Learning through Experience.

Four the next couple of days I will be posting a new short chapter of an Experience that to this day has been very influential on the way I live my life.  But as my last post described, I lost touch with much of this recently, and now I would like to share my reminiscence with you.

The Route

In wake of my preface with my last post, now I feel it is time to tell of the Experience.  This event was one that took place three years ago this November, and took the process of over a full year to completely come together.  But some things are just worth waiting for, and this one is no exception.  In this I formed a relationship with a route that is easily the one I am most proud of.  Last weekend as I sat under this white, orange and black beauty, I was literally awe struck that I had forgotten what she had taught me as it all came rushing back starting with a nervous feeling in my stomach and ending with my fingers sweating.  I had fallen into the old saying “fool me once”, at that point I guess I just had to learn the lesson, but to have forgotten this and be “fooled twice” shame on me, this time I will not forget for it has affected far more than myself.

Pudd's Pretty Dress

The first time I laid eyes on this route was with a good friend of mine Matt Londrey, it was a day that is still in the top five most fun climbing days I have ever had.  Neither of us really understood going climbing outside yet we quickly hiked our way up and down the breath taking Endless Wall of the New River Gorge, picking routes that sounded cool by their description and grade and then going in search of them one by one back and forth up and down Endless, which is called Endless for a good reason.  But we didn’t know any better or did we care, we were stoked, back and for we hiked chasing descriptions and grades, like a freshman in college trying to find the party.  The description read, “Overhanging orange wall. Awesome route!”  We passed it two or three times trying to find it, yes we were still learning how to really use a guide book too.  We flailed then bailed, neither of us able to make it to the top of the route.  And honestly served us right, she was far too beautiful for us to try to talk to.  Later I realized just how inexperienced we were when I later found that sometimes it takes climbing sideways to go upward, literally just a move or two left.  Just like life, running for the anchors sometimes comes with moving horizontally to make forward progress, keeping this in sight is difficult.   Just as the path we must take through life we cannot just gun for the top, but keep our eyes open in search for the line of least resistance, what will keep us on route and moving ahead towards our end goal, our anchors.  Lesson One should have been learned on this day but hindsight is 20-20 I guess J

Little did I know as I walked away from her with my tail between my legs like the beaten dog I deserved to be that this had the potential to be something more.  And in the back of my mind she always stayed.

NTVS