Episode 38: Are You Safe There?
Dan always knew he was different growing up, but he didn’t have a name for it. Growing up gay in rural America shaped the way he moved through the world, and it led him to believe that the outdoors wasn’t a safe place for him.
This podcast unequivocally supports the LGBTQIA community. Episode thirty-eight discusses suicide and depression. If you’re struggling with mental health, please check out the show notes at the end of the transcript, and take care of yourselves while listening.
This month through July 4th, use code LOVECLIMBING-20 at checkout for 20% off deuter’s Guide Series packs. Deuter is one of the leading backpack brands that has been supporting this podcast from day one.
For the Love of Climbing is presented by Patagonia. Additional support is from deuter USA, Gnarly Nutrition, Allez Outdoor, and Ocún.
Music is by Chad Crouch. Additional music is licensed by Music Bed.
Cover photo by Kika MacFarlane.
Catch up on podcast (pod-Kath?) updates and general life things: @inheadlights
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
(KATHY KARLO): This podcast is presented by Patagonia. Not bound by convention, Patagonia’s in business to save our home planet.
- This podcast is sponsored by deuter, one of the leading backpack brands that will help you hit the trails with confidence and comfort, but most importantly–your snacks.
deuter has a history of first ascents and alpine roots. Their head of product development even climbed Everest once, in jeans (hashtag not fake news.) deuter is known for fit, comfort, and ventilation. Founded in 1898, deuter believes in good fitting backpacks, so you can focus on way cooler things like puppies, pocket bacon, and gettin’ sendy, whether at the crag or in the alpine.
(FEMALE VOICE): Today we’re going to talk about “allez”. “Allez” means “come on!” in a way, or to encourage. Ok! We are done with the simple and normal uses of “allez”, now let’s cut to the chase:
(KATHY KARLO): Allez Outdoor Personal Care products are made by climbers for those who love the outdoors. Their rich and repairing ingredients for their skincare collection are inspired by desert landscapes, and their simple and recyclable packaging makes them eco-sustainable. Allez commits to protecting the open spaces that we love by partnering with the Access Fund and 1% for the Planet. That’s Allez Outdoor: “A-L-L-E-Z”). Allez Outdoor—made by climbers, for those who love the outdoors.
- This podcast gets support from Gnarly Nutrition, one of the leading protein supplements that tastes “whey” better than they need to, because they use quality natural ingredients. So, whether you’re a working mom who runs circles around your kids on weekends or an unprofessional climber trying to send that 5.13 in the gym, Gnarly Nutrition has all of your recovery needs.
The only question you need to ask yourself is: Are you a sucker for anything that tastes like chocolate ice cream? (Yeah, me neither.) Gnarly Nutrition is designed to enhance your progress—and taste like a milkshake, without all the crap.
(MALE VOICE): Ocún?
(bell dinging)
(FEMALE VOICE): No.
(MALE VOICE #2): Ocún?
(MALE VOICE #3): Nope.
(MALE VOICE #4): Ocún?
(MALE VOICE #3): Really?
(FEMALE VOICE #2): Ocún?
(NON-GENDERED VOICE): No!
(KK): Who is Ocún? More than prolific crack climbing gloves, Ocún has been making innovative gear engineered for climbing to improve your performance since 1998. Their climbing shoe designs are all original, developed and manufactured in Czech Republic and one hundred percent gender neutral. Beyond their sticky rubber, Ocún is renowned for their hardware, harnesses, and the biggest lightest crash pad on the market. Find your new favorite climbing shoes and accessories at Backcountry, Moosejaw, Camp Saver, and Amazon.
- It’s June first, and like so many of you, I’m making the migration to higher elevation for the summer. This season of the pod just kicked off, and here are a few ways you can help us grow: download and share your favorite episodes, leave us a written review on iTunes and or Spotify, and support our work on Patreon.
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Deuter is one of the leading backpack brands that has been supporting this podcast from day one.
Here’s the show.
- Hey, a quick heads up. This podcast unequivocally supports the LGBTQIA community. Episode thirty-eight discusses suicide and depression. If you’re struggling with mental health, please check out the show notes for more resources at fortheloveofclimbing.com, and take care of yourselves while listening.
(DAN REESE): It’s a bit of a long answer if that’s ok.
(KK): That’s ok.
(DR): Ok.
(KK): That’s why I asked it!
(DR): (laughs)
So, climbing for me actually started way, way, way back. I’m originally from central PA in a really, really small town. Like, literally—if you take PA and you just put your finger right in the middle of it, right in the Appalachian mountains, middle-a nowhere—that’s where I’m from.
