I'm a woman

I'm a woman
Photos copyright Laurence Gouault
No reproduction on other media without the photographer's permission.

Friday 15 September 2017

Free Climbing is not Free! by Stevie not Free Haston.

You know the term Free Climbing, but have you ever paused to think, is it free? Or how free, freeish perhaps? Free Diving, is not exactly Free unless your a lotus eater living by the sea. Terms of endearment, or willy waving terms to big up the protagonist? Freedom was a big massive word when I was young, its still the biggest word in my vocabulary, but the meaning seems lost to me now.

 3 years ago, stretchy rope, inattentive belayed, work the next day!

Four years ago I pulled out of a big race, my knee collapsed, I had been up in the first twenty places for bits, I had trained for nearly a year and wanted to place fairly high, the injury was certainly free!

 Free?

Free Ride was the upmarket term for what I had always done, which was to ski off piste in the mountains! Suddenly every Nob, and his Dog was doing it! The gear certainly got nicer! It came at a cost of course, the authorities started to shut things, and put barriers up, saying danger and other obvious stuff!


 Chicks for free?

There's lots of songs about Free, strangely they all seem to cost money. Where's my interesting life, where's my interesting wife, wheres my fast car? The sea was full of plastic today, the southern wind kept all the