And when my life is over
Remember when we were together
We were alone and I was singing this song
To you”
---Leon Russell

It had been a long winter. Every pain was the beginning of cancer. Every forgetfulness was premature senility. Every cold was the beginning of pneumonia. It was raining and snowing and every old fool who could fool any other fool into following him was calling in the rapture like this life wasn’t good and beautiful and sweet enough so you gotta cash in what you got for something you don’t really know is gonna work and ain’t that the ultimate in foolishness, to just give away something that is beautiful, maybe a bit tarnished and too taken for granted , for something unseen and unknown that some puffy-eyed old fool tells you is a sure investment and so you give it all away to buy what turns out to be a tawdry imitation made of bitter ash and dust.

I was sittin there listenin to that radio and they told me I had to believe or I would not be saved. And I thought to myself, what is this I am to be saved from? Am I to be saved from thinkin for myself, for takin the chance therein? I mean if y’all gonna save me from seein the world as gray cause I been taking it for granted for so long now that I wonder if I could ever see colors again, then maybe I sign up for y’all trip. But if’n you just offerin me another gray place where I need be feeling guilty about just being born, then I thinking maybe you outta just walk on outta here, boy, ‘cause you just wastin yo time with me.

It had been a long winter. Our daughter was going on a High School band trip to Hawaii for a week and this was the first time in 16 years that Kristi and I had been alone together for that long. I just look over one day at that woman and I said, baby, we gotta go somewhere. We gotta get outta the house and get away from this sh#t, baby, instead of sitting around wondering when the next bill is gonna come in, thinking about how shaggy the lawn is getting, cause I mean, at my age, I got no time to waste mowing no lawn.

I’m sort of an intense person in ways. I get into that modern sickness that somehow something is better if it’s harder. So I get this feeling that if I’m not doing 10s and 11s and got some 12 going that I’m not really doing anything. My long sufferng family finds it hard to live with me. Pushing 60 years now I get to feeling I don’t have much time to waste, which is pretty ironic since I have wasted such prodigious amounts of it in the past. If I’d done half of what I’ve backed off of, I’d be considered a great climber.

But I look at Kristi, still a fine looking woman after all these years, and I think, maybe we should just go fun climbing. After sixteen years of raising a child, you lose touch a bit. We’re looking at each other, thinking, who the hell is this person? Maybe we should just go like get reaquainted and not try to make climbing history. City of Rocks looks pretty cool. Out of the way, away from the house, close enough to get to, do a couple of days, and get back to pick up our daughter.

When I was a kid, I used to think that the car was standing still when we drove and the Earth was moving past under our wheels with little jolts and bumps to fool us into thinking we were driving the car and it wasn’t bigger forces turning the wheels. Maybe time is like the same thing, sometimes it seems to pass so slow and painful and other times it’s so fast going by and after it’s over it seems like it was no time at all. Maybe that’s the secret of interstellar time travel, you put your mind into that fast space and you’re there and only the lines on your face to tell how long it’s been. Don’t need none of those fancy proton rockets and plasma engines, you just set your mind to it and there you are. Pretty cool. Beats paying the price of a ticket.

So there we are, that strange place called southern Idaho. The biggest and nicest looking buildings in all these small rural communities are the Mormon Churches. Look out, boy, you’ll never fit in here. Just keep moving. They’re perfect capitalists, they’re real friendly when they want your money but don’t ever try to live there. They’ll freeze you out sure as an 80 below day in Interior Alaska.

But it’s pretty down there around Almo, especially in the Spring. The people in the store are nice and they even have beer for the youngin’s in their Pranas chilling after a day in the sun. They have it all set up real nice up in the City with campsites and bathrooms and water and the scenery is real sweet out over the valley below with those pretty white rocks everywhere. Interesting mixture of xerophilic and alpine plants and even moose droppings around, wandering around in those cool watery shaded gulleys going down into the Inner City. Early is nice. Nobodies up yet and you can walk down in there without the chatter just the breeze moving around in the aspens and across that rough granite as we find our way with the old guidebook out to Stripe Rock. They even have little signs out there just made for climbers to find their way. In some ways you might think that’s pretty bogus but in another way, it’s kinda nice they have acknowledged that it’s a big climbing place and we’re not some weird subculture to be sprayed with Round-Up.

