I Put Bishop In My Rearview Mirror And Rolled On, Baby
I left Bishop after lunch on Saturday. My parents (as usual) were great and came up to help me load the truck. Since I was sort of on a time crunch (needed to be in Minneapolis by Monday morning), I didn’t get to take as many pictures as I’d like.
Driving across the western high plains - you really get an idea of the scope and enormonity of this country. Also makes you question whether this world is really getting overpopulated when you can drive a hour and not see a single sign of civilization.
Driving through Nevada, it really becomes apparent that most of this state is really just one big empty place with people stratching out an existence wherever they happened to land. And then there’s a lot of evidence where people just gave up and left. Abandoned houses probably outnumber habitated ones ten-to-one.
Shrine to the Tractor Wheel Gods?
Even the cemeteries are dry, dusty affairs.
Who lived here before? What did they do? Why did they leave? How long has all of this been sitting there?
Who knew Nebraska had such beautiful rolling hills?
For the first time in weeks, I took the 35mm off my camera to use my big-gun, the 70-200mm to take this amazing late-afternoon picture.
Back in Minnesota, and its Freezing Here
Yup. Left Bishop Saturday afternoon and drove back to Minnesota. Some (not many) pictures to come as soon as I shake off the last of the road fatigue.
Its Almost Closing Time, Buddy…
My parents are gonna be rolling up here soon. They’ll stay with me and take some sights in. Oh, also they’ll help me pack my stuff in the truck because I can’t. Nice parents, huh?!
Then it’ll be a 1,800 mile drive back to Minneapolis. Back to where I started out Jan 10th of this year. When I left that cold snowy evening, did I even entertain the thought that life would bring me full-circle back to Minneapolis? With a broken foot? Can’t say I did.
But I’ve always been one to roll with the punches. Sometimes… no… not sometimes, its a certainity that life will knock you down at some point. As someone famous… and probably dead said, its not about falling down, but how you get up and dust yourself off thats the big idea, yeah?
Oh yeah, doctor said I could start driving again. So I drove around the valley. I drove up and down roads I’d never driven before. I saw whole new sights I’d never seen before. And whole new angles to familiar landscapes. As I watched the clouds go by, my heart broke a bit. I’d become attached to this little town in a big valley.
I keep telling myself that I’ll be coming back. This is not by any means my last time here. But I know that for the rest of my life, I will reflect upon the four months I spent here as truly priceless. I came here to climb and I discovered so much more about myself than I expected.
But well, its time to turn the pages, time to look ahead to things yet to come.
One more drink please? For old time’s sake. Just one last round before we stumble off into the night?
Natalie & Anaya Shoot
Another late night in organizing my photos. Last month when I was in DC for the wedding shoot, Natalie wanted to get a photo shoot in with her daughter, but my week was so busy, the only time we could get was about 30 minutes before I’d have to dash off to the airport to catch my flight!
Here are three of my favorites.
Its Getting There
So yeah.. my foot’s looking better those days. The dead skin around the fracture blister area started peeling off today. I kind of helped it along in some areas. Boy, I tell you.. the dried stuff under the dead skin smelled BAD! *shudders*
I still have a bit of swelling around the ankles and toes. The arch of my foot and around the heel still shows bruises. But overall, its a tremendous improvement over the last few weeks. I’m happy with how it’s coming along… just a couple more weeks… *sigh*.
Campusing Iron Man Traverse
When I headed out to the ‘Milks last week w/ my climber buddies, I couldn’t resist getting *some* climbing in.
So I did the safest thing out there, and campused Iron Man Traverse from start to end. J Grant Gray took this pic of me at the final holds.
Click to see me! (flickr sucks, cant direct link)
A sunset, a beer and some melancholy…
I have this little porch on the front of my house, and with the weather getting really warm those days, I find myself sitting out there with a beer in hand and watch the sun go down behind the mountains.
I didn’t feel like focusing for some reason. So blurry pics are what you gonna get!
Like the sun that drifts down behind the mountains, drawing the day to a close, I become ever more acutely aware that my time here in Bishop is coming to an end. In less than two weeks I’ll be coming back to where I started this whole trip. Back to Minneapolis.
