essay
Into the wild What happens when an outdoor girl dates in the indoor world? A whole new kind of adventure
T by stephanie forte
The conversation died. My date made a brave attempt to fill the silence. “I don’t even know what to ask you about rock climbing,” he said. Most of our dinner had been spent recounting his life: a struggling musician who gets a dream job on Broadway, starves in L.A., lives the high life in Japan and now performs in Las Vegas. He knew little about me other than the fact that I rock climb — and that I’m the type of woman who would boldly accept a friend’s challenge to walk on stage after a show, hand a musician my business card and tell him to call me. Drummer Boy was one of the more interesting men I’d met in Las Vegas. But I was most fascinated by the texture of his skin — unnaturally smooth, devoid of the lines left behind by one too many powder days or desert climbing trips spent baking alongside the cholla and Joshua trees. I compared our hands: mine scarred and scabbed, his nearly perfect. I ordered another drink. I’d whipped 20 feet off the side of a cliff more than once, but it took living in Las Vegas for seven years to brave dating outside the climbing circle. For me, going out on the Strip was like observing the mating rituals of alien life forms — females with thin, elegant arms 22 D e s e r t C o m pa n i o n A P R I L 2 0 1 1
and males more skilled with hair product than I ever was. The Las Vegas I live in isn’t glamorous or en vogue with Hollywood’s A-list. My Las Vegas is sandstone walls, desolate trails and hiking out of the canyons by moonlight. It’s about the feel of warm rock under bare feet and the solitude of Red Rock at sunrise. I can recall the texture of each minuscule handhold on my favorite route on Mt. Charleston’s limestone. But for the life of me, I cannot remember which nightclub is in which hotel.
Since strapping on my first climbing harness nearly two decades ago while living in Aspen, Colo., first dates have been burritos and a Fat Tire on the tailgate of a pick-up after climbing. I decided to make a serious effort to date outside my circle after a non-climbing friend at a local climber party made a frightening observation: “You guys are like a tribe … I’m not even sure you can mate with people on the outside.” I’ve dated my share of climbers — almost married one — but it never worked. It
ILLUSTRATION By Christopher SMith