Blue Dragonfly

I’m on the road tomorrow with my climbing partner Ashely.  We’ve been climbing together for a few years now, and I’ve learned some of my most important climbing and life lessons beside her; or, better said, I’ve learned them while gripping the rock above or belaying her from below.  We’ve never been to Yosemite before, but we’ve patched together a solid rack of gear and are loading up her Forerunner in pursuit of another adventure.  While I anticipate rad climbs on some of the world’s best granite, what I most look forward to is the poetry of partnership–the story that unfolds when two people take a journey–the conversations, the problem-solving, the alliance formed during the pursuit of common goals.  The good times and the tough calls.  The fatigue and the last final push. I look forward to eating roadside dinners of Ramen and PP&J, to meeting other climbers and sharing stories.  To getting lost and finding our way again.

I’d like to christen our next adventure with a quote that Ashely recently found by Aldous Huxley:

Ok, here’s an honest confession from a lucky so-and-so. Even when I was paid to write full-time for ten months, it was still hard to sit down and make myself put words on the page. I could justify my resistance to at-the-desk time by saying that, even though I did not commit to producing a specific composition every day, I always took notes. I observed cultural trends, how people wore their hats, and the migration of ants across my kitchen sink. If I didn’t take notes that very day, I did something interesting and took notes about it the next. I was always attentive to getting something down.

However, it wasn’t until after my grant was over that I figured out how to really write every day. For the past year, and perhaps even for the past ten years, I have been in transition, recovering from one journey while excitedly preparing for the next. I have never been grounded long enough to create a routine. Theoretically, I remained in Chile after my grant was over to continue working on my project, but I really stayed to teach a writing course, cook every day with my boyfriend, and practice yoga. It was during these two months that I realized it was hard to write every day because my life lacked ritual.  As I practiced yoga each day simply because I had the time, the guided reflection and vinyasas taught me how make a ritual of my writing, one that would be sustainable through the complicated mechanics of my on-the-move lifestyle.

A photo I took of my friend Giusep Vitale practicing yoga near my home in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

My writing ritual is portable, incorporates my physical well-being, and helps me separate my public and private writing. Depending on how much time I have and what my mind and body need that day, I practice yoga for between twenty minutes and two hours. If I am lucky enough to have the resources nearby, I sometimes replace yoga with a climb or a swim. But I have found that yoga best directs me to the state-of-mind I need in order to write well. My yoga practice helps me make the transition from the activity of the world to the concentration I need in order to sit at my desk. It moves blood through and stretches my body, leaving me relaxed and alert for sitting. Yoga also clears away useless thought patterns of self-doubt that inhibit creativity. I generally journal for a few minutes after I finish my yoga practice, which allows me to process how I am feeling and move on the essay, article, or poem that will be my work for the day.

Here are two interesting articles about the rituals of other writers: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/456 and http://www.mastersdegree.net/20-acclaimed-authors-and-their-unique-writing-rituals/

I ascended Cerro Toco (5,640 meters or 18,500 feet) a few weeks ago, which might be the easiest ascent in all of the Norte Grande in the Atacama Desert.  The mountain is accessed by an old mining road near the border of Chile with Bolivia, a winding set of tracks that allows you to park your truck at nearly 5,000 meters.

A friend and I left for the climb from San Pedro at around 3 in the afternoon.  It took us less than two hours to reach the start of the ascent.  By 4:30 we were climbing and by 7 we were on our way down, watching the sun strike the remaining patches of snow, rows of jagged shark teeth in a bed of sand.  The climb was easy because the path was well marked and had a very gentle grade.  I gave thanks for the chance to experience my mind and body in altitude without great physical stress.  I walked slowly, taking each step as its own moment, and focused on my breathing.