And looking upon it now, the recurring theme of growing up in the small, super homogenous, super conservative, super everything that you sort of imagine when you think of a very conservative town—that’s what it was.
So, we were not from that town and the hard part about being an outsider in a very homogeneous, conservative-everyone-does-the-same-thing-sorta-town is you kinda have to learn how to do what everyone else is doing. And, you know, this was a football, basketball, we hunt, we fish sorta place.
But I think the hard part for me—I don’t really have a positive memory towards it because it was always, “This is what we’re doing to try to fit in.” and knowing that you really have to work to do that. Like, you wanna be accepted by the people that you’re around, so you really fake as much as you can.
And I think back on it, and I did—I had friends. I had people that were really, you know—we hung out and we did all sorts of fun things. But to me, there was always this wall up and it was always because from a super young age, I always knew that we were different. We’re not like everyone else—but there’s something about me that’s really different from everyone else and this is something that you need to not let people know about.
You know, first grade, kindergarten. Just knowing—I don’t know what this is, and it’s—it’s that I was gay. But just not having a name for it even, but just knowing there’s something that is so different from me, and this is something that is dangerously different. This is something that you really need to make sure that you don’t let anyone know about.
So, because of that, I think for me, there was almost this hyper—let me just find something. If I’m not gonna be able to play basketball, I’m gonna get into swimming. If I’m not gonna do this, I’m gonna do that. And Scouts was one of those things where—ok, I can go and do these things, but it’s strange for me because I sort of think back on it and I think—I would do these outdoor things, but the outdoors wasn’t someplace for me.
(ALEX HONNOLD) (to himself): Ok, I’m Alex Honnold. You’re listening to the love of climbing podcast. It’s a funny, sad, somewhat uncomfortable podcast—
(louder)
I was like, “Wow, this is the opposite of my podcast. But, you know, here we go!”
(laughs)
(upbeat music)
“I’m Alex Honnold and you’re listening to For the Love of Climbing—”
—is it “to the”? Or “to—“ Do you say “to For the Love of Climbing Podcast”?
“I’m Alex Honnold and you’re listening to For the Love of Climbing Podcast.”
Yeah. Yeah, I see it.
“You’re listening to For the Love of Climbing Podcast. This is not a climbing podcast. Well, sorta. It’s a funny, sad, and somewhat uncomfortable podcast about choosing vulnerability. Here’s the show.”
Easy cheesy!
(MALE NEWSCASTER): GLAAD president and CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis. Sarah Kate, always good to have you with us. You know, some of the lawmakers behind this bill—their argument is kids have their whole lives to sort out their sexual orientation or gender identity, so they don’t need to have those conversations now. How do you respond to that?
(SARAH KAY ELLIS): Well, good morning. Thank you for having me. That was a very emotional piece for me, actually. Seeing what’s unfolding—we’re not talking about sexual orientation, gender identity in kindergarten. This is not about that.
Show me a curriculum that does that. This is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, and this is a politician who is creating division within a school that doesn’t need to be created.
Families, or kids like mine, who have two moms—now when they say, “Draw us a picture of your family.” —they cannot draw a picture of their family. This is about ostracizing, shaming LGBTQ kids and their families and it’s going to lead to, and already is, is for families and LGBTQ kids to feel shamed, less than, and what we see, direct relation, is more suicidal ideation. It’s just—this is a problem that doesn’t exist.
(MALE NEWSCASTER): The Free Speech Organization Pan America says at least fifteen bills looking to restrict or penalize conversations about gender and sexual orientation are being considered right now in nine states. Is there anything at the federal level that could be done to try and stop some of these bills?
(SE): This is a concerted effort and it’s very coordinated because the bills actually all have the same language. And these are people who couldn’t fight against marriage equality—it’s the same groups that said that if LGBTQ people were afforded the right to marry, the whole society would come undone. And guess what—the sun rose the next day and everything’s fine.
There’s over, or nearly, two hundred anti-LGBTQ bills across the country right now. There is an Equality Act that is sitting in the Senate that is past the House that would help with eradicating a lot of these anti-LGBTQ sentiments.
About ninety percent don’t make it through—ten percent. And this one, the Florida one that we’re talking about, the Texas one that we’re talking about—are egregious and very, very dangerous and harmful.
The problem happens when these bills are actually proposed because they’re politicizing people’s identity and orientation. And we’re just people—we just wanna live our lives, and we don’t want to be politicized. Now we’re being politicized on the playgrounds and in the classrooms.
(DR): So, my name is Dan Reese. I live in LA proper—specifically in Orange County. So, in a nice, beautiful, residential, suburban, pretty boring area. But I’ve really enjoyed transitioning from living in one of the biggest, busiest cities to now, I’m two miles away from work and I can just work and go to the gym and go climb on the weekends.
