by the owners to reduce our water consumption (and resulting leach field impact) and the cessation of poisoning mice, and we now have wildflowers, native grasses and lots of critters. (including mice)It's now called yurt-ville.
Marmots moved in a couple of years ago and entertain us with their sun bathing on our decks. Belding's Ground Squirrels scamper underfoot and Junco's nest in the grass, urging caution at fledge time.
A week ago, I heard the unmistakable chirping of a Pika. I had not seen them in the resort proper before and quickly spotted him under our pastry chief's deck.
The very next day, one of our cooks Chris asks me about 3 creatures he saw IN his yurt the night before. Round fat things with no tails that hop like a rabbit. I couldn't believe it, he had 3 Pika's in his yurt! He woke up to the sound of something in with him just in time to watch one of his wool socks drug across the floor and under the wall. A little while later he saw the biggest one (named "Daddy" by him) going after the horseradish leftover on his dinner plate. He said daddy got a taste of it and went nuts, jumping all over and doing the cha-cha. He must have liked the taste, because they keep trying to get back in, even after Chris barricaded the skirt flap with rocks. He says they have built a nest under his yurt and he hears the family quarrels every night.
So in the interst of trying to get some sleep, he decides to live trap them. Last night, he sets out the trap baited with a fig newton. He swears that as soon as Daddy sees the trap, he sets to the loudest alarm calling yet, running around the thing and yelling at it. (I heard some of this)So now of course, none of the rest of the family will go near it. He's seen 5 of them, 2 big ones and 3 little ones.
Let's see if Chris makes peace with the Pika's and gets some sleep. I sure hope so, he cooks my food!
On a related topic, we have a family of shrews living in a cabin. Last guests loved them, we'll see what the next group thinks.
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perswig
climber
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Aug 15, 2010 - 08:53pm PT
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The steady, droning basso continuo of the approaching plow (finally it's snowing), brief gouts of sparks seen best out the corner of your eye, feet tingling with the vibration of steel on macadam transmitted through our old stone foundation (and maybe up into my soul - it's starting to feel like winter), and then the bittersweet doppler as the plow passes and takes its wakeup song to someone else, leaving in its wake only the sound of the dogs breathing and maybe the tree lights glimmering through the tiny crystals.
I can hear it. Can you?
Dale
(posted '08 in What Song...; starting to think about winter a bit)
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Aug 15, 2010 - 10:09pm PT
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i dreamed a nun playing delta blues in a smoke-filled speakeasy. I'm not catholic and every thing i know about nuns i learned from sally field. that nun played walkin blues and come on in my kitchen like she was breaking a promise... my heart murmured and she knocked the wind out of me. i couldn't breathe. i had to get out of the smoke, get some air, so i awoke.
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MisterE
Social climber
Bouncy Tiggerville
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Bump
A Simple Lesson in Human Behavior
Humanity: 1: the quality or state of being humane
Humane: 1: marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals
Premise:
The important lessons in life are the most difficult to overcome and understand. If not learned, they return to one again and again.
Statement of Purpose:
This premise lies in all of our subconsciousness, we know with some part of ourselves that it is true. How one deals with the challenge of these lessons defines a state of active or reactive living in our lives. We either choose to accept the difficulty of the challenge of our own reactions/responses to difficult situations, or we react without understanding. When we react, we continue the cycle of misunderstanding, resentment, and anger.
The Questions: “What is it about this statement that makes me react? Why am I allowing this person to effect my perception? My stability? My peace?”
The answers are in the questions. By asking them - internalizing the questions about one’s reactions - it takes the reaction away, makes it personal.
“Why am I responding to this negativity in my particular way?” “What is within me that is unresolved, and therefore forcing me to react?”
In that, it takes the power away from those seeking to engage one’s energy for their insecure purposes. This process serves a dual purpose in that it takes one into an active state of mind, focusing healing energy within. From that active, considerate state of mind, one can look outward toward the person that previously caused one pain and say:
“Thank you for challenging me, helping me grow to be a better person.”
Finding compassion where there once was pain.
It is a way of tricking one’s mind until one gets the hang of the processes, these questions. Eventually, with practice, it will become second nature and one can simply let others insecurities flow around and past them, not through them, not a mirror of them.
Erik Wolfe
06/24/10
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