Full Circle

[billcoe]

Live has a strange way of providing lessons. Sunday I found myself driving past a river that my family had lived on for a while. In a tent.

 

We weren't homeless, our home was a tent. On a river. I always had a home and was never homeless for we were always together after my dad had died. Mom was doing her best and this was it. A Canvas Tent. Great home. Great life for a kid.

 

As I drove past the spot where my brothers and I use to frolic and repeatedly swim across the river, dangerously close and just above a rapid on a cold fast spot, I wondered why none of us ever died. Truly this was in my mind as I passed the spot. We achieved a lifetime of stupidity within the first 2 weeks we were there and this stupidity continued unabated until they kicked us out and we moved to another camp spot where we began anew. We climbed stuff then I would never get on now, hiked hikes I'd never try with just the clothes on our backs and swam stuff then I know I couldn't swim across now. Pups running wild. Having a ball.

 

A new home, same tent. The next place was a spot I would later climb at. It was called lewis and Clark State park. Now Broughtons Bluff and the camping is gone. I floated that river with no float tube as we were too poor. Just swimming.

 

I never knew then that I would someday have what I have now, the resources I could marshal, my own family and good luck, or the climbing I would be doing. I had no clue.

 

I missed the event Sunday as I passed. It may have been before I headed up to the hills to check out a rumored cliff that turned out to be unimpressive and chossy looking, or perhaps afterwards as I didn't hear the time it occurred, but a 13 year old boy drowned in the very spot my bros and I froliked in as pups and survived.

 

Strange indeed how life is. Today my son and I went to work together. I counted my many blessings.

[Rad]

Cool story Bill.

 

One of my best friend/partners lived in a TeePee on the East side of the Sierra for a number of years. Pictures really conveyed the romantic image you might imagine.

 

In a less aesthetic sense, I know folks who lived in yurts for several years. Still others grew up in trailer parks. How many do we all know living in vehicles?

 

I remember an ad (not sure the vendor) that pictured Dean Potter slacklining in Yosemite in the sunshine. The caption read, "There is a leisure class at both ends of the economic spectrum".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bug]

Yeah, nice.

It reminds me of the wolf pack that raised me in a cave in Montana. They were soooo warm and cuddly. But don't bite the nipples man.

This IS spray.

 

We always had a house but there were more than a few hungry moments. 2 meals a day when I was 3 and 4.

We used to drive up the Rattlesnake and pic the apples from the old homsteads. We also shot everything that moved and ate it.

Cattail shoots. huckleberries, you name it.

Looking back it was quite an education. At the time I was just plain hungry.

[lI1|1!]

damn. growing up i always had everything. now i feel deprived.

 

i used to climb the trees behind our summer house. family seemed concerned i was spending too much time up there. one day they noticed i had two mosquito bites close together on my neck. brother starts teasing me about it being a vampire bat but i ignore this. next day my urban hysteric mother takes me to a pediatrition and points out the bites. docter lets it sink in a second and then shits his pants (adding to my embarassment). tells my mom that the bats around there don't bite (massachusetts) but that if i develop a hungarian accent to bring me back in immediately.

[olyclimber]

lived at the Duckabush campsite for a summer growing up right after starting 1st grade. living on the river was sweet.

[Off_White]

Summer is an okay time for that life, did you live there through a winter? That would seem a bleaker prospect, but it's a fact that summers used to be much longer than they are now.

 

Can anyone explain to me how it can be almost the end of July?

[billcoe]

Not sure Doug, but the calendar has something to do with it. You'd never know it where I was Sunday on the weekends trip (July 20th). 5 feet of snow and broken trees/downfall everywhere closed the road.

The area will have 250-300' long routes, as there isn't a crack around other than the one on your backside, it will be bolted and bolted safely and well with epoxy U-Bolts. U Raindawg. I'll make sure you never find the place and don't come here if it bothers you.