So, I came from Stronghold. I have to represent Stronghold from downtown LA, ‘cause they started me on this journey! And I’m a marketer. I actually just switched jobs. So, I moved from Johnson & Johnson over to a smaller company—and super excited ‘cause they are taking, essentially, hardware that they use to monitor patients pre, during, and post-surgery. And they have really cool algorithms and AI that they’re sort of combining everything together to help sort of triage and better manage patients.
But yeah. So, I work—we call it “upstream” and the “here’s what we think we wanna make—how do we actually make it?” And it’s super cool! I’ve always been sorta fascinated with, not necessarily how things work, but the logistics of how something happens. And so, that’s why this is super exciting. Like, how does a podcast happen?
(laughs)
(KK): And despite endless Google searches, we ask ourselves the very same question—to this day.
(DR): And so, I do the same thing with devices. Like, what’s working, what’s not. How do we make it and get it to the U.S., but also, how do we make it and get it to rural India and the really, really rural places where they need it just as much as everywhere else.
So, yeah. I was working out east for a while and then, our headquarters was out here, so I was training and just had that feeling—like, I don’t know why, LA’s not gonna be good for me. But I’m gonna need to move there. And it has been hard. It’s been really good, and looking forward to the day that I get to not live in a major, traffic-congested, terrible city but—
(laughs)
—fortunately or unfortunately, however you wanna call it, have just made some of the best friends that I’ve ever made—especially through climbing. And until that’s done, we will stay put. So, at what point do you just say you’re from LA? Like, I was born on the east coast, but I’m from here now. I’m not ready to say that, though.
(laughs)
I’m living here!
(KK): Discrimination against LGBTQIA communities is not unique to rural areas, but its impact is more acute—limited access to healthcare just being one example. And cities do offer more safe queer spaces, including protection when it comes to employment, housing, and federally funded programs.
Non-discrimination protections in rural areas disproportionately impact queer communities, but according to a study from the Movement Advancement Project, between 2.9 and 3.8 million LGBTQ people live in rural America. This number shatters the stereotype that gay and trans people are typically only city dwellers.
And, for the most part, people choose to live outside of cities for the exact same reasons as heterosexual, cisgender Americans—closer access to nature and community. Nobody should have to choose between basic rights and where they call home—and yet many do.
The outdoors isn’t biased—but its history is rooted in discrimination. Lack of diversity and inclusion in outdoor spaces has been traced back to the individuals who created park systems. The underlying rationale was always the idea of promoting nationalism and the “American” identity—which was primarily white and male.
And you won’t have to tell any person of color or LGBTQ person about discrimination—because chances are, they already know.
(DR): There were just things that are said—things that you’re sitting around the campfire and people just kinda make homophobic jokes. And one I remember, they were like, “Yeah, if one of them showed up, do you bury ‘em or burn ‘em?”
You know, when people make those little kinda offhanded jokes, you laugh. You diffuse. You disconnect. But it just kinda digs in, I think, a little more than what you expect.
Scout’s introduced me to climbing and I remember, there was this one little random patch of boulders in the middle of Pennsylvania called Bilger’s Rocks. And there’s not anything you’re gonna get photographed and put in a magazine in climbing—
(laughs)
—but we were camping there and someone had some ropes and they hooked it up and they had a rappel and it was kind of a gnarly rappel for your first time. Like, there was this big lip and you had to not only lean back but then, pretty quickly, as soon as you got onto the wall face, then it went to an overhanging lip and you had to free rappel down.
And I must have finished it and I guess my dad noticed something that I didn’t because a week later, my dad and I were driving three hours to Pittsburgh to go to REI to buy climbing gear. And so—
(laughs)
—the week after that, we then went and we found a guide and my dad had a book. And I mean, I was a proper teenager who did not read unless he absolutely had to.
So, my dad would sit and read a book at night, and then, in commercials he would pop the footrest up on his chair and like, “Hey, tie this knot. Hey, look at this picture of how you equalize anchors.” And I remember one time, the hand jams and we practiced hand jamming in the cushions of the fabric of the couch and stuff like that.
When we would drive just anywhere we were—if it was on the freeway or if it was on some back dirt road. Obviously, this was way before Google and way before the internet. We would see someplace and then, we’d get out topographic maps and look at sorta lines to see if—is that really somewhere we could go? And we didn’t have climbing shoes, so I think it’s like glorified hiking if anything else.
