Old Friends

I had the pleasure of spending the day yesterday with an old friend Adam and his wife Andrea. Adam was a fellow teacher at the Brusnwick School in Greenwich, Connecticut and solid climbing partner as well.

We talked about his new life as a University Professor at Indiana in their Geology and Education Department, but we also had some time to reflect and talk about the old days when things were a bit simpler, life seemed less stressful, and when the "Big Picture" included some kind of road trip to the Gunks, Red Rocks or Yosemite!!

Somehow life got a hold of us, we moved on to institutions of higher learning, and rock shoes were traded in for all those responsibilities that seem to come with new houses, new careers, marriage and children.

I have to admit, I am a bit of a sentimental person, and I often look back on my youth with a bit of nostalgia and melancholy. Despite the fact that I too have a mortgage, full time job, wife and three children, I have manged to acheive a level of balance in my life that was seemingly absent in my earlier years of Van living! It seems as the years pass, the reality of waking up in a van cramped with gear with three other smelly climbers fades and is replaced with a somewhat romantic notion of halcyon days when not a care entered our minds and all was good in the world. The reality was that we were simply dirtbag climbers, working odd jobs to pay for gas and coffee and nothing else mattered. I still have fond memories of those years, but would not want to go back. My outlook on life and climbing has come full circle and I anxously await the next stage that I am about to embark on....this whole middle aged thing!!!

When all is said and done, I will look back on my life and know that I pushed it when I was healthy, young and able...and for that...I will have no regrets.

"It's better to burn out than fade away" Neil Young