BOOK EXERPT
K ATIE IVES “DAMNATION GULLY, MT. WASHINGTON” PHOTO BY AL AN CAT TABRIGA; PORTR AIT BY DAVID SWIFT
between pain and joy in the light on the waves and the rock, the water and the ledge reflecting and absorbing the warmth of the sun, a feeling of all-encompassing and incongruous safety.” ··· Whatever really happened that day, these fragments of memory have lingered in my mind: inexplicable, ominous, radiant. When I began working on the fiction story, I wasn’t planning to climb ropeless again. Lead climbing seemed dangerous enough: I was still a novice, struggling to place protection in the rippling cracks and rain-filled holes of Iowa’s brittle limestone. One late-autumn morning, I put my writing aside and hiked with a friend through dry, yellow fields into the leafless woods of Indian Bluffs. At the base of a cliff, he opened his pack and realized he’d forgotten to bring any gear. We sat for a while, sharing a single cup of warm, sweet tea.
“Some light seemed to explode within me, shattering everything that was not itself” He asked me if I’d ever wanted to “free solo” – to climb without a rope. His face trembled a little as he smiled. He didn’t know that I already had. The sunlight spilled, pale and almost silver, across the fallen leaves. The rock shimmered in the still, cold air. In retrospect, I think he expected me to say no. By the time we finished the tea, however, it seemed inevitable that we’d both solo the route, one by one. I went first. Stone features separated into disjointed images: a dusty overhang; a narrow ledge. Dead plants crackled under my hands. Dirt filled the empty spaces in the rock. Fear descended and then drew back. Blue sky rushed down a stone chimney like a tide. Some light seemed to explode within me, shattering everything that was not itself. At the top, I held on to a tree, waiting for my friend, while the forest reeled. Back in Iowa City, I walked downtown alone, staring at the ginkgo leaves that swept like yellow paper fans across the sidewalks, forming and unforming tessellated patterns as wind and feet displaced them. It was like learning to see again. Shapes and colours lost their dulled, familiar meanings. Sunlight paled across the storefronts. Brick walls shone like the backs of oak leaves. Through the windows of restaurants and bars, the hunched forms of other people wavered, dim and luminous, as if underwater. I felt an expanding tenderness toward everyone and everything. It was as though I’d broken through into some secret, more essential and more beautiful world. 34
Banff Mountain Film Festival 2013 / 2014
KATIE IVES is the editor-in-chief of Alpinist Magazine. In 2004, she won the Mammut/ Rock & Ice Writing Contest and in 2005 she attended The Banff Centre’s Mountain and Wilderness Writing Program. Her writing and translations have appeared in various publications, including Alpinist, The American Alpine Journal, Mountain Gazette, Urban Climber, She Sends, Circumference, 91st Meridian, Outside Magazine and Patagonia Field Reports.
Rock, Paper, Fire: The Best of Mountain and Wilderness Writing is edited by Marni Jackson and Tony Whittome and published by The Banff Centre Press. It is available at book stores or online at banffcentrepress.ca, Kobo, Amazon, and iTunes.