(laughs)
But enough that, you know, we were throwing our hands and stuff, and you sorta set the anchor and rappel down in and sometimes find out that it’s not really climbable—those kinda things. But we did a lot of that. And I think the thing that makes me sad when I think about that is—
(inhales and pauses)
—that’s a lot of people that have been climbing for a long time—like, that’s a really great starting point. My high school graduation present from my dad was we went and we got a guide and we went white water kayaking on the New in the Gauley River, down in West Virginia.
And it turned out that it was a week before the World Championship. And so, these were class four, class five rapids and I’m just sitting in an eddy and there’s all these pros around. And I’m like, “You guys go. It’s fine, I’m gonna go and just get whipped by this white water. I’m gonna be destroyed by it.”
And they’re like, “No, dude! Go for it! This is gnarly!” And these really fun stories that I should have, but the entire time, I’m just thinking, “This isn’t for me.” You know, the place that I am the safest is in a city. The place that I need to be is away from rural places. And I look at all the stuff that we did as a family and I say, “I had to have had fun with it, but I don’t remember any of it.”
I don’t know if you’ve seen the Netflix special with Hannah Gadsby: Nanette, but one of the lines is growing up rural, really conservative and she said, “Really, really bad things happen when you grow up gay and homophobic.”
And I—
(pauses)
—really struggled with that. And I didn’t know I was struggling with it. I think between Nanette currently and Freaks and Geeks back in the day, but there’s a scene in that, too where one of the characters, Bill, he comes home from school and no one’s home and he just makes mac and cheese and he sits and watches TV. And it’s just this moment where he’s just himself and he’s laughing, watching TV, and food’s falling out of his mouth, and—
(pauses)
—that was me with MTV’s Real World, ‘cause I remember coming home and like, my people—they exist out there. There’s someone out there that’s like me, and people accept them and they can be who they are and they can date and they can do all the things that I see everyone else doing, but those are not things that are allowed for me.
So, I think that after I graduated I sorta took all that stuff, just put it in a box, and was like, “Go to college. Study as hard as you can, work as hard as you can, and get to the biggest city that you possibly can.
(KK): The trajectory was DC and then Pittsburgh, which eventually led to Dan living in downtown LA. By the time he had moved to California, Dan was working eighty-hour workweeks in the corporate world.
He found himself depressed, injured often, overweight, and out of shape. But when your career is advancing and you’re working for a fortune hundred company, you should ride that momentum—right? At least, Dan thought so. He also started thinking about some of the things that brought him joy, and that’s when he remembered climbing.
(DR): Like, there was that thing called climbing and they have climbing gyms, but the timing wasn’t right. And the timing was right when I was in downtown LA and just like, nothing working—mentally, physically, any of that sorta stuff. And that’s where I said, “You need to just try this. You need to go up there.”
Stronghold was right next to the train station that I used for work and went in and it just, it felt less like this is somewhere I’m going to work and do something that’s good for my physical body. It was home.
I remember walking in and in the bathrooms, it’s the “male-identifying or non-binary”. Like, it has that wording. And I just remember being like, “This would be so infuriating to so many people, but this is so cool—that this is normal here.”
I think that I’ve started to figure out why climbing means so much to me—because it is more than just about getting to the top. For me, climbing needed to meet with mental health in a really unique way. I don’t know, I hit this point where I was like, “You’re thirty-four years old. Like, you’re treading water.” And I thought, “Why don’t you just try this out?”
(KK): It’s definitely worth mentioning that Dan had a really hard time finding a therapist. This was too important to his story to omit because we know that it’s a huge challenge for a lot of people. Much like in the dating realm, for therapy to succeed, you have to find the right person.
And the process of trial and error can be emotionally draining, especially if you’re already feeling sad or anxious. By the time most people are ready to seek professional counseling, they’re already experiencing a crisis or at capacity.
(DR): I kept saying, “PTSD is for somebody who was in a war. PTSD is for somebody who went through significant, physical trauma.” Like, I know that I’ve been through things—I know there’s a lot from my past that I was, what I thought, working through and worked through already. You know, why do you need to pick a scab whenever it heals?
But I remember, you know, you grow up rural—an acorn falls on the roof, there’s a stick that falls, there’s a deer outside. You know, any of that sort of stuff. I always thought it’s someone coming for us. Like, I am the reason why this family is going—and you know, you hear it on the news, right? That was right around the time where some of these hate crimes were starting to pop up, and I just remember vividly thinking, “That’s someone coming for us.”
And I remember there being nights where I was sleeping at night and in order to fall asleep, I would think about escape routes outta the house. What would I do if someone was in the doorway? Ok, I could go out onto the roof. What if there was someone down below on the roof? Like, that’s not something that somebody who didn’t grow up with significant trauma—and that word, “significant”. Like, everyone has something that happens.