 

That cliff, which still doesn't have a single route (long story there) looks like this:

 

I headed over to another rumored cliff which a hunter buddy of a buddy had found. Buddy hadn't gone up there, just relayed the general co-ordinates and I'd acme mapper found it and headed up after the snow had melted off. There are multiple formations here, sort of like a mini Menagerie. Nothing too kick assed, but interesting, not far from the road, and perhaps full or multi-pitch pitchs, although it's difficult to guess due to distance - the trees are full sized. So here's the pics of this "secret cliff". It needs "Route developers" (I hate that name) to show up and toss choss. I'm pretty busy with 5 other secret cliffs so this is going to go on the back burner I suppose.

 

Overview of the new area.

 

closeup of one of the Pinnacles

 

closeup of another Pinnacle

 

Edited 7/23/08 to add some interesting new secret cliffs stuff

[olyclimber]

Summer is an okay time for that life, did you live there through a winter? That would seem a bleaker prospect, but it's a fact that summers used to be much longer than they are now.

 

Can anyone explain to me how it can be almost the end of July?

 

 

no but lived in a half built house/double wide without running water/electricity/phone/indoor plumbing for first 16 years. if that is all you know it isn't a big deal...it wasn't till i started going to my friends house and i saw how they lived that i realized how my parents deprived me of modernity. then we finally got a phone, but it was a shared line with the neighbors who had just moved up from san diego so you would pick up the phone and hear them talking all the time.

 

the camping on the river for the summer i remember because there were 6 kids in our family at that time and we were living in a 75 squarefoot little camping trailer. most of the time we slept a tent though. it wasn't bad...i don't think it would have been a pleasant winter though.

[Off_White]

sly devil.

[phillygoat]

[quote=billcoe

BTW, lets start to ignore this thread so it gets buried like I intended and can then post some truly inspiring, amazing and wonderful pictures and information as is my wont. Found some new cliffs kind of thing.

 

I don't know, Bill- It's kind of Dingus-y. (That is to say that it's sweet and contemplative and... GOOD.)

 

BTW- I never had it too tough, but my dad died when I was 12 and I remember clear as day those attempts by mom to hold it all together by taking us kids to those certain, magical "wild" spots. It made a difference, for sure.

[olyclimber]

 

like the swing right here

[Sherri]

Bill, thanks for sharing that memory. We lived through some interesting adventures, too, and it was good to be reminded of how such things impact and influence who we become.

 

I came across this poem a couple years ago and it has stuck with me as another reminder of what we lose when we gain.

 

 

The poverty of having everything is not

wanting anything: I trudge down the mall halls

and see nothing wanting which would pick me

up: I stop at a cheap $79 piece of jewelry,

a little necklace dangler, and it has a diamond

chip in it hardly big enough to sparkle, but it

sparkles: a piece of junk, symbolically vast;

imagine, a life with a little sparkle in it, a

little sparkle like wanting something, like

wanting a little piece of shining, maybe the

world's smallest ruby: but if you have everything

the big carats are merely heavy with price and

somebody, maybe, trying to take you over: the dull

game of the comers–on, waiting everywhere like

moray eels poked out of holes: what did Christ

say, sell everything and give to the poor, and

immediacy enters; daily bread is the freshest

kind: dates, even, laid up old in larders, are

they sweet: come off sheets of the golden

desert, knees weak and mouth dry, what would

you think of an oasis, a handful of dates, and

a clear spring breaking out from under some stones:

but suppose bread can't daily be found or no

oasis materializes among the shimmers: lining

the outside of immediacy, alas, is uncertainty:

so the costly part of the crust of morning

bread is not knowing it will be there: it has

been said by others, though few, that nothing

is got for nothing: so I am reconciled: I

traipse my dull self down the aisles of

desire and settle for nothing, nothing wanted,

nothing spent, nothing got.

 

[rob]

My poverty is not complete: it lacks me. -- Antonio Porchia

[Crillz]

Full Circle is a kick ass Pennywise album. FYI.