For being open to the public, trails and mountains aren’t frequented by a very diverse crowd. On the way to climb at Sauratown, I noticed that the carpool consisted of me and seven men — six of whom were white.
The cliffs were crowded with more white people. They were well-equipped, and at no small expense. One climber ran a successful blog. Another was a Ph.D. student. A fourth was a white-collar guy there with his young daughter. He talked about how incredible of a climber she would grow up to be. While he spoke, she toed the dirt behind him, looking bored.
A wiry old man accompanied the father-daughter duo, carrying their rope. He wore a white beard that reached from lip to collarbone.
The father was making conversation with me, asking what I wanted to do with my degree. The old man perked up and shouted immediately,
“Be a rock climber!” A true dirt bag, he’d been coming to Sauratown for 26 years, and he seemed to be teaching climbing only to make enough money to keep climbing. True dirtbaggery is rare because it’s a full-time job and allows only minimum commitment to family or other pursuits. I, like almost all the other climbers I meet, am white with white-collar aspirations. Why is this?
One of the biggest turnoffs to climbing is the expense. Shoes and a harness can be about $100 combined, and a rope is even more. Even climbing indoors requires paying regular membership fees to the gym.
How well-off do we have to be to think enduring bad weather and mimicking survivalism is “fun”? Those who have to fight to survive on a daily basis, to scrape together money for groceries and electricity, find very little leisure in sleeping in the cold and walking long distances. For them, it’s not fun to play at being homeless.
I like to think outdoor adventure has made me an empathetic, humble, industrious person — as well as keeping me out of trouble. I’ve built a lot of character through self-induced suffering. Maybe that’s because I’ve suffered so little otherwise.
Sometimes I wonder if I just want to impress the people around me, using the outdoor world to benefit an image very much grounded in the indoor world of social media and conversation starters.