So we find this climb called Cruel Shoes and get started. Kristi hasn’t been doing much climbing lately, having a real full time job and all so she’s a little nervous about getting on a multipitch thing. But she’s always game, always has been. The rock is great stuff, steep but rough and all these wonderful big in cuts and buckets that remind me of those dikes on Lover’s Leap. Absolutely great stuff, kinda steep and only 5.7. It’s wonderful to be on trad again, after doing so much of that dumb-ass sport climbing in Lander. It’s like you can move and feel good instead of fussin around on some obscure combination of sh#t a whole big 3 feet out from a bolt like you were on Nanga Parbat or something.

The second pitch is kinda funny and I thought the whole thing was only two pitches, but the book we have is from the 90s so I get up to a belay anchor looking thing with a ring and a chain and there looks like a heck of a lot more route above but I start out anyway and get up there and realize that I’m not going to make it to any sort of anchor with a 60m rope anytime soon and I’m always loathe to belay off one bolt, like that is just asking for it. So I climb back down to the anchor, making it a short pitch and bring Kristi up. She’s a little nervous, up in the air and the wind is blowing around but still wants to continue. That’s the girl I’ve always known. I grab the clips and do a wonderful pitch of 5.6 to the top and bring her up.

It’s pretty cool to be up off the ground and look around at all the cool little rocks and things and see the tops of the trees below. There are a couple of groups arriving. Nice to get any early start and beat the crowds. We rap off in two 60m raps. It’s getting warm and we take a break in the shade talking to a couple kids that are happy and psyched to be there. Back up the trail to Bath Rock, stop along the way and do a few short climbs, fun, wonderful rock, getting hot so back to the car and do the reservation shuffle finding a campsite for the night between who’s gone and who’s coming tomorrow and who may never come. So we go to Almo where we can get cell reception and check on our daughter, text her a message; we miss you sweetheart and get an ice cream and head back up the hill. Getting cool as evening comes on so we head around and do a couple of real nice 5.7 cracks out of the Parking Lot.

Next morning, back down into the Inner City. Everyone else still sleeping it off. Maybe these young guys don’t do that anymore. All that training regimen and organic teas at night and sleep. So I’ve read but I’m so out of it I really don’t know. Never liked the taste of ginseng anyway. Still cool and breezy as we do some twenty star route on Bumblie Rock. Long 5.8 all bolted and nicely done. Good ledge at the top with a little tree. We get to watch a couple of early risers climb a slab on the rock across the creek. Later we’re doing a nice little 5.6 at the end of the rock, the crew arrives, Pranas and clip sticks and lots of chatter. Time to go elsewhere, being the misanthropes. We head over to Slabbage Patch. I need to stroke the 5.10 hangup a little. We beat some pretties to the cut off and I put on the gas to get up there first and lay out the rope. They turn around when they see I’ve staked it out all ready. Interesting rock, big dark plates and a wild start to the first bolt, some fun moves on good edges. The roof at the top is way fun, big jug pulls and easy. I can see why it’s so popular.
By then, the sun is coming around the corner and more people are coming around. We hang out by the creek for a while. Just a nice place to be, us older folks on vacation, not feeling we have to prove anything. The youngsters, they have to prove it. That’s the perogative of youth and it’s good. But it’s nice to not feel that pressure so much anymore. It’s all good, it all works out: everything will be fine. The shadows of the leaves moving in the breeze on running water. This is why we climb.

I get up in the middle of the night to take a pee. So many stars up there, whole worlds looking back at each other across the voids of space probably all going ‘who the heck is out there’ as well. A dome of light to the south, probably Salt Lake City. Still far away enough to not dim the Milky Way, slowly spinning it’s way through the great night. The creek tinkling away downward and the thin breeze in the aspen. Nothing to suggest that it is not a perfect world. May I turn turn turn and never forget.

Driving through Malta the next morning in the rain and the sun breaks through. A huge double rainbow completes itself across the valley and moves as we move so it goes on and on until the sun is hidden in clouds again. We’re both watching it with no words. Everything is all right. It always has been. We’d just forgotten for a while.