But growing up, and as I was getting into later high school years, and I remember specifically my senior year. Like, that’s when the depression just became too much and thinking, “This is my out. This is my way out.”
When the T.V. show “Glee” came out, I remember the big thing was dumping slushies on the gay kid and this, that, and the other. Like, that happened to me. I was in the cafeteria and someone came and they dumped their food on me. And I stood up and I slipped because the floor was wet, and I remember the vice principal just came up and he was like, “Get it together.”
By senior year, I think that I just sorta lost it all. And senior year of high school, all the sudden, I noticed that my drinking and my partying were really picking up and a lot of these other things were going on and consequences didn’t really exist.
And it’s strange because this is the same time that I’m having these great outings with my dad and we’re going, literally, out in the middle of the woods and just putting a sign on the side of our car on the interstate that says, “We’ll be back—maintenance issue,” when really, we’re sneaking into the woods to go climb.
And then, I get home and there’s this thing that’s going on that I’m not talking about that I can’t tell anyone about. And it led to, “It doesn’t matter what college I go to because I probably am not gonna graduate. It doesn’t matter what major I pick because that’s down the road. It doesn’t matter ‘cause I’m probably never gonna make it to college. I’m not gonna—”
And that time period just slowly shortened down to one night, just sitting at the end of my bed and thinking, “None of it really matters because I’m probably not gonna wake up tomorrow.”
That should have been such a scary thing to happen, and I just remember feeling relieved and thinking, “Now you gotta figure out how.” And the next thing that happened, I woke up and I’m in my room and all the lights are on and I’m underneath my bed in all my clothes and I just think—
(sighs)
“You didn’t do it.” And you have to somehow pick yourself up outta that, right? You have to get yourself out.
(KK): A 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health conducted by the Trevor Project found that forty-five percent of teens seriously considered suicide in the past year. Gay and trans youth of color considered and attempted suicide at higher rates than their white counterparts, with the highest percentages among Native American, Black, and Middle Eastern. Transgender males, nonbinary or genderqueer, and transgender females considered and attempted suicide at the highest rates.
CEO and Executive Director of The Trevor Project, Amit Paley, states that his “hope for these data and trends will be used by researchers, policymakers, and youth-serving organizations to advance policies that better support gay and trans youth and work to end the public health crisis of suicide.”'
(DR): I went to a college that was extremely conservative on the evangelical spectrum, which means that I essentially went directly into four years of conversion therapy. And yeah, not the “We’re gonna lock you in a room and beat you kind” but the “You’re gonna spend the next three years self-inflicting torture on yourself using shame and guilt as a way to really, really confuse your head.”
But once you get into therapy, and: “Well, that happened a decade ago. It’s not impacting me now.” And then, your therapist is like, “Well, you just cut someone off on your way in here and you’re saying that you’re worried about—what does that person think about you? Are they at the coffee shop waiting for you to come out? Like, you are constantly on guard.”
And there’s a therapist that works on PTSD, specializes in it and his name’s Bessel van der Kolk. And his book’s called “The Body Keeps the Score” and the goal of trauma therapy, not being to relive the situations that happened, but his idea is that you’re presenting yourself with opportunities to contradict what your body expects.
And that’s climbing for me. I can be open and authentic and the part that keeps breaking my brain with climbing is the people. Like, that’s the first time that I’ve ever just been “one of the guys”. They were making a joke about some girl at the gym and I was like, “Well, yeah. She’s wasting her energy on me.”
(laughs)
And that’s what they did! They just laughed. So many times, I think, whenever you’re an outsider from the norm, from the group—like, when you haven’t just been made fun of, right? For just baseline things. Like, I’ve been picked on and abused, but I’ve never just been the butt of a joke from people—like, just been part of the group.
(KK): Dan continued going to therapy after finding the right therapist, and he started climbing, but it was more than just climbing. It started creating a sense of security, and he was able to reframe and release a lot of the trauma that he’d experienced growing up.
Dan, the guy who likes to understand the logistics of how things happen, was in the process of troubleshooting his own life and re-figuring himself out as a person, but it was a process.
(DR): Three weeks ago, we were camping out and were gonna boulder all weekend.
(pauses)
On the second night, it was like eleven o’clock and we were quietly just sitting at the table, sharing some beers, most of the campsite is asleep, all those kinda things. And coming up the road, you can see just this big truck and you can hear the big diesel engine going and this, that, and the other.