And it fills me with a profound sadness for the moment. I sit there in my chair, the evening wind rocking the trees that line my yard and I look out to the Buttermilks and wonder what could have been. I came out here in January, all ready to climb, and to bring my climbing up to a whole new level.
And I sure did. I knocked off some long standing projects and made huge progress on some others. I was starting to hit my stride. My confidence level was increasing every week and I felt ready to take on everything that Bishop had to offer. I was ready to demolish everything I set my eyes on.
Like the saying, “pride goes before a fall” - I stormed out to the Pollen Grains, with little prior beta or knowledge, with not enough crash pads to completely protect the landing area, with just one friend, and tried to make short work of Jedi Mind Tricks - and thus, I fell.
It was a humbling experience in more ways than one. It opened my eyes to the fact that no matter how easy a problem might be rated relative to the other problems you’ve already finished, every single problem on every single boulder out there deserves your full attention and respect. Every problem is different. Every problem presents an unique challenge and risks. And it is no one’s fault, but your own if you fail to consider all those when you attempt it.
Also humbling was the fact that I suddenly only had one good foot. Things that I hardly gave any thought about, like walking four blocks to get coffee, or driving to the food store to get some chow, or walking up some steps, all of a sudden became real challenges. I know that this is only temporary, but I think about all those people who go through their lives having lost a leg (or both) permanently - and I look at those people with a whole new level of respect.
My thoughts drift to what I’ll do next. I’ll be heading to San Francisco after my short stay in Minneapolis. I’ll be hard at work rehabbing my foot. I’ll be discovering a whole new city and friends. There will be many more photographs coming. I smile to think about all those. It will be wonderful.
And one day, I’ll start climbing again. And I’ll be a different, better climber for it. And I will return to Bishop. I will come back to Jedi Mind Tricks, on that one day when I am physically, and most importantly, mentally ready. To climb.
It has other priorities, I guess…
I was clipping my nails earlier today. After I finished clipping my finger nails, I moved on to my toes, and it was (not so suprisingly?) interesting to note that while the nails on my left toes were getting long, the nails on my right toes had barely grown out, if any.
I guess that either means my right foot is too busy patching up the heel bone to push out toenail material…. or my toes have died and are going to fall off one of those days.
If I May Soar…
I picked up my first DSLR in 2002 and started taking pictures - now six years later, I’ll on occasion pick some old album of photos and just browse though them. Because I never delete any photo I take, I can look through the rolls, in the order I took the pictures and not only see what I was shooting, but also guess at the specific frame of mind I had at the moment, was I experimenting with 50 shots of the same subject? Or was it some random one-off-shot? What did I shoot before that picture, or after? Did the previous picture influence the next?
I was browsing through my album of photos I shot at the Assateague Beach in Maryland, late summer 2004. It was one of those “last summer weekend fling before the fall” things.
A two shot-sequence caught my eye. The first one, I shot of a seagull flying overhead. Then the very next picture, I shoot my feet in the shallow water. And I’m sitting here thinking about what particular thought was going through my head, that I would shoot a bird in the sky, then just shoot a pic of my feet. Was I trying to explore some creative juxatposition of being free of the ground like a bird… and then me firmly rooted in the ground, the water and sand swallowing up my feet?
Or was I shooting the seagull when my attention was pulled downwards when the warm, summer ocean wave rushed up and over my feet?
I can’t remember.
Boot o’ Doom Visits The ‘Milks
This weekend was one I’d been looking forward to for a while because some of my climber friends would be rolling into town for the weekend. It’d give me a nice break from the long spell of being cooped up at home most of the time. On Sunday, I told them to drag me out to the ‘Milks so I could get some sun and fresh air. It also marked my first return to the the climbing area since I broke my foot three weeks ago.
It was a typical brilliant Bishop spring day. Sun was fierce, the sky was clear and the air cool. Another great day to climb.
The hardy desert plants were starting to flower.
As always, the natural attraction of Iron Man Traverse was seeing lots of attempts that day.
And when everyone’s all climbed out, what better is there to do than a little ping-pong outside?
A late rush to the mountaintop to catch the setting sun. Only problem was that we were too late and missed it.
So how about some beer and pizza?
