I got to see the sign for Peter”s Kill Area Climbing Permits UNavailable change to AVAILABLE this weekend. And I think that’s what joy looks like. It looks like opening day at your favorite place. It looks like sunshine in late March. It looks like a cold, hard day that is also beautiful. This time […]
I find that we all tell ourselves stories about who we are. The reality is that we aren’t actually the person telling the story, we’re the person listening to it. This is important to remember because you have to be careful what stories you tell yourself. Sometimes you tell yourself that you can’t or that […]
I’m still coming to terms with the fact that what I want to be when I grow up has changed. Like, they just don’t tell you that might happen. They ask you what you want to be when you grow up and if you’re one of the lucky ones, maybe you know and you have […]
Birthdays are hard as a grown up. The joy has gone out of growing older. I’ve got wrinkles and body aches and a job and a mortgage and a car payment and everyone tells you when you’re a kid that it isn’t better to be an adult but you don’t believe it until it happens. What […]
I’m beginning to worry I don’t know how to live without chaos. We’ve made it through the longest nights of winter. But it’s still winter. My husband caught COVID, so I did as much as I could while I was still testing negative. This included taking my nieces rock climbing and ice skating for one […]
For a while I didn’t like teaching the learn to climb classes at Cornell because I felt like I didn’t really have anything to teach. That said, I’m stupid because this is all you really need to know when you’re first learning to climb: I guess I have at least two things to teach, then.
All I want for Christmas is to climb forever. I want to see all of the high places. I hope for the holidays you find a passion that leads you to new heights, metaphorical or literal.
Sometimes I feel like I spent years waiting on someone or something. These days I try not to. These days if I want to do a thing, I just do it, with or without someone to do it with. This is hard. I know we are pack animals at heart, but I think about all […]
Sometimes I struggle to have things to say if I don’t have a photo to back it up. Like this week, the only pictures I took the entire week were of a display of donuts so I could decide which to order while I ate my breakfast and a photo of my boss demonstrating prusik […]
Sometimes the weeks feel like a flip book. The pages go by and make a movie but it’s gone in seconds. You flip through again and again. It’s a whir of pictures. Occasionally it stops. Usually in high places, after hard work. Let’s be honest, usually it’s when climbing. That’s why I do it. Like […]
