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If you’re a certain kind of person, you can feel others’ pain exquisitely, and your own, but you lack the ability to vocalize it You find other ways of expressing it

“Can she talk?” a privateI was, froe, wordless The pain I’d frequently felt was that of observation—of witnessing others’ trau powerless to do anything about it I didn’t just feel that way—I was powerless I was young

To speak requires trust—that someone will listen It was easier, then and now, to be silent instead To be a jock The one who lifted weights until it hurt to move, whileboot

Even now that I can speak, silenced by each new inexplicable event, there’s so littlethere Each trauma suffered has pushed me back into that silence They’ve felt endless, relentless The cuht has, at times, felt too much It has broken me—physically, emotionally

Cli can be hard to explain to the uninitiated, hard to visualize: the ways in which rock is bolted every few body lengths with ers, into which a leader clips the top biner of a quickdraw, into the bottom biner of which the leader clips the rope that is their functional lifeline Below stands the belayer, or the clih a belay device, watches for potential hazards, catches falls, and eventually lowers the leader back down to the ground Of course there are variations: traditional, uage of sport cli

More than thethat’s always fascinated me The ways in which how someone climbs reveals much of their character, and the ways in which it reveals ourto fear, trust, risk, and consequence

“What do you think we all have in co, after she eyed the canned corn I was du into e for some yellow kernels

I spent the next afternoon cli on the road, sleeping in the back of afull-tilow of a young couple in love I envied the support they had in each other, that they thrived jointly off of this dirtbag lifestyle “Why do you think we do it?”

I didn’t answer her then, as was h that silence only meant that people would project what they wanted on ut instinct was that every serious clirappling with past traumas or demons Or perhaps they were just built for a different time, when adrenaline and physicality mattered in a way that contemporary society doesn’t reward

This seeh Why we’re different in this particular way, in this particular obsession Another old cli one, tolddirty But I have to do it”

What compels us to continue in an activity that involves endless anificant amount of pain, and scrapes and scars and injuries and all the rest? I know only that it makes me feel more present, more alive And yes, happy, in a way that feels earned

Just as traumas don’t make for polite dinner conversation, they don’t fit neatly into stories or narratives But we have to escape sorapple with them For rew up having seen my father’s faith in nature as a restorative I spent little ti near so some mountain

As a dirtbagger I marveled at the aers and ers are probleh threshold for pain and discoht be channeled if redirected, even as somore, perhaps, than to be left alone