About a month ago one of my closest friends, John, was visiting me from Maine. John and I have known each other since we were freshman roommates and, after my father, he has probably had the biggest influence on me. So while John was there, I was cleaning out my apartment, following a renovation, and I was deciding what to do with my climbing gear. John and I had read an article years ago in the Washington Post that written by a guy who had a drum set and electric guitars set up in his garage ready to jam. The guy hadn’t touched the stuff in ten years, but every day he walked by his garage and said to himself “the guy who lives in this house must be really cool he has a whole band set up in his garage.” As I was staring at my climbing gear and I said to John that I think it’s time for me to accept I’ve become like that guy — I don’t use the stuff anymore, it just makes me feel good to look at it — it’s time to get rid of it.

“Or we could go climb” was John’s response; without missing a beat. So 2 weeks ago we headed to Maine to climb Mt Washington.

Clutching to the side of an icy face on Huntington Ravine with a thousand feet of vertical below me and avalanches looming above, my toes and hands numb, and the only assurance from the rope was that if I fell it would also rip by best friend from the face, I remembered why I stopped mountain climbing. And on the summit I forgot.

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