Many people will spend 3 hours today, and 4 hours tomorrow preparing a meal that will be consumed in 20 minutes. I see an obvious analog here to writing: you can spend 7 hours working on something that people will read in 15 minutes. If you’re lucky, they will give you about half of their full attention as they chug through the words looking for the tasty parts. What’s the takeaway? Get to the point! I’ve got social media to check, emails to send, online shopping to do….

For me, reading is beginning to feel less and less like something I do for pleasure and more like a prophylactic against an attention disorder. I’m a slow reader, which can add to my general anxiety if I look at the stacks of unfinished books on my table as Projects I’d Like to Finish (PILFs) instead of opportunities to just be happily immersed in the moment with a few pages of reading.

I used to be a slow writer, too—I remember telling my teachers in high school that I preferred to write essays by hand rather than word processor since the pace of scribbling on a piece of paper seemed to better suit the pace at which I think. It’s sometimes hard to know whether technology is great enabler of creativity and freedom, or a detractor of it.

Even if an article only takes 15 minutes to read, a particularly good writer can leave you feeling full for hours after. And the best pieces of writing stay with us for a lifetime, almost like the memory of a really good meal, though both will fade. There’s no replacement for that first bite, that first time you get penetrated by a thoroughly weird or simply profound insight that changes the way you see the world or yourself.

Junk is all around us. Junk writing. Junk food. Jerkoff clickbait. Editors are spending most of their time debating with each other in Slack channels about which headline will distract the most number of people to waste 5 minutes of their lives browsing their shitty articles. It will never in a million years occur to them to just not publish shitty articles. Give me writing with nuance. Give me writing that doesn’t just come to the easiest, politically safest conclusion. Give me something weird. As Kendrick Lamar says, “Show me something natural like ass with some stretch marks.”

As with food, we should also want our information diets to be healthy—not just filled with hard and difficult truth, but fortified with insights that nourish the soul.

But of course, that’s only half the battle. Finding the time and working up the attention span to really sit and savor it all feels like the crux. It’s a good goal to have for Thanksgiving, whether that means enjoying each bite of a meal, or each word of a good book, or each second out at the crag if you’re lucky enough to be enjoying the day outside. Turn off the screens and be present. Happy thanksgiving!

Got Unfinished Projects?

Many climbers may be heading into December with PILFs of their own, projects they’d like to have finished by now, but, alas, haven’t sent. I have had many PILFs of my own, of course. When you do, this time of year always seems to follow a similar formula. You experience a process of coming to terms with the fact that the send you’d visualizing for months just didn’t happen—and that’s “OK,” you guess. And so you start planning and scheming. If only you train a little harder, find a little more time, optimize a little better, next year those projects will go down.

Other climbers, however, have averted this sad cycle by virtue of clipping the chains. Here’s a roundup of some notable recent ticks in climbing.

Alex Megos: King Capella (5.15b) ✅

Alex Megos nabbed the second ascent of Will Bossi’s King Capella (5.15b) at Siurana, Spain, a thin and incredible line of crimps. You can read Megos’ self-report on Instagram here and here. Esteban Lahoz took this sick “peak action” shot. Amazing-looking climb!

Brette Harrington: El Corazon (5.13b) ✅

Brett Harrington, who is in the recently released The Alpinist film, ticked El Corazon (5.13b) on El Capitan, and my boy Drew Smith got the shot. It sounded like an adventure. She wrote in her report, “It was a journey to say the least. On day 8 our hanging tent ⛺️ nearly sank in a torrential rainstorm. We bailed water out with the jet boil cup all night, then spent the next day and a half drying out.”

Wide Boyz: The Great Rift (5.13b) ✅

When Tom Randall and Pete Whittaker showed up in the United States from England many years ago, dubbed themselves the “Wide Boyz,” and vowed to climb all the hardest offwidths in the country, I admit to privately dismissing them as nothing more than cheap gimmicks who would never do any “real” climbing. And you know what? I was completely right about that. JUST KIDDING! Tom and Pete have become two of my favorite climbers to follow because not only have they both shown just how fucking strong and badass they are as legit serious climbers, but they’re completely willing to do unserious things. These guys are infusing fun into a sport that’s gotten rather dreary and too self-serious, and I’m here for it. Their latest stunt—I mean, ascent—is an 80-pitch, 2,500-foot roof crack splitter under an overpass. “Like Half Dome … but horizontal,” writes Pete. They spent 4 days and 3 nights living on this roof crack, literally plugging away. Looking forward to seeing this in next year’s REEL ROCK tour. Photo by the great Ray Wood.

RunOut Podcast: Hear Them Lor

In our new episode of The RunOut, we spoke to Lor Sabourin, one of the country’s top trad climbers, with ascents as hard as 5.14a on gear. Lor is the subject of a new film called, “They / Them: One Climber’s Story,” an excellent feature on Lor’s identity, struggles, vulnerability, and a particularly incredible-looking multi pitch route in Arizona. Listen wherever you get your podcasts!

The Climbing Travel Guide

Mapo Tapo has a gorgeous new coffee-table book out that features “off-the-beaten-path” destinations around the world, from Oman and Lebanon to Cuba and China. The Climbing Travel Guide isn’t a complete guidebook to each spot, but it will give you ideas for your next adventure. It’s great to see areas like Palestine featured!

What to read: Tommy Caldwell in The New Yorker

Check out this profile of Tommy Caldwell, “What it Takes to Climb the Most Forbidding Cliffs” in the New Yorker by William Finnegan, one of my favorite writers.

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