Gear for Sail

For the past nine years I've been a climber. I've drifted for months and settled myself in a city where I could climb everyday, work as a climber, and have easy access to the country's greatest climbing areas. If one's life could be about anything other than love, life and death, then mine was about climbing. I spent three years working as a climbing guide, taught college courses and touched some of the most beautiful stone in the world. I found though, that to continue to pursue climbing was to ignore a valuable lesson I learned: I can do anything I wish to do, I need only get to doing it.

Oppression can be defined as " sense of being weighed down in body or mind". As a climber I began to feel oppressed. My free time was filled with climbing and my body was strengthened from the rigors of it. I admit, I have a focus problem. I can really only do one thing at a time as far as life goes. Though I've found success in college and as a "professional", to grow in different directions never was easy for me. A thing like climbing, while within its grip, presents a myriad of stimulation. It feeds the mind body and soul, and the ego. Its true, pride can kill, but when feet are on the ground, and circles from, egos get enflamed and mere mortals ascend to heights far beyond that of any stone wall, they become legends of sport.

And rightfully so, climbing is something like enlightenment from the perspective of awakening to what truly is. Only, what is to a climber is not necessarily to the end of enlightenment. If the buddha was a prince, and then a vagabond, and then a sage, it is the act of transition that gives the perspective. To maintain a mindset; address; lifestyle is to maintain obstruction to what truly is. As a climber, I felt oppressed, so I stopped climbing for a period and started traveling on my bicycle.

Gear for sail was the flyer I put up at a climbing gym where I used to work. I put my climber gear up for sale. I bought a sailboat. That is just the way I do things now- all the way without attachment to the past. I've learned a great deal from a life as a climber. I learned the art of letting go. If climbing was the teacher, then I mastered it.

in the breeze,

&e