RunOut #43: So, Can We Start Climbing Again or What?

When I was a young dirtbag, living out of an old sedan, sleeping on my crashpad in a $25 Walmart tent for children, drifting around from one climbing area to the next on what little money I had, I wrestled with the typical questions that keep many young newly college grads awake at night. What would I do with my life? What would I become? What would come next? Despite these lingering existential concerns, I held fast to my dirtbag lifestyle. Although I had aspirations to do more than just climb, I was also mostly happy sleeping in that stupid purple tent. There was a certain comfort in knowing that even if I failed to amount to anything else in this life, if everything went to shit, I could always go back to doing this—living in a tent, in Yosemite, climbing forever. Now even that security has been taken away. Yosemite remains closed. Campgrounds are closed. And many climbing areas are asking out-of-towners to stay away. But other climbing areas and corners of society are tentatively opening up, albeit not with a green light, but more of a yellow. Proceed with caution … but do proceed. Heightened uncertainty is the flavor of the year. We are actually living in the question, to paraphrase the poet Rainer Marie Rilke. For us, that all-encompassing question is, well, is it ok to start climbing again—or not? This is Andrew Bisharat. I’m here with my co-host Chris Kalous. And in this episode Chris and I wade into the murky waters of this question and attempt to parse our strange new reality, which I fear we’ll all be living with for quite some time. Hope you enjoy our dialogue and are even listening to it as you drive to discreetly climb somewhere safe while exercising best practices. Featured image by Keith Ladzinski.