I thought, “That’s not a ranger. That’s people.” And everyone else is kind of ignoring them, and I can’t stop staring at them as they’re coming closer. So, they come into our campsite and they’re super drunk and they’re, you know, “We’re just lookin’ for something.” Like, those are my people. I know those people. I know the people that sit in big trucks and I know what “lookin’ for something” means.
And so, I ended up talking more than anyone else ‘cause I think I was the most nervous and I was like, “I just want you out of our campsite.” And they leave and as they leave, I sorta told the guys at the table, I said, “So, I’m nervous about these people because they’re looking for something and they’re gonna go and they’re gonna leave.
And they’re gonna get to the end of the road, and a couple things are gonna happen: they’re either gonna keep driving or they’re gonna be like, ‘Wait a minute. We don’t get told what to do. We’re gonna go back there.’”
And I think the important part about being open with a group that you’re with and what it means to be an ally is that you’re also gonna have your life and your life experiences sorta changed. And in the back of my mind, I didn’t tell them this, but in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, “How was I sitting? Did I speak with a lisp?”
And I remember whenever they left, I remember thinking, “As soon as you started talking, your voice was deeper.” Like, there were all these things that I knew to do right away. And first of all, being ashamed of that, but also, really nervous that they might have seen something. And what I’m telling people is, “What if they go and they come back?” And in my mind, I’m thinking, “What if they go and they say, ‘We’re not gonna let some gay guy talk to us like that.’”
And the group was like, “You are being paranoid! Like, no. They just stopped by. These are just drunk people—they’re just gonna go on.” So, we said, “Well, you know. It’s late anyway. We should probably just go to sleep. Let’s go to sleep.” And in my mind, again, because you go into your PTSD—like, you relive your moments, I was like, “This is what you’ve been afraid of your entire life. This is why the outdoors was not for you.”
And I remember everyone just sprinting to their tents—this is not what happened. But in my mind, just everyone bolts to their tents, jumps headfirst in, and just immediately hides. But about a half-hour later, you hear the truck come back and they stop at the campsite.
(truck engine rumbles)
And you can hear ‘em, but I’m just sitting in my tent frozen thinking, “What do you do?” And I’m sliding my shoes on. If I need to run I can run, if I this, that, and the other. And thankfully, they go away. And then, I get outta my tent and I just sorta say, “Let me just watch, lemme see what’s going on here.” And they drive around the campsite—
(car tires on gravel road)
—and then, they come back. And then, they park in the campsite across from our campsite. And at this point, I’m flat on the ground, hiding, trying to hide myself but then, also look for them. And I’m slowly whispering to people. I’m like, “Hey, guys! They’re back. What do we do? What do we do? We’re out of cell phone reception, we are way in the mountains.”
And they leave—again and I think, “Ok. This is your opportunity to go.” Thinking, “If they come back, they’re gonna be looking for you. So, are you ok with them ripping this campsite apart?” And I thought, “No. That’s not something that I’m comfortable with.”
At that moment, obviously, I didn’t have any lights out but there was a quarter moon and I remember looking around and just starting to build a map in my head of: “Where are the boulders? Where are we? Where are they? If they come back—if they come back, what’s the line of sight?” Because obviously, these people probably are armed. There’s some kind of a gun, there’s some kind of weapon that they have. So, what do I do here?
And as I’m thinking this, they came back and they actually park in our campsite.
(car tires on gravel road)
I’m squatting on the ground and the crazy thing is, I remember squatting down on the ground and thinking, “Wow. Climbing has really helped your range of motion because you never were able to get this low to the ground and still be super mobile.”
And also thinking, “This might be your last sorta moment. If this goes the way that it might go, this isn’t gonna be a fun couple hours here.”
(KK): We’re going to take a short break. We’ll be back.
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- Patagonia reintroduces “Clean climbing”: a philosophy that challenges us to ask ourselves, "What constitutes success?" From the commercial introduction of chocks in 1972 to cams in 1978, clean climbing meant that we could finally climb free. This was the beginning of modern climbing.
Yvon Chouinard and Tom Frost argued that this ethic of style over summit should also inspire climbers and mountaineers to restore our commitments: to each other, and to the planet we’re working to save.
Go deeper and check out the 2022 reflection on the state of clean climbing, “Bring Back Clean Climbing,” by Mailee Hung on the Patagonia website. Visit Patagonia.com/stories for more.
(DR): So, if they come back, what’s my threshold? Like, what am I gonna do, when do I go to them, versus when do you just wait? And I said, “As soon as I hear a door. If I hear a door open, I’m gonna go up and I’m gonna—we’ll have a chat.”
