In the city, the marketers and mass disseminators are doing brunch with bottomless mimosas and hollandaise—or drinks and dressings hipper than these—at places that have been written up or blogged about. They are squinting, recounting hazy memories from last night’s two-borough, eight-bar night, and jousting for cool points and accords in taste in music, movies, and TV, because, as John Cusak’s character in the movie High Fidelity says, “It is not who you are, it is what you like”. In Times Square, the tourists who can’t walk anymore huddle in new, so-called “green spaces” where the pavement is painted physically green and blocked off with large potted plants. They rest on chairs and shield. Sirens are loud enough to hurt. A girl in her twenties sits, elbows on her knees, crying. She is saying, “Fine, fine…”, with an iPhone to her face, and the tourists cannot help getting distracted from the cool burn of Jumbo-Trons and moving text and James Franco’s eight-story averted middle-distance gaze that sells perfume to watch this girl they don’t know despair in the heart of the city. I am eighteen feet off the ground over a pit of possible physical despair grappling with this rock that is 400 million years old that fell off a ridge in a series of small geologic cataclysms that littered a miles-long ridgeline with gigantic boulders. I eyeball the edge of that rooflet, which is maybe a foot deep, with pebbles of quartzite sunk in it like oversize buckshot in a phone book. I am going to frog my foot on a pencil eraser of quartzite and pinch the square edge of that motherfucking roof as hard as I can. Downtown, in Union Square, the listless are gathering: skateboarders posing in motion for the crowd, a witness of Jehovah shouting about Adam and Eve to nobody and everybody; some NYU kids are shooting the scene of a student movie so this girl is running in a circle, trying to stay in a building’s shadow, avoiding the blown-out light of the sun, while student actors playing homeless people stand next to actual homeless people, a front-toothless one of which is playing to the crowd, making fun of another who has headphones plugged into a transistor radio, and whatever he is hearing he is pretty jazzed about it and oblivious to being watched or just doesn’t care because he keeps bouncing back and forth on his toes. His hands open out in front like a gloveless boxer ready to fight, except he has a serene look, a complete lack of concentration on his face. Art imitating life-imitating artimitating life with hundreds of people milling about, looking—some just standing in sunlight, which they hadn’t felt on their faces in weeks. Some taking pictures to show people: This is New York.
I make a noise when I make the move to the lip of the rooflet. A “Whup!” sort of grunt, only no vowels. There is a hold. I am still on. Hips rise as if pulled by strings and I move to an edge that’s like a lightning bolt. I thrutch about, trying to avoid the potentially season-ending barndoor. I move right to this raised bit of Braille to set up for the final move - which is really the moment, this one. I’ve raced through so much in so much detail and I’m so high off the ground trying really, really hard and I have managed to cajole friends and motivation and mercurial ability together all in one place at one time to full-body wrestle with this geologic wonder. I stare down this motherfucking jug - which is so close but really far away and it is all I can think about and there is nothing else except how scary it is. Really, even if I don’t do it, it doesn’t matter. A good spotter will divert my long, oddly quiet, and dangerous fall onto a pad. I will pack up and trundle down the talus quietly among friends who understand, the last bit of water sloshing in the jug, and I will get back on the road toward that bristling skyline, exhausted and safe and empty and maybe a little sunburned, already wanting to come back. Tomorrow I will go down into the subway, emerge into the thin light and walk up to my desk and later talk among friends who don’t understand, but still feel like I did something and got scared, so it doesn’t matter. But then, I do it. And here, within a commuter’s shot of the city, it matters very much.
Promiscuous Emily Stifler (‘02) I got a job this year, so my climbing has been in brief and satisfying spurts, desperate for rock, sky, dirt and the companionship of climbing partners. It’s made the days I do get out that much more satisfying, but also frustrating because my position as desk jockey at a set of publications based in Big Sky, Montana hasn’t exactly improved my strength. My friend Rose and I escaped to a granite gorge east of Yellowstone Park in September, adventure in mind. The first day we repeated a fantastic, dirty, wide, four-pitch 5.9 called Mr. Wiggles. The next morning, we decided to go for something new. I’d spied a 300-foot line of prominent dihedrals that looked filthy, but not 5.11, so we dumped cams, beaks, hammer and ropes into our packs, and descended into the canyon. We wanted to go ground up, so I spent the next four hours on lead, hucking rocks and massive hummocks of moss down at Rose, free climbing, aiding, cursing and hacking at CCAJ
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