Of all the characters in the lore of Western climbing history, of all the heroes and the heroines, the maniacs and misfits, one could hardly script Brad’s character. The madman and the obsessed we’ve seen, in our tradition, are a dime a dozen. The willingness to sacrifice anything and anyone, those who quarrel about ethics, those who burn bridges and craft a life so self-centered it will abandon all for glory. Those who are coded by a pure obsession for a summit, for notoriety, for achievement or even a feeling of peace in an otherwise chaotic world, we can understand. We’ve seen the type. Even if they fail to ride that most fine line, even if they fail as fathers or sons or daughters, for the places they take us, for how they lift the human spirit, we are willing to call them heroes of some kind.

Even when they face a tragic end, we consolidate their memory, as one would with an addict of any type, suggesting to ourselves that our heroes were indeed good people, making the best of a condition not of their choosing. We think that when they knowingly pursued summits over simpler obligations, they did so not because they wanted to, but because they were compelled to. We say it made them the happiest to be doing X, Y, or Z, and how could we ever ask of them to be otherwise. But momentary happiness is not our entire expression. That happiness, the kind that is attached to achievements, is always unsustainable. Usually, nobody knows that more than the hero who finds, at last, more emptiness after the fanfare of each ascent. But ask any recovered person about real happiness, and they’ll tell you it only ever came when it was given away.

Brad really was different. Same look. But different. He never had that dilemma. He never tried to juggle capacities. He never ran counter-intuitive functions. At first that could seem basic, almost one-dimensional, but looking closer, temper the judgment and you’ll see that his character was, in a most eastern aspect, perfect. Fully reduced, nothing to add, and nothing more to possibly subtract. Pure. Realized, not with prose and pomp, but with action. He flashed before your eyes and if you were too busy looking at the incident—which is his manner of living itself—you’ll miss that flicker of brilliance.

If his humanity seems just too far to grab, hold to this. He did believe in beauty, and all that it promised us. It might be the one thing which superseded his whole drive. The one thing that could put a pause on the feedback loop. The one thing that will freeze action. As he described it to me, the one thing that could make him stop what he was doing and just look around with total wonder. In the middle of a 24-hour day on the stone, somewhere deep on a trail after some ungodly link-up, even if he was going for a speed record or trying to rush out of the tent at daybreak, even if he had an agenda for something which seemed pressing—when a beam of nature was suddenly lighting up the empty corridors of that unconflicted mind, beauty overwhelmed him. He’ll stop, he’ll be raptured with the same rush of love and incomprehensible glory as you will.

“I definitely think that climbing El Cap, just being on it at sunrise or sunset, is the most beautiful thing I can do in my life. It’s the most beautiful rock out there. And there have been times on it, where the sky is so perfect, I can’t imagine anything else. For me, that’s it. I’ve had it happen all over in nature when I get completely frozen by something beautiful, but it happens to me the most on the Captain. I can climb all over the world, but I don’t think anything will beat it. It’s just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

That’s it. That’s what’s up there. Beauty. There isn’t so much a “why” to his action. There never was with Brad. It wasn’t in his nature to ask why he had the drive. He just ran it. Beauty was up on that rock, and so was Brad. He wasn’t going to take our aspirations up there with him. Lord knows he’s not carrying any form of science or philosophy into that experience each time he goes. He was taking the only thing he had and the only thing he ever needed, that pure heart.

As hard as it was, at times, to watch him live, it is much harder to know he’s gone. It was terrible on context, terrible on condition of how it happened, and terrible on timing, as it always seemed to be with loss. Brad was on an arc, after all. He’d grown and was growing, in a lot of new capacities, and we could all see it. Some of us had been on that arc with him longer than others, but the truth is it didn’t matter where we were on it, it just mattered that we were there. It mattered that we could keep him and all his indelible, robust, comical, and even gentle aspects alive in memory.

He’ll be missed for so many things—the million or more quirky details, the mimes and the sarcasm, the infamous chicken bock at the tourons, and for the jokes and laughs he provided. But he’ll be missed for so much more than his lightness and amusement. He’ll be missed for his singleness of heart, his honesty, his authenticity. For all the things we struggled to consolidate about him. For all the things that made him him. That’s what we’ll miss the most.

We’re all going to have that last text, that last phone call, that last hug, that last beer, or that last climb that we shared. Those painfully close will have that last “I love you.” too. Painful as they may be, those are priceless memories, and we should nurture them. Grief is a force of nature, a part of the cycle we must submit ourselves to. It does not get solved, it is not a matter of logic, and there’s nothing pretty on face value with it. Grief simply must be had. But grief is of nature, too, and for that it is good. It is good because it keeps us together. Let’s remember all those sunspots Brad burned on our reels when he was flying through the frames. Let us play them back, honor them, celebrate them. They were real, they were special, they were once in a lifetime.

To me, he had it. When you are known as much for your failures as your success, as much for the falls you take as the summits you make, you’re onto something. That’s my image of him. Brad Gobright, up there looking the fool; could be an epic fail or his greatest ascent, it doesn’t matter because he’s shining just the same. That same light we’re all shielding our eyes from as we find ourselves looking on from below is the one he’s wrapped in. Radiant, fleeting, glorious. Light.


Aperture Alike

This post is an excerpt from Aperture Alike, a new book by Lucas Roman.

Please visit DiAngelo Publications to purchase and more.