Reflections from the Stronghold

Spring is here in Vermont and I am beyond excited to kick off the rock climbing season.

This year, I marked the transition from ice to rock with a trip out west to Arizona. I attended the Access Fund Climbing Advocacy Conference and returned to my climbing roots at Cochise Stronghold.

Cochise Stronghold has always held a special place in my heart. It is described by many as a “magical” place... It is especially so for me.

Back in 2012, I left my tie-wearing job working for a USAID contractor in Washington, DC. I was miserable sitting at that desk and would tell myself I was just putting in the time to build my resume to get to where I wanted to be.

I forget who it was, but I explained that to someone and they told me if I was miserable on the path to get somewhere, I’d be miserable where it took me. I quit that job and ever since then I’ve told myself that if I chose the next step that I find exciting, interesting, and meaningful then it would lead me down a path that was also exciting, interesting, and meaningful.

My Southwest Outdoor Educator Course with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) at was the first step on that path. I felt completely lost in life, but was ready to do the next thing that excited me.

The course revitalized my love for rock and created a foundation of adventure climbing that I've been building upon ever since.

That moment of pivotal change in my life's trajectory led me to serving as an AmeriCorps member at a teen center, leading trail crews, guiding wilderness therapy, facilitating gap year programs, creating an outdoor program at an alternative high school, and starting my own rock and ice climbing guide service, Sterling Mountain Guides. I’d take any one of those steps over wearing that tie.

I remember fondly the mornings of our climbing section. We’d wake up and our 60 year old veteran NOLS instructor, Cody, would facilitate yoga and read us poetry. There was one poem that hit a chord so much that I copied it down into my notebook. I’ve since read it to many youth I’ve worked with and I'll share it again here in case it strikes a chord with one of you.

Weathered plates on pitch one of Endgame - 5.10a, 4 pitches.

LOST

By Hayden Carruth

Many paths in the woods have chosen me, many a time,

and I wonder what this choosing is:

a sublime intimidation from far outside my consciousness

(or for that matter from far inside)

or maybe some train of mortality set in motion at my birth

(if our instruments of observation were fine and precise enough to trace it)

or maybe only disparate appeal,

pure chance that distant drumming of a partridge in spring,

the advancing maple color along a line in fall,

or only that the mud was less one way than the other.

Free or determined?

Again and again I went one way and not the other, who knows why?

I wish I could know.

Maybe it would explain the other things that worry me.

But I have no compulsive need now. Not any longer.

What I know is whether I walked freely or trudged exhausted, I chose one way each time and ended by being lost.

I think I sought it.

I think I could not know myself until I did not know where I was.

Then my self-knowledge continued for a while while I found my way again in fear and reluctance,

lost truly at last.

I changed the appearance of myself to myself continually and losing and finding were one in the same, as I now realize.

Choose Your Own Adventure