Noncommitance

Just because it’s not a word doesn’t mean it can’t be a vice.

I’m starting over over here: http://vicevirtue.wordpress.com

Addiction

While my current obsession with rock climbing does get me out of the city, into the woods, and up mountains, it does very little to get me on the water. Considering I live on a sliver of land surrounded by Lake Washington, Lake Union, and the Puget Sound, that is really a tragedy.

But no longer!

This morning, at 5am, Charlie gently ripped me from REM sleep and watched me dive in the closet for warm layers. Within minutes he was back asleep and I was speeding to a boathouse on Eastlake, where I would meet a recent acquaintance. Ms. Aina Williams, Project Manager at Publicis and coach at Lake Union Crew. I made it by 5:15.

For about an hour, we cruised around on a motor boat while Aina hollered at her team and I gazed in appreciation at their united strokes, the white-capped Olympics and bald eagles in evergreen trees.

Ah, Seattle. It’s a treat to experience beauty like that in the city, any city, but especially your own.

I asked the seven women rowers what their motivation was for waking up with exercises in oxygen deprivation.

“I got sucked into it.”
“Don’t start! You’ll never be able to stop.”
“I don’t know how else to start the day!”

Aina described the deep satisfaction that comes from working at your limits. Not knowing if you can achieve some physical goal, but going for it anyway, and sticking it. Sticking it? Yeah, I’m talking about climbing now.

I don’t know if rowing will be for me (Charlie and I have plans to try sometime next week) but I do know the addiction these women described pins me like a common Monarch. I love climbing. I need climbing. I run moves through my head when I wake up and when I go to bed. I want nothing less than technical perfection.

I have never ever thought of myself as an athlete. But today, I can finally say, “Hi, my name’s Summer. And I’m a rockaholic.”

As for rowing, well, at least it would enhance my pulling muscles.

Tourism

It took me four boring, wasted days to travel from the southern Lake District to the Atacama Desert in the north – but the destination was worth every moment en route.

San Pedro de Atacama is a paradise (with a price) for vacationers, backpackers, ethnographers, rock climbers, drug dealers… and electricity shuts off every day at 5pm so I can’t finish this post until later.

Ciao

Right Mindfulness

Guide books say Chile’s disproportionately long geography is a mirror image of the U.S. West. In the north they have their own Death Valley and in the south, no joke, they have their own Maple Valley.

Well, Chileans don’t call it Maple Valley. They call it Choshuenco, but its blackberry bushes, ferns, dandelions, horse and cow pastures, climate, and dormant volcano say it all.

After a freezing overnight bus ride, no sleep, lost Nalgene bottles, and women cutting in line for the bathroom, I was not happy to be home.

Where was the wilderness? The southern adventure?

Worst of all, the “trail” turned out to be an unpaved road cutting across the countryside. Picturesque, but hardly worth the trip.

Exasperated, I set to work picking blackberries. Why not? They were fat with sugar and juice and… delicious. When that purple nectar hit my tongue, my outlook changed.

Choshuenco was like Maple Valley, my hometown, but everything was new again. I didn’t know where the roads lead, property rights were a mystery, every step was an exploration. That’s not possible in the real Maple Valley. I know it too well.

Travelers, I suggest you take one vacation in your life to a time, not a place.

My favorite time was growing up in Maple Valley. Choshuenco let me revisit MV the way I was then – without routine, expectations, responsibilities, or worries – the way it was then – unknown, wild, and plenty adventurous.

A few hours later…

somewhere deep in the jungle… Thinking I should’ve stopped on memory lane.

Expectation

The Cornejo family had gone and I was left alone in Arenas Valley – but not without prospects. Carved out during an ice age, this wide groove was filled with 80 million year old stone spires and altars deposited by the glacier.

The night we camped, I was giddy with excitement – this place would be perfect for bouldering. In the morning, I gained confirmation as daylight revealed chalk smudges and problem ratings painted on the rock.

Lucky for me, I brought my shoes.

Unluckily, my chalk bag was missing. And I had no crash pad.

With Octavio and Rodrigo, I bumbled around the boulders, climbed easy routes, and put on a hardcore face for the camera.

After the Cornejo family packed up and headed down the canyon, it would take only an hour or two for a new group to appear. Boulderers! Six here and twenty friends camped nearby.

They lent me chalk and let me crash on their pad. Rick, an American teaching in Santiago, mentioned a multi-pitch route he was bolting in an adjacent stream basin. I asked if anyone planned to climb it this weekend.

“Sure, there’s gotta be someone who wants to go up tomorrow.”

Plans were made, I met them at their basecamp that night, and listened to guitars around the fire. Rick was the kind of guy who sang Bob Marley and meant it. In the morning, they strummed ”Here comes the sun!” as it spilled over the lip of the valley.

But the fun ended there. Rick left early to add the final bolt – a necessary safety measure. I saw his truck roll away in a dusty cloud. “Be right back,” he yelled to no one in particular. He did not come back.

The other climbers were less conspicuous when they left. I don’t know if it was deliberate or not, but I waited half the day and passed up more bouldering to be, in short, ditched.

Friendliness (Comitas)

I am happy to report that Chileans, far more than the average American, are open and neighborly to nearly everyone they meet. Almost to a fault.

I quicky understood it’s common courtesy here, whenever you share informal space and especially on the trail, to stop and share the news with the folks you come across. You tell them who you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going, what you think about where you’ve been and where you’re going, ask for any insight they might have, and find a common experience to laugh about.

On our way down the mountain, the Cornejo family and I ran into a pair of dread-headed young campers we met the day before. Not only did we stop to discuss the lake, the rain, and where to find more clean water, we kissed cheeks and shook hands like family before parting ways again.

Some of you know the judgements I occasionally make about people based on their nationality - like the Irish (who are mean), Mexicans (who are foul-mouthed), and German police-people (who are totally disresectful) - so you’ll be surprised and pleased to hear I really do like Chileans!

Appreciation

That night we drank pisco and coke beneath the full moon. Gerardo went to bed early, Rodrigo and Octavio experimented with night photography, and Marta pointed out a few constellations unique to the southern hemishere. One of them, the Southern Cross, looked suspicously like the Big Dipper, but Marta insisted that no stars we could see then were visible at night in the north.

In the morning, we packed up and prepared for our assault on Lake Morado. Our trail lifted us out of Arenas Valley along with the clear stream we were desperate to find the day before. I figured, as we followed its rocky course, the lake must feed this stream directly. But what color would the lake be? Sky blue? Green? I’ve seen green glacial lakes.

To my infinite amusement, after two days of hiking we stumbled over the final crest to see…

the biggest mud puddle ever!

So wide, I coudn’t fit the thing in my viewfinder.

Our party cooked up some soup and Columbian coffee – good for exhaustion, thirst, hunger, and the common cold – while I provided a decadent spread of Cliff Bars and turkey jerky. Dinner was cut short, however, when the wind and rain came to whip us back down the mountain.