I experienced only one moment of panic during the climb, which surprised me because it happened on the descent when the truck was in sight.  The wind had been blowing at an average speed of 25-30 miles per hour and the temperature hovered around freezing,  My fingers had become  numb and clumsy.  I wanted to readjust my gloves, but I couldn’t get my fingers to respond.  My body would not do what I wanted it to, and this made me feel powerless.  My heart started to beat faster and my breaths became more rapid and choppier.  I made myself stop fidgeting with my attire until I regained a normal pattern of breathing.  Only then could I rationalize with myself.  I coaxed myself into not worrying about my hands because the car was only a fifteen minute walk away.

My next goal is to climb a mountain with similar altitude but with a greater elevation gain and a more difficult terrain.  The physical and mental stress will be more intense, but I know that the technique will be similar: use the breath to calm the mind, and the mind to calm the breathing.  Now that I am aware that panic is my body’s natural response to altitude, I hope use this concentration on my breath to help me relax and continue the climb.

Summit of Cerro Toco

I recently read an article called 3 Reasons to Travel While You’re Young. Jeff Goins, who appears young and handsome in his blog banner, proposes that you travel and now, “boldly” and with “full abandon,” because it teaches you adventure, helps you encounter compassion, and allows you to “get some culture.”

I like this article but with reservation.  I live in the most arid desert in the world in a town that receives hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, and I know that “travel with full abandon” can be destructive to both the environment and to the lives of those who live in the destination.

I can offer an example.  Last month my house was without running water for more than 48 hours. This shortage is a regular occurrence that has to do with so many people competing for a limited and at times poorly managed resource.  All the major hotels and most of the hostels continued to have water because businesses can afford large reserve tanks.  Meanwhile, those of us who live in town and in the surrounding agricultural communities peed in the small bushes in our yards, used bottled water to flush the poop in our toilets, and ate salads or canned food because we could not cook or wash our dishes.

It is true that travel puts you in contact with other cultures and perspectives.  But it is also true that the tourism industry, that is hostels, tour operators, and restaurants, all operate as part of a service industry.  They exist to make you happy and comfortable so you will give them your business and recommend them to your friends.  In an effort to make you comfortable, they will not let you know, for example, that the rest of the town is without water.

Instead of traveling often and with abandon, I would say travel less but travel wisely. Inform yourself. Choose destinations where tourism has a positive effect on local economy and on people’s lives. Travel mindful of our interconnectedness.

Or, see it this way.  Travel creatively, with purpose, to places where you can give yourself over to specific experiences that will help you grow as a writer, an artist, an entrepreneur, photographer, whatever.  I think traveling with purpose will help you develop a deeper and more concrete connection with other people and the natural or built environment.  While it is romantic to think of traveling with abandon, without plans, to let experiences happen to you, it is also naive and perhaps selfish.  There is an immense amount of material on the internet to help you travel responsibly.  Use it to create a holistic and genuine experience for yourself and as a tool to help you “do no harm” to others while you’re on the road.

The wind is drastic and weird today.  It disturbs us, especially at lunch.  I stab my fork with pieces of white fish and onion.  I say I like the wind, as it lifts my napkin from under my glass. What I think I mean is I like change; I like the way this day is different from a day with no wind.

The horizon is unsettled and hazy. The horses on the other side of the wall stamp their feet and my friend across the table looks concerned. Her eyes are wet and she is tired of pulling her wild red hair our of her mouth.

The wind continues to flare, its currents destructive and lovely.  I wonder what it would be like to travel today, on foot, a caravan walking slowly and swallowing the dust.  I wonder too much and my jaw is tight as if set constantly the wild force. My skin peels away from my hands, transparent fly wings that I discard, carefully.

The cats are still crying, sleek demons driving out of their throats. Wind I am your body performing your grit and grace over the desert.  Low, blue and helpless as the fiercest work of imagination.

the wind drying my housemate's clothes quickly on the line

I host a yoga class for pregnant women on Fridays.  I am not a yoga teacher, nor am I pregnant.  But my friend Cata, after seeing the dried-lilac peaks of Likancabur and Juriques from my shaded patio, asked if she could hold classes at my house.  ”Its the perfect space,” she said.

