Many of you know that I have been climbing for almost half my life. I learned to belay when I was sixteen years old, but it would not be for several more years that I would begin to generate training momentum and begin to achieve climbing goals that I thought would take a lifetime. Now those goals are bigger, badder and stretch farther into the future than ever before.
Climbing began for me mostly outdoors and then in gyms and then again, eventually brought me back to nature. I had long been a product of the technological age; spending long hours under fluorescent lights, staring into a blueish screen for work, entertainment and shopping. I wanted to chop wood, build a fire, set up a camp and feel the pull of humankind's most primitive and basic needs. The kinds of needs that Amazon can't provide. Life can be a little harder in the woods but it can also be simpler.
Years into working at a Northwest New Jersey Climbing gym, I began to set routes and boulders, as well as coach a small group of young climbers in a relatively informal setting. This experience would set me up to further my climbing career in a way that I never thought possible.
When I began to train in a concerted way for climbing in the summer of 2012 I could have never imagined that in the summer of 2018 I would be helping to further a project called Memphis Rox in the heart of South Memphis, Tennessee, USA. I got the job over social media. It was a whirlwind. And suddenly, I was immersed in the challenge.
South Memphis is home to one of the poorest per-capita zip codes in America and is a veritable food-desert. The gym's mission was to create a community space for climbers and non-climbers alike in the epicenter of a socio-economic and racially stratified city. We aimed to bring people together.
But that's a lot harder than it sounds. There were some amazing successes and countless failures. We laughed, cried, rejoiced, panicked and everything in between. And one day I realized I was stressed again. Stressed in such a way that I had forgotten how much climbing meant to me. I sidestepped all of my own motivations in the world of climbing and promised myself that teaching and sacrificing of myself would be worth it. And it was, in so many ways.
Memphis is a city of beauty and squalor. The reds and yellows of the sunset over the Mississippi River is viewed in stark contrast to the metal rust and grayshade of dilapidated structures and artifices of a city long depressed and partly abandoned. The reality of living in a city again hit me hard. And then I realized that those uncomfortable feelings were valid. After all, I was not climbing and teaching others to climb because I was passionate about it, but rather to get paid and simply survive in an unknown locale.
When the shine of these new florescent lights had become too much, my wings started to flap again. Away from the smells and sounds. Away from the selfish pull of making money in a city. Away from the disenchantment of stacked and shared living spaces. Take me away from all that. Place me firmly back in the hands of the loving forest. After all, separation makes the heart grow fonder. Or perhaps just more appreciative. I never thought I wanted to be a climbing coach, anyway.