Until last week, it had been years since I’d climbed with, or even seen Jarod. After leaving the porn industry behind a couple years ago, Jarod moved to Mammoth, California and quickly joined the fearless ranks of people who hurtle down the mountain and huck themselves off jumps with drops like four-story buildings. I drove out from Flagstaff, spent a day at The Buttermilks, and then went up to Mammoth for the weekend. There was hardly any snow and Jarod had to work most nights. We got a couple beers and sooner then I’d expected it was time to go back down to Bishop where I planned to climb for another couple days. I told Jarod I’d see him later in the spring when the snow was better.
Normally at any major bouldering area I run into some group of climbers I know and end up climbing and camping with them. This time however, those groups seemed to be elsewhere and I was left to enjoy quiet solitude in the back of my truck with a couple novels for company. I wandered The Buttermilks all day, climbed some old projects, found some new ones and felt like I was home. Sagebrush grew with twisted branches from the sandy soil and I wondered where all the rattlesnakes were this time of year.
I woke as the sun turned the sky amber and reflected off the glassy boulders across the way. It had been cold; my water was all frozen and it had been hard to read the night before without gloves. I decided to get a hotel room for my rest day.
In the afternoon, Jarod called. He was getting a ride down to Bishop for the day; did I want to get some food or something? By eight we were both back in my hotel room, talking about our first trips to Bishop, The time we found a baggie of meth in New Mexico, all that Red Bull, my broken ankle, and my truck. We agreed, Good Times that should absolutely keep on going. I told Jarod that after all these years and miles I wanted to sell my truck. “How much do you want for it?” he asked. We started talking numbers.
Driving up Buttermilk road Jarod patted the dash, “I love this truck man, I can’t wait!” Jarod only speaks with extreme punctuation and when he writes he tends towards the use of multiple exclamation points.
We parked at The Birthday Boulders, where we used to camp when we didn’t know any better. The sun was strong and warm and the shade cold. The rock was chilled to the core so we decided to go to that quintessential Buttermilks problem, Ironman, to warm up. After a couple laps we wandered the web of trails talking about the time we got really drunk shot-gunning beers in the campsite I’d camped in two nights before. The night had ended when a bunch of other climbers all wearing nothing but kilts stumbled out of the darkness and crashed the party with a well-placed head-butt and a bloody nose.
I made progress on my project, I felt stronger with Jarod spotting and his encouragement always gets me higher. The next hold always seemed closer. Soon though, the sun rounded the corner and the crux holds were too warm. We wandered on, talking little, but feeling good. Even after so many years, climbing with Jarod had barely changed. We didn’t feel like we needed to catch up, the blank spaces filled themselves in. We just bouldered, fell, and laughed. Nothing else mattered.
I’d been planning on leaving early; Flagstaff is a long nine hours away, but early snuck past us both and the shadows off the mountains grew longer and longer. We were bumping back down the road to Bishop by 3:30, two hours after I had planned on leaving.
Jarod had some paperwork to do at the DMV, he was in the process of purchasing a rifle, and so I dropped him there.
“I’m gonna come out to AZ this spring, man,” Jarod said, “I have a friend with some Harleys, were gonna ride to the Grand Canyon!” I pictured Jarod on some monstrous bike riding through that same stretch of desert.
“Awesome,” I said, “just let me know when.” I hope he does. He’s always welcome on my floor.
Jarod got his bag out of the back of my truck and closed it back up. The latches are finicky and I noticed that he worked them skillfully. A car horn honked from 395 and the branches of the cottonwoods were all naked.
“So good to climb with you again man, I really miss it,” I said.
“Yeah dude! Come back out soon! I love this, just like Old Times,” he said, and I knew I would make the long drive back there from Flagstaff soon. We hugged, fist bumped, and then did that awkward handshake-hug combination thing.
“See you later dude,” I said. I got back in my truck and rolled down the window.
“Later Bro!” Jarod said, smiled and went inside.
I rolled my window back up and drove east into that primordial space where places aren’t advertised, but still wait to be discovered by people like me or Jarod, people who find the solitude of bumping along some cracked highway more soothing than a warm bath. I drove through a forest whose trees are old as stone and back into a desert where time moves differently, where all the lizards, tortoises and kangaroo rats go about their crepuscular business without anyone noticing and every roadside stand sells the world best beef jerky.
No comments:
Post a Comment