And thankfully, they pull out and as they’re leaving I hear them saying, “I don’t know. Should we come back? They’re probably gonna be asleep.” The other guy’s like, “I told you they were asleep! I told you they’re not up. I told you this—“ So, they’re looking for us. And when they get down to the bottom of the hill, thankfully one of the guys at the bottom campsite, he goes, “I have a radio. I’m calling the rangers. Leave right now, or else.”
So, that’s the event as I saw it. Everyone else—they were just these annoying guys that kinda drove around. Like, this is no big deal. But to me, it was: you knew were always alone, you knew that you shouldn’t have been outside, and you knew that if these people come, that they’re gonna come back—and everything came true.
So, it was a really hard thing to not only live through at that moment, but then, you can’t leave, right? ‘Cause they’re on the road down the hill, so you just have to sit in the woods until morning. And as soon as I got up, I just told people, I was like, “I gotta get off this mountain. I gotta get out of here.”
And I fell apart. I sorta said, “I don’t wanna climb anymore. I don’t wanna do any of this. I don’t wanna do this.” I came home and I just was doing whatever I could to just survive. And whenever I was brushing my teeth at night, I remember looking in the mirror and just seeing a shell. And I thought—
(long pause)
“You owe it to yourself, ‘cause you’ve worked really hard for this thing. You owe it to yourself to try to see this thing through.”
(inhales)
And so, the next day I went and woke up in time to go to the climbing gym and cried on my way into the climbing gym and got in there and cried a little bit when I was there, but sorta hid it from everybody. And the group chats kept going but I just sorta muted them.
And one of the guys I climb with—we talk all day, every day. Pretty much from the time that we wake up until the time that he’s like, “I have to go talk to my wife, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” It’s adorable! He is my best friend
You know, I just fell off the radar and he just finally said, he was like, “Where have you been? You’re radio silent.” And I just told him, I said, “Look. You’re not gonna understand this because it’s a situation that you didn’t experience the way that I did, and it’s gonna sound crazy, but here’s what I experienced.”
And he just said, he goes, “I am so sorry. You take as much time and distance as you need. If you decide that you never wanna climb outside again, let’s set up times and let’s climb inside. If you don’t wanna climb inside and you don’t wanna climb ever again, I still like hanging out with you. It’d be great if you could stop by for a beer every now and then.”
But he was like, “Do you want me to take you off the group chat? Do you want me to this, do you want me to that—“ And there is no other way that you can analyze that situation and come up with something other than—this is someone who just cares about you. This is someone who sees you as valuable.
And that was something that I just hadn’t experienced ever. And it’s so strange to say—like, this sport, this thing that we do, whatever you wanna call it. You know, I don’t do it particularly well. My joke is always like, I’m too stupid to quit this thing—because I work really hard to be this bad—
(laughs)
Like, I’ve been working for many, many years on some of these very basic moves and I just have really bad range of motion activation, but for some reason it’s fun to train and even more fun to hang out with these people. But in a really strange and unpredicted way, climbing has sort of presented me with people—not just an activity, but people—who let me know that it’s ok to kind of let, what my therapist calls, survival coping skills for the situation that you’re in.
You know, I’m not in that situation anymore. I’m not around those people. I’m not in that environment—and it is safe. And it’s funny, right? We like to hang out when we don’t climb, but there’s just something that magically happens when it’s the people and the event, that those two together—I don’t know! A peanut butter sandwich is fine, but PB and J is so much better!
(laughs)
When you’re in your mid-thirties, you know, you’re staring down that magical forty number, right? I’m single. I have a lot of friends that have a home and a stable life and all those kinda things, and I still am like, sitting in the dirt.
And I think I’ve always just been curious—like, is climbing just a fad? Is it just something that you’re doing now that, in two or three years, you’ll sort of move to whatever the next thing is and the next thing?
(sighs)
I think it’s gonna stay. And I just keep coming back to that line of presenting yourself with opportunities to contradict what your brain or your body thinks. A couple weeks ago, my brain and body said, “It is incredibly unsafe for you to be just existing.”
And I felt confident and comfortable enough to go do something that, I think that my whole life, I’ve wanted to do. I really enjoyed, I think, climbing in high school. I think I enjoyed being outside. It just wasn’t a place that I was allowed to be.
And, slowly but surely, realizing that it actually is somewhere that I can be. And I think that it’s really cool too, to see how by being open and by sharing my story with the guys, that they have also recognized that they have a part in this, and that’s what allyship really means.
And imagine how different things would be if I had this level of acceptance for myself when I was a teenager. I’m interested to see what role I play in that because I think that that’s something that I want to be part of, moving forward. Like, after this event happened camping, I just remember coming home and thinking, “Who’s someone from the community that I can call?”
