One story from my climbing career is so big that the compressed, two-minute punk rock version of it I wrote was just that, and left many details unsaid. A couple of versions of it have been published, and I’ll claim the definitive edit is in “Kiss or Kill - Confessions of a Serial Climber”. My spoken word show of it given at the Banff Mountain Film Festival in 1995 was the apogee of my telling; vital, comedic, entertaining, deadly serious, and something I could not put into writing. I am grateful there is an audio record of it, and even a grainy, handheld Hi-8 video tape that I’ve never watched or digitized. I should probably do something with that someday.
Barry told the story in his first book, “The Calling”. He tells it very well. It is gripping, he draws the reader in to the rest of his wild origin story, and hooks them with a rich and enriching memoir. I’ve wanted to write a longer version from my perspective but found it daunting enough to procrastinate. Scanning and cleaning the slides I shot on the climb 38 years ago gave me the idea to tell my story by using those images and long captions. What I thought could be done in 36 pages ballooned to 76 and kept me occupied for some time. The sheer quantity of good, worth-a-thousand-words images relegates this project to digital presentation because print costs would be insane.
The time and emotional cost of building this PDF also means I’ll only offer it for sale on my website where $17 will get you a digital zine suitable for viewing on a desktop screen or tablet but as with many things, a phone won’t do it justice.
p.s. the title of this post refers to an excellent track by Mogwai that you can check out here
