You should never, ever be understood completely. That's like the kiss of death, isn't it? It's a full stop. I don't ever think you should put full stops on thoughts. They change. John Lydon (Johny Rotten, The Sex Pistols).
2026 was the year I wondered, fleetingly, if I would give up rock climbing. Each passing year, it just seemed to get harder and harder to drag myself back into climbing shape after taking the summer season off. But I put a stop on that thought, and started climbing again, and I’m so glad I did. The movement, the challenge, the effort to keep trying substantiated by small improvements is still so satisfying even on a crag that is barely 20 metres high.
It may be the year I have to recognise I’m not going up in the grades anymore, and that’s hard, but I think it is harder still not to climb at all. That would be dying a small death before the final death and in no way a measure of the joy of a life. Fred Beckey kept climbing (or at least trying to climb) for decades after his prime. I’ll never be a Fred Beckey, but perhaps there is some kind of crazy dignity in continuing the struggle for improvement long after the physical ability to improve is gone.
Beckey used to roll into Nelson occasionally when I lived there and my mate Hamish would hook up with him to go climbing. Sometimes at the local crags, sometimes the local gym, but often on some hare-brained scheme to carry a ball busting pack deep into the remote BC wilderness to climb some obscure peak. Often, the walk in (trackless) was enough to render Beckey incapable of completing the climb and the youth who had accompanied him would climb the route instead. Beckey was the prototypical eternal optimist, busting his arse getting way into the remotest wildest mountains long after his ability to string long hard climbing days together was gone.
I like to think that Beckey carried an unquenchable flame for climbing that age and wisdom never dimmed. A dreamer spirit that found solace and quietude on high mountains after extreme effort. These days, he would be diagnosed with autism or ADHD. He would be drugged up and/or convinced that his extreme focus was the product of a “neurodivergent” brain that needed assistance and accommodation. That never happened, because it was a different, and in many ways, more tolerant time. Beckey didn’t want accommodations, and neither should we. The beauty of life is in the struggle to improve not in the dismal acceptance of fading ability.
