In the midst of the holiday season author Scott Thybony reflects on a few crucial life lessons that changed his perspective. In this month’s Canyon Commentary, Thybony says he’s learned that it often pays to jump headlong into an endeavor, even though one might be wholly unprepared for what they’re about to face.
One Christmas I decided to pull together a collection of anecdotes for my son. I went through my field notes from past assignments to find whatever provided some insight into the wider world he was facing.
In a section labeled, “Learning the Ropes,” a common theme was the need to cut the tether and engage the world directly.
The santero Robert Bal, a traditional woodcarver from New Mexico, learned this lesson when he was young. Normally the tradition of woodcarving is passed down within a family from one generation to the next, but Robert was self-taught. When I asked how he learned to carve, he told me about Don Pablo.
Returning home after an absence of several years, Robert was surprised to find his friend dressed in good clothes and living in a nice house. When he left, Don Pablo was only a poor woodcutter. Curious, Robert asked him what had changed.
“I’m a stone mason,” he said, proudly.
“But Don Pablo,” Robert said, “you’re a woodcutter.”
“Don’t be a fool. See that wall over there?” Don Pablo pointed to a finely laid stone wall. “I built it. Don’t ever think that you can’t do something. Do it and the job will teach you.”
Some of us have to learn hard lessons the hard way. Lowell Lundeen worked as a swamper on the Colorado River for the Grand Canyon Dories. His job was to bail the baggage boat and observe how the boatwoman ran each rapid. All went smoothly until they made camp above the huge, breaking waves of Crystal Rapid.
Due to a family emergency she had to helicopter out, leaving the raft without a rower. Lowell had no idea how would get the extra boat downriver and asked the trip leader.
“It’s your boat now,” he told him. “It’s up to you to get it downriver.”
"Don’t ever think that you can’t do something. Do it and the job will teach you.”
The swamper had never rowed a boat through a rapid before and now faced some of the most powerful whitewater on the river. Scared to death, he began his solo run the next morning. The crashing waves tossed him sideways, but he made it through without flipping. “You’re not much of a boatman,” the trip leader said, “but you’re a good survivor.”
Another case was big-wall climber Todd Skinner who found the ultimate challenge on the Great Trango Tower in the Karakoram Range. Outside magazine called it “the most fearsome big wall on the planet.”
When the peak first came in sight, it stunned him. An immense granite tooth stood before him with a smooth, 3,000-foot face reaching more than 20,000 feet in elevation.
“We were scared,” Todd told me. “If we had seen the mountain first, we would never have tried to climb it.”
He realized they had to take the first step and do it quickly to break the hold of fear and inertia. So they began climbing, and once started decided to stay on the vertical wall without descending.
“Momentum,” he said, “means more than strength.”
Cuts never healed in the thin air, so they climbed with bloody hands. At one point, rockfall completely tore out the ropes below them, and they survived a deadly nine-day storm trapped in their portaledges. Despite the suffering, they kept going until reaching the summit.
At the start of the climb, Todd told his team the worst-case scenario would be to spend fifteen days suspended on the wall. They agreed to try, uncertain if they could hold up that long. But what they thought would take a tremendous, two-week effort became an unimaginable ordeal. In the end they remained on the sheer face for an incredible sixty days.
Todd refused to take credit. “The mountain,” he said, “makes the climber.”
Scott Thybony is a Flagstaff-based writer. His Canyon Commentaries are produced by KNAU Arizona Public Radio and air on the last Friday of each month.
