Posts Tagged: death

climbing / life — No Comments
1
Jun 11

Bounce

As soon as we got to the base of our climb, we felt drops. A moment of sun. Now a moment of rain. Unde­terred, or maybe not even notic­ing, he racked his quick draws, did a quick safety check and started the climb.

Moments. Most are mun­dane, pass­ing by unno­ticed and unnote­wor­thy. We’d been plan­ning this trip for months. It’s been almost a year since this group of friends has been together. A three day week­end was the per­fect oppor­tu­nity for a lit­tle rock climb­ing, camp­ing, and out­door fun. A moment in time we wanted to remem­ber. Unfor­tu­nately, the weather was a crap shoot once again. The spring weather can’t decide if it should bless us with sun or rain. The clouds mur­mured a few drops, only to be dried quickly by the warmth of the sun. We sneak by, try­ing to get in a climb before it fig­ures out what we’ve done. Yet this moment would not go by so unnoticed.

Con­tinue read­ing “Bounce” »

climbing — No Comments
30
Oct 10

Bring Joe Home

I am deeply sad­dened by the news of Joe Puryear’s pass­ing. He was one of the good guys.

Con­tinue read­ing “Bring Joe Home” »

life — 2 Comments
31
Jul 10

Rest in Peace, my friend

I came out of the moun­tains to the news that a friend died. She was 32. Com­pletely shocked and sad­dened, I won­dered why life is full of so much death. I re-questioned all the risks I take in life. Climb­ing is a dan­ger­ous sport. Even though I work to mit­i­gate those dan­gers, acci­dents can and will happen.

Per­haps death is there to remind us about life. What is life with­out some risk, with­out pas­sion to do what you love, and liv­ing to do it? We all must mea­sure what accept­able risk is. A walk, a ride, a climb, a jump. A per­son can be struck dead cross­ing the street. The real­ity is we have no idea how long we have and in many cases, it’s shorter than we think. If I want to take away some­thing pos­i­tive from an oth­er­wise tragic end, it’s that every moment is pre­cious — so seize it, because you may not get that sec­ond chance.

Let death remind us of life … that every moment is precious.

Rest in peace, my friend. You will be missed.