Stay Home. Stay Humble.

By Sarah Chase Fountain | April 10, 2020

One of my favorite climbing partners and humans is nearly 70. He's been a diehard climber for longer than I've been alive. In my local area, he is a legend. You’d know of him too, if he hadn’t checked his ego at the door long ago. 

The first time we went to the crag, I was nervous that I wasn't good enough to be climbing with him. This guy cut his teeth with Royal Robbins, for Pete's sake. I expressed my unworthiness, and in return, he gave me a lesson that I have carried ever since:

“Sarah,” he said, “climbing is not about what we can show the rock—it's about what we can learn from it. We're not here to prove anything. We're here to listen.”

I understood: rock climbing is about staying humble, and an ego will get me into trouble out here. 

It’s the same lesson I learned years prior, sailing in the Sea of Cortez with the National Outdoor Leadership School. A massive norte (a storm front from due north) came barreling into our path without warning. We managed to anchor and row to shore in the nick of time. Battling exhaustion and a few broken ribs, we watched in disbelief as our drascombe longboats were thrown around like rubber ducks in a giant's bathtub. 

I was humbled by a full-blown reminder of our mortality and respect for the power of the Earth. Years later, staring up at a rock face, I would learn that lesson again. I can’t prove anything to the sea. I can’t prove anything to the rock. The elements are my teacher.

Right now, a different force of nature—a pandemic—is sweeping across our globe, boundaries be damned.

Like most, I am distancing at home. My waves of quarantine emotions consist of equal parts happy, fearful, and heartbroken: happy to do my part, fearful when I see that my own state is short 9,000 ventilators, and heartbroken when I see my healthcare heroes crying. Heartbroken when I see forklifts moving dead bodies in New York City. Heartbroken when I realize how many more bodies will end up in orange bags.

In addition to happiness, fear, and heartbreak, there's been an unforeseen emotion in the mix: anger. 

Many of my fellow outdoor enthusiasts are still out there: climbing, skiing, dismissing the shelter-in-place orders. Recently, a picture of another packed crag kicked my rage into full throttle.

On social media, I posed a question: “if you’re still climbing outside, what is your thought process behind it?”

Almost 9 out of 10 times, the response was, "nothing is going to happen to me,” along with a reminder of the duration of their climbing career that had not (yet) necessitated medical attention. Some asked me for “proof” that we shouldn’t be climbing anymore. I pointed them to my local climbing organization’s directive to “steer clear of the crags.” Cue the messages telling me to “fuck off.”

But here’s the thing: Have you ever been injured climbing? Know someone who has? Same. I honestly have a hard time thinking of someone who hasn’t. 

The attitude of invincibility goes against my very first lesson about climbing: we are not in control. We must stay humble. 

To believe that nothing will happen to us in the mountains is to put ourselves above Mother Nature… the very force that gave us rock climbing. We have little ability to predict a hold breaking or a rock falling on our belayer’s head. As climbers, we estimate risk, but we’re never perfectly in control of it. If we were, some incredible members of our community would still be here. 

No matter our level of skill or expertise, sometimes we end up on the wrong side of risk. It’s impossible to know when that day might be, because it’s out of our control. 

What we CAN control are the decisions we make about our actions. Climbing is a gratifying endeavor, but not at the expense of those around us. 

There are so many points I could touch upon regarding the coronavirus and neglecting to do our part: the mere risk of getting in a car accident, thereby taxing our selfless first responders who are fighting COVID-19; the likelihood of being an asymptomatic carrier and infecting someone else; the sadness I hear from my friend, a nurse in Denver, who begs people to “please, stay home.” I could talk about the bed shortages, or the fact that your muscles have to be paralyzed to go on a ventilator, or how dying from COVID-19 means suffocating to death in a room without your loved ones. I could talk about my friend in search and rescue who has been on three rescue missions in the past six days related to climbing, hiking, and snowmobiling, and how upsetting that is to him and his team due to their limited capacity. 

There is so much changing every day, and I understand how easy it is to be cynical of the conflicting information we’re getting. But no matter what happens, I will know one thing when this is all over: given the circumstances and information at hand, I did my absolute best to protect others and remain humble to the forces of nature. 

I’ll close with this final thought, shared by the same person we started this story with: my climbing partner. He said,

“I heard a spiritual teacher a year or two ago talking about spiritual practices—he described a certain practice as ‘radical self-responsibility,’ and I thought, ‘that’s exactly what climbing is.’ There’s no blaming, no whining—I mean you can—but that doesn’t do you any good.”

Radical self-responsibility means we are deeply aware of all we see, feel, think, and do. As a rock climber, I know what I need to do: stay home. When this is all over, I’ll drop my pack at the base of a route and thank the rock for still being there. I’ll thank it for teaching me how to be still and how to be humble. I’ll dip my hands into my chalk bag, take a breath, and feel an even deeper appreciation for the world as I begin my climb.

Sarah Chase Fountain is a writer, wanderer, business owner, and outdoor lover. She’s a firm believer that human connection is what the hokey pokey is all about, and has been known to ask about people’s life story within five minutes of meeting them. She’s never sure if she’s a sport climber or a boulderer, but always feels that the most important pursuit in climbing is that of community. Find her on Instagram @sarah.chase.fountain.