It’s why I wanna do the volunteer work that I do. It’s why I wanted to change my job. To me, I’m excited about having more of these opportunities where people are ok, not only saying who they are but, like you said, what they went through and what road led them to it.
And the line that I wish that I could have—like, the best line from “Love, Simon” is when Jennifer Garner’s character finally tells Simon, “You get to take a breath. You get to exhale.” I think that’s the line—“You get to exhale.” I feel that way now. This is what I was supposed to be—somebody who is excited to leave work, somebody who’s excited to go hang out with his friends.
I am surprised at every step of the way whenever I sorta pick one of the weeds. Like, the flowers are growing so much stronger. When you strip things away, you lose things—and you do, you grieve for them. But there comes a point where you’re just tired of surviving.
And because I have this other thing and I have this other coping mechanism, you know, something that could have been equally as devastating to me—like, I think it shows the importance of having, not only mental health—like, understanding your own mental health, but having your own systems set up that I knew what to do. I knew what I was feeling and I knew that I had this other thing to work for.
Like, it was so easy for me to say, “Your life isn’t useless or pointless. Like, you have a lot, and you have something to look forward to and you owe it—if nothing else, you have spent too much time in quarantine doing too much yoga to not see if you can translate it into being able to climb….slab.”
(laughs)
(KK): The Trevor Project is the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth. If you’re a youth ages 13 to 24, connect with an affirming international community at thetrevorproject.org.
Through public policy advocacy and education, GLAD works nationally to create a society free of discrimination based on gender identity, HIV status, and sexual orientation.
If you’re struggling with suicidal ideation or thoughts of self-harm, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK.
(MALE VOICE): Dear Kathy: Sometimes, I feel the fear of my elders, my community, my parents. I can hear their voices sinking into my brain asking, “Are you safe there? Do they know others who look like you?” Their fear is of the darkness, of the unknown, of lands that they haven’t seen. Their fear is not of bears or coldness or injury but rather, of death.
Their fears sometimes sink into my mind when I sit at the crag or the hike in or the small town that I visited just before. This fear is irrational, at times, but it sinks in because of the history that my elders, my people have had with the land.
(KK): You’re listening to For the Love of Climbing Podcast. A huge thank you to deuter, one of the leading backpack brands that will help you hit the trails with confidence and comfort. And a big thank you to Gnarly Nutrition for supporting this podcast and the messages that we share. Gnarly Nutrition supports a community of vulnerability and equality—and tastes like a milkshake, without all the crap. A big shout out to Allez Outdoor for supporting the Access Fund and 1% for the Planet. And to Ocún—innovative gear engineered for climbing to improve your performance.
And thanks to Patagonia. Not bound by convention, Patagonia is in business to save our home planet. Support companies who support this podcast—we couldn’t do it without them. If you liked what you heard, you can leave a review on iTunes or give us a like—like all good things, you can find us on the internet.
Additional Resources, and Credible Organizations and Websites:
Support Hotlines + Resources
National Suicide Prevention Hotline
24/7 hotline, staffed by trained individuals, for those in suicidal crisis or emotional distress
Crisis hotline: 800-273-TALK (8255); 888-628-9454 (en español)
Crisis Text Line
Free, 24/7 support for people in crisis
Text 741741 from anywhere in the USA to text with a trained Crisis Counselor
The Trevor Project
Crisis intervention and mental health services for those ages 13-24
Crisis hotline: 866-488-7386 (for those ages 13-24)
National coalition documenting hate incidents
Report and get help at: 1-844-9-NO-HATE
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
National civil rights organization with offices across the United States
GLAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders)
Legal advocacy for the LGBTQ community
CenterLink.lgbtcenters.org/Centers/findacenter.aspx
A directory of LGBT Community Centers
Department of Justice
List of state and local human rights agencies
Equality Federation
Directory of state-based organizations advocating for LGBTQ people
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
National network of mental health care providers, as well as a provider database
Help Line 800-950-6264
National Council for Behavioral Health
National network of community behavioral health centers, as well as a provider database
Psychology Today Therapist Finder
A list of therapists around North America. Once a city or state is selected, there is a filter for therapists working with transgender clients under the ‘Issue’ area on the left
Legal Resources
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
National civil rights organization with offices across the United States
GLAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders)
Legal advocacy for the LGBTQ community
Lambda Legal
Advocacy and legal support for the LGBTQ community
Movement Advancement Project (MAP) is an independent, non-profit think tank that provides rigorous research, insight and communications that help speed equality and opportunity for all. MAP works to ensure that all people have a fair chance to pursue health and happiness, earn a living, take care of the ones they love, be safe in their communities, and participate in civic life.