New to blogging, I’ve been thinking about how best to settle into this medium, to use it to enhance my work, to employ the platform as a tool for my writing. I certainly don’t want it to feel, or become, superfluous. One function that has seemed obvious from the beginning is its usefulness in showcasing climbers’ creative work over the next months. Another idea has emerged as I’ve been researching climbing literature: the blog-space as archive. In reading James Salter’s novel Solo Faces I found myself taking notes (a hold-over habit from graduate studies). Unlike a thesis, however, where the goal (complete with literature review) is usually determined in advance, this residency is largely open; a project without a predetermined design, or argument, apart from the rather broad guiding idea of ‘first climbs’. My notes are not, however, about finding a way into that concept, per se; they comprise phrases that adhere to my sense of a writer’s good observations, associations, interesting language.
And then I came upon this paragraph, told in the third person, but from the perspective of the story’s protagonist, Rand:
‘… his mind went back to the days when he had first climbed. He was fifteen. He remembered seeing another climber, older, in his twenties, rolled-up sleeves, worn shoes, an image of strength and experience. Now, with absolute clarity, he saw that climber again, his face, his gestures, even the very light. It seemed that in spite of all that had happened in between, the essence, an essence he had seen so vividly in that unknown face still somehow eluded him and he was struggling again, still, to capture it’.*
Salter’s words immediately tap into a fascinating aspect of the sport: the persona of the ‘typical’ climber. Solo Faces features personal stories and backgrounds of people who voluntarily put themselves in dangerous situations, and, as such, leads its reader to explore the possibility of a basis to the stereotype. What draws someone to climb, whether outdoors, with all of nature’s inherent variables, or indoors, with its relative, but obvious, ‘softer’ risks? Is there a sort of person that craves this type of adventure, this instability, the height, in order to feel complete, or happy? Does the act of climbing, in any environment, and its associated fears, bring out this facet of one’s personality? Can a person possibility recognise this nascent reaction in themselves at the time of their first climb?
This project won’t directly attempt to answer these questions; however, it would surprise me if these sorts of thoughts don’t creep into the creative writing produced this year. I suppose this post is an archive of these early theories, as well as a nod to Salter and his climbing characters, many of whom are deeply flawed, passionate: incurable, lovable thrill-seekers.
* Salter, James, ‘Solo Faces’, One Step in the Clouds: an omnibus of mountaineering novels and short stories, compiled by Audrey Salkeld and Rosie Smith (Sierra Club Books: San Francisco), 1990.