Climber, you have a gift to help you get through this turbulent time.

Like you, I have been largely at home for nearly 90 days. I haven’t done any climbing, but I hope you have. When able, I read my issues of Alpinist, Climbing, and some books rather than spend too much time on my phone, which has been especially difficult this past week.

And like you, I have a heavy heart. There have been over 375,000 deaths worldwide due to the novel coronavirus COVID-19, and for me that includes a loved one. For we Americans, things are dark here, particularly with the uprising around the unjust killings of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Sean Read, Tony McDade, and many more. And there’s been vandalism and violence and retribution. Although racism has been here since European explorers arrived on the continent, it still lurks about in nasty, evil ways. If the myth of American exceptionalism was still still alive, surely we should face up to reality that was always a myth. I recognized that it wasn’t true just a few years ago.

As adventurers, I think you and I are poised to see what’s possible, in justice, equity, and peace. I know you might prefer to face adversity of a different kind right now, particularly without health worries, existential questions, and politics. Part of me wants to flee to somewhere remote and disconnect. No smartphone. No news. No radio. Ernest Shackleton’s fourth expedition to the South Pole actually appeals to me in calming way lately.

However, Shackleton was not escaping anything; he had a clear objective. He was headed to the South Pole, by nature an adverse challenge. He suffered and he endured. He guided his stranded crew through shipwreck, cold, long days, buoyed ebbing morale, and navigated the high seas. They were missing so long they were presumed dead. And when they all returned safely to an England 497 days later, they arrived in their own new normal, with a world at war. Change is the only constant.

For you and me, climbing matters not only for our appreciation of movement on rock and human achievement in the mountains, but for the superpower of perspective. By now, in your climbing career, you probably realized that there is more to climbing than climbing. In fact, it’s not even Instagram posts of your route or view or even your clever boulder problem around your kitchen cabinets during COVID-19 self-isolation, as joyous as those things are. Climbing is about our inner being; it tests our nerve and our perspective of what’s possible for ourselves and humanity. It has always been about seeing the beauty of a challenge, even if it’s absurd, and pursuing the dream. We build strength, condition our endurance, and innovate equipment and technique to see our visions through.

That mountain or route you daydream about is not itself a challenge, rather how you look at it. El Capitan has been reached without a rope a million times before Honnold scaled it with Jimmy Chin’s camera’s on him — except he took the route no one ever actually free soloed before. A beautiful, ephemeral line that changed how we looked at the world, what’s possible, and our humanity.

This season of COVID-19 exacerbated by grave racial injustice is no different. We need to use our superpower and apply a wide, broad, and long perspective. It’s for safety, health, equity, and a better world.

What do you see when you look at a mountain in your life. An opportunity? A dream? Something futuristic? Maybe we’re not collectively fit enough yet to see how the path comes together, or in our case a route to some normalcy and racial equity. Maybe we need more conditioning to rise to the challenge. Maybe we need to dream, or just endure while holding on to our vision for the future, even when violence and forces conspire to smash our hope. The first way to the top might be just one foot in front of the other. Later, we might go the hard way, maybe ropeless.

How do you see things now?

For your next steps, I recommend clicking over to the Access Fund’s list of actions items to be part of the solution.

Use your perspective and hold on to your vision.

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