First, I’m flattered you clicked over here; Thank you. Since you found my humble hobby blog, I suppose that you are curious about a book I reviewed, some commentary I wrote, or maybe you stumbled on an article by me in a print publication. And, I think it’s safe to presume, you are seeking more connection to the mountains and drawing the power of their stories into the everyday. Well, that’s why I needed this blog too.

I wish I could say The Suburban Mountaineer all started when I was climbing roadside frozen ice in the Adirondacks on my 21st birthday, when I first climbed ice. It was a beautiful, cold day that felt like it could snow. I was getting away from my home, where I grew up, in Buffalo, NY. It’s a fine city with a lot of culture and things to be proud about, but I remember it for a lot of trips to the mall, endless housing and neighborhoods, being nearly always overcast and gray, and being bullied at school. The lakefront was an industrial brownfield and nearby Niagara Falls–a wonder of the natural world–was easily overshadowed by the Ripley’s Believe It or Not and helicopters whirling in circles for paying site seers. Everything was commercialized and the ice cliffs in the winter and the boulders and trails in the summer in the ‘Dacks were another beautiful universe to me.

The highlight of the winter, for everyone else in Buffalo, it seemed to me, were Sundays after church when everyone watched the Bills’ football games on TV. It was a common thread of life with everyone I knew and met and made us all Buffalonians, but I didn’t own any Bills logoed clothes, which made me odd to my peers. But if the team lost, Monday felt like a funeral, which seemed wrong to me.

SNOWFALL

The highlight of winter for me was snow. I loved it when I woke up to find the tree branches appearing thicker and gleaming white. The ground had been transformed into a uniform surface, and the cars in the driveway hidden altogether. I loved it even more when Buffalo’s roads were clogged by heavy powder and school buses couldn’t start in deep cold, so everything was canceled and I had a true snow day. I would suit up and help shovel the driveway, make an igloo or build a fort, and go cross country skiing in our wooded backyard. I had two pairs of mittens so when the first was soaked, I would stick them in the dryer and put on the second pair and go back outside until dinnertime.

When it snowed, the world transformed into a simpler, warmer place, filled with beauty. It wasn’t about going on pointless errands for entertainment or the game’s score. When it snowed it was an ephemeral moment about play and being present in the here and now. My mild anxiety from heredity and getting picked on soothed my overly active mind. Things were orderly and beautiful.

The Adirondacks–whether it was backpacking or bouldering in the summer or ice climbing or skiing in the winter–was a source of therapy, especially as I started life after high school. I was getting up there for occasional weekends then. When I was younger, I went 51 weeks until the next visit to the mountains. Now, with my own car and some cash from a job, I could go when I needed to go. While that was a significant change, I made a bigger discovery in Buffalo. I’ve been an avid reader since high school and I visited the library and the small (and sleazy) bookshop in the mall regularly. A new national bookshop chain, which was enormous compared to my library and mall store, was built across from the mall. At large new bookshop I discovered Climbing Magazine, Rock & Ice, and the relatively new Alpinist Magazine, which seemed expensive for my wallet, but they all opened my eyes to a broader and bigger mountain and climbing community I didn’t know existed.

DISCOVERING ROBERTS

The big new bookstore had a lot of climbing books. I had seen guides in the Adirondacks, but these were narratives. I discovered that there was an American Alpine Journal, with entries that were technical and alluding to people having adventures all around the world. It was a bit pricey to take home, too, so I bought a copy of collected articles by David Roberts called Moments of Doubt. Roberts, I would later learn, was often called the Dean of Adventure Writing.

When I read “Five Days on Mount Huntington” by Roberts late one night at home, I knew about Mallory and Irvine’s disappearance, modern expeditions to Everest, but independent climbs of significance was different. After summiting, Roberts and his partner Ed Bernd descended and had one more pitch before they reached a short stroll to their tent at a camp high on the mountain. It was dark and it was just a matter of going through the routine. Mid-rappel Roberts saw there was a spark off Ed’s crampon and he was free flying. It remained silent, except Roberts shouting once for Ed who must have fallen to the glacier 4,000 feet below. Roberts knew he was alone, and I felt a chill. I was simultaneously unsettled and felt more alive.

After reading it, nothing in the world, wherever I have gone, has looked quite the same since. I was no longer stumbling through days just waiting for snow. Although it was an unnerving story, it was authentic. It wasn’t grinding, routine, or shallow. It was genuine and sensitive. And it was different from other things I have read to that point, and mostly since, in that it was nonfiction and dealt with our internal struggles of living. For the first time, I saw through the daily routines and retail therapy as a substitute for real beauty that was buried by so many things, like over commercialization, consumerism, and over-the-top sports events.

SOME 120 BOOKS LATER

In 2010, eight years after moving to Washington, DC to use my political science degree properly, I started this blog at SuburbanMountaineer.com. I started it because of this growing hobby and passion about mountain climbing and mountain literature and because the daily grind of working and commuting in the Washington Metropolitan Area was draining me.

I started connecting with readers, climbers and authors and building a community and network of climbers and people like me who didn’t want to be drained anymore. Together, we started to see the world was bigger than our horizon, and even though we worked nine to five, climbing mattered, mountains mattered, and peaks were out there and part of our world even if we could not see them.

What started as a reader-response blog, grew into a discussion about mountain literature. I now review mountain books here on T.S.M. and discuss climbing trends and upcoming publications. I have also contributed pieces to Alpinist Magazine, of which, my favorite is my Local Hero piece on my friend, the mysterious Bob Schelfhout-Aubertijn. I also enjoy serving as a pre-reader for the Banff Mountain Literature Competition held in conjunction with the Banff Mountain Film & Book Festival annually in autumn.

A practical challenge of living in Washington, DC also spurred on a sub-project of this blog. Since I had limited space to store my growing climbing library, I wanted to have the most important climbing books on my shelf, both to enjoy and reference. Identifying what those books were, I learned over time, was an enormous challenge that no one has actually done. It’s a genre that’s surprisingly large for being rather niche. While you could find lists of classic science fiction or books of English literature, with few exceptions, there were no lists of climbing classics that were by an authority or contained apples to apples narratives or guidebooks, or whatever. They were mostly haphazard. Every mountain book I read and investigate is part of my quest.

After 15 years in DC, I relocated to Lancaster, Pennsylvania where I have taken an “assignment” (as I like to think of it) to manage a local Habitat for Humanity and build more homes for first-time homebuyers. Moving put me a little closer to my favorite regions of the country in the Adirondacks and New England, and in a more affordable and strong community for Natalie and I to raise our family.

Let me wrap up with this statement and an invitation: We both know that the daily grind of life is hard, but everything in the mountains feels simple. The clarity from a journey you took, or the path you took made by an author, is far more insightful and enlightening than any photo stream or brief blurb on social media. My antidote for the daily grind is a combination of seeking wild places, written word, and winding journeys, both literally and abstractly. And mountain literature is a rather large niche; after reading mountaineering literature for 25 years, I have only scratched the surface. There is a lot for us to explore and discover, despite the world being mapped and wired.

So, join me. Feel free to email me at andrew.szalay@yahoo.com with questions, ideas, and books to review. And stay in touch; follow me on Facebook and subscribe to my newsletter.

Your friend,

Andrew Szalay
The Suburban Mountaineer

(Photo: The Suburban Mountaineer at the Fritz Wiessner Memorial in Stowe, Vermont. Photo credit: Schnickelfritz.)