On the first class we sit with our legs folded, lengthen our spines, our shoulders falling back and our heads lifted.  We mimic the posture of the mountains. The sun filters through the shade, heating but not burning our faces.  The wind lifts the warm earth to our noses.  The tiny leaves on the Chañar tree twitch. Their yellow flowers have dried up and the bees have sauntered on.  The birds chatter to each other, their sharp calls echo in their throats like swallowed laughter.

I like having these women in my home because they remind me of something true about my body. From all this climbing my muscles are tight and my elbows and hips protrude sharply.  I feel taller and my stance is strong.  My hands are dark and dry, my cheeks always a little red.  I train my body for myself, so it can do the work up walls and hills. But the women in this yoga class modify the poses so that they can be their best selves for a different kind of work: each day carrying their babies.  The make room for their belies, they don’t exert their abdominals.  They don’t do poses on their stomachs; in their effort they are more relaxed and attentive to more than themselves.  Their energy is given over to the daily task of nurturing creation.

So far practicing with these women has reminded me that yoga is not about achieving the perfect expression of a posture.  It is about achieving my body’s best expression of it.  I view climbing mountains in the same way; it is less about arriving at the peak and more about finding your own edge and moving past it.  I might never coach my body into a textbook expression of Astavakrasana, the Eight-Angle Pose.   I might never summit Llullaillaco, the tallest mountain on my horizon and the 5th highest volcano in the world.  But through the repetition of physical expression I can grow stronger and learn to nurture my own acts of creation.

View from my backyard in San Pedro

I would like to think about pleasure, what it means to keep the window open at night so I can smell the dust and the chañar flowers, faces pinched and tiny lips flaring.  The wind pulls the shade over my patio tight.  The laundry on the line is turning cold. There is no moon and I can feel my toes alive with tiny needles of chill.

Yesterday I climbed four short cracks in the Garden of Eden.  The river pushed its way through the sand below me, and the pear trees shed their white flowers.  The wind dried the cups under my arms and behind my knees.  I remember most climbing a route called Linea Magica, or the Magic Line.  My partner had his eye on the route all day.  From all other points in the canyon Claudio would turn to it, measure it, take in its slight variations, imagine his movements up it.

“Beautiful crack,” he said after he finished leading the route.

“What does that mean?” I asked, my eyes running up the sand-colored volcanic wall.

“Continuous,” he said.  ”Sustained.  One that you can imagine yourself working up.”

I pulled the rope and led the route on his gear.  I pushed hand after hand into the broken line of rock and the skin below my knuckles scraped away.   I checked each piece of equipment to make sure that it was still well-placed, to see that it hadn’t walked too far into the crack. I tipped the thin strip of rubber over my toes, pointed my knee up, and lifted my body horizontal with the thin line, balancing my weight on a calloused knuckle.  Sometimes I trembled.  I was still learning to trust my feet.

The route was short, probably 10 meters, but by the time I clipped the bolts my muscles were tight with fatigue and I realized that the sun had beat my neck red.  I had nicked away old scabs and my hands were bleeding.  I was tired and deeply satisfied with how hard I had worked.  On the bus ride home I didn’t even watch the mountains.  I closed my eyes and dozed with the pleasure of the body worn and spent.

Climbing, even on route I have been up before, is one of the activities that gives me the fullest sense of pleasure.  Climbing makes me realize that pleasure is not the lack of pain.  Pleasure is the feeling that comes from reaching an edge.  It is the feeling that is produced from working as hard as you can, repeating an action until you know it well, attempting a different way if the way you know doesn’t work, trying, trying, giving as deeply as possible, giving the body and mind over, completely.

I love these photos of my friend María José on the route Bloody Mary.  Her motion on the route illustrates the union of effort and pleasure.