“Oh, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves,
As reckless as the best of them to-night,
By setting fire to all the brush we piled
With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow.
Oh, let’s not wait for rain to make it safe.

I sit in front of a hulking boulder, located off the side of a walking trail, in the middle of a historic climbing Mecca, The Gunks. I’m trying to gather the energy to repeat one of the neo-classics, New Pair of Glasses. I’d done it last year, but my ego requests I get it captured digitally for both my own posterity and broader social media approval. Some may consider New Pair a highball – the summit itself clocks in at 35 feet, but the climbing that makes the grade ends at a jug at less than half that height. I’d brought only one medium pad, and while I was glad to see others there for a bit more coverage, I’d steeled myself to be willing to go for it over just the one, if I had to. I remembered how massive it first seemed, but having topped out by various lines, it now stood shorter than I remembered.

A young man sidled up next to me, if I had to guess he was more than 18, but less than 25 years old, and much like me at that age, had a shiny new pad. That is where the similarities betwixt us ended.

“You trying Karajo?” – His question comes out friendly with a light hopefulness, perhaps an undertone of ‘can I steal beta from you’?

I later pondered the nuances of engaging someone with the generic “What are you working on?” versus “Are you working on X?”. They sound similar, but maybe its a visible tone, or maybe I’m neurotic (ok, that’s true regardless), but there’s an assumption or a supposition with the second phrasing. “X” has a grade, and in asking if I’m on that in particular, it carries an implication of their assessment of my abilities.

In this case, I should be flattered. Karajo is a lower start that links into my current objective, and clocks in at V11, a grade I’ve never climbed, and genuinely never really wanted to climb – a conversation for a different day I suppose.

His tone in asking informs me as well. Despite the shiny new pads, he knew what the hard-hard on this boulder was, meaning either he wanted to see something rad go down, or more likely it was his goal for the day – homie is either STRONK, or thinks himself stronk.

“Me? No, no. Just trying to repeat New Pair. Sessioned it two years ago, did it last year, wanted to get it on video”, with some humility I peel back that I am after much more pedestrian fare.

“Have you ever topped it out?”

I am initially confused – I’d just told him I’d done it previously. I actually looked at him a moment, and a bit of nervousness shown on his face. I get it, its a tall boulder, and the first time I considered it, there were definitely nerves. As humility evaporated back to braggadocio, I informed him, “yes, a few times, both when I did New Pair last year, and the year before by the line on the left. The holds are huge, would swallow your arm, and you can stand on the ledge up there all day if you wanted”.

He seemed unconvinced.

After a few more failed attempts on New Pair, I’d checked down to Million Dollar Problem, an adjacent line the shares the same finishing sequence, but with a couple fewer V-points. In the interim, the young man had pulled on the starting moves of New Pair a few times, and was trying out the individual moves on Karajo, having impressive success on the shouldery moves, and occasionally stared at the full height and remarked he’d heard about injuries from up high, or from slipping down the slabby descent on the reverse side – very plausible if you ask me, as slab as a genre is unpredictable and cruel.

Let’s all but bring to life this old volcano,
If that is what the mountain ever was—
And scare ourselves. Let wild fire loose we will….”

“And scare you too?” the children said together.

“Why wouldn’t it scare me to have a fire
Begin in smudge with ropy smoke and know
That still, if I repent, I may recall it,
But in a moment not:

I’m into the crux moves of Million Dollar Problem, a long reach to grab the first shared hold, and then to a generous hold. Sticking them, I look up. I know from experience that the jug above is big enough to swallow a limb. I know this because my foot had gotten briefly lodged in it on a previous lap, a slightly startling experience at 20 feet up, more comical than scary however. Still, its always a little further away than you want it to be, and I know going to it dynamically is much safer than the static approach, but there’s a faint butterfly still – this is a moment of commitment and if I make it to the next hold, the only reasonable way out is up. I’ve put myself here, voluntarily forcing a decision, because I enjoy this sensation, and because X-rays have not yet revealed the location of the horseshoe lodged in my ass that lets me to continue to get away with these gambles.

With a little pop I’ve latched the bucket, outstretched but feet still on. That is of course until I deliberately cut and swing from just my right arm, waving my free arm and both legs behind me to mimic a snowboarder mid- Melon Grab. I tell myself this is done both because I am enjoying the hell out of myself, and to hopefully convey to the onlookers just how good the hold must be if an old man like me can swing off it.

My loving partner expresses a third option, letting those around know that I may just be a jackass. Again – multiple things can be true.

I finish the top out, and very delicately pick my way down the slab, genuinely more nervous about that then the climb up, both for my noted inability at the angle, and the young man’s N-th-hand tale of someone fracturing a jaw after a tumble down this side. By the time I get back to the base, my partner informs me that the same young man has absolutely hiked New Pair of Glasses, moving with great ease, but on arriving at the two holds I stalled at preceding the monkey-swing jug, paused, and then said aloud, “I’m not topping this out”, dropping back to the pads. As I packed, he was making small links on the shouldery moves across the roof that would lead him into New Pair and into that same decision again. I wished him luck and walked off.

The best way is to come up hill with me
And have our fire and laugh and be afraid.”

Bonfire by Robert Frost

I don’t know what to make of that exchange, but I’ve thought about it a lot since – as if that wasn’t painfully obvious by my recounting it in detail above. It seems so bizarre to me that someone could have a plausible goal to climb a V11 and not have the confidence for a V2 jaunt at 20 feet followed by a 4th class scramble. Baffling. To a younger less-empathetic me, it’d be an offensive level of cowardice, blasphemous to get up on something that iconic and not take it to the top as those that went before me did.

I’m wiser now. The perceived difference in risk tolerance could be a lot of things. Having climbed nearly as long as he’s been alive, maybe I have a keener sense of what moves I can do, what risks I can take, and what I can get away with. In that time however I’ve never climbed nearly as hard as he was aspiring to, and instead I focused in on lines that felt like that had some sort of weight or history to them, the proud and the feared and the mythologized. Perhaps New Pair is so far below his ability that it’s not even a blip on his radar, carries no weight, and skipping the finish on it is akin to my slapping the top hold on next week’s V-Intro during my next gym-session. Maybe on the send-go for Karajo, he’ll get to that same set of holds and feel inspired into the true summit. Even if he doesn’t, I wouldn’t judge him for choosing to stay within his personal comfort zone.

I will judge him if he takes the tick without an asterisk though – the empathy only goes so far.

Bonfire encourages children to set uncontrollable fires and scare themselves voluntarily, so that they might be less afraid when something less-voluntarily happens to them. Justin Meserve isn’t from New England, but half his family is, which means he was given a copy of Robert Frost’s Complete Works at birth. Maybe that’s why he chooses to spook himself time to time – its as good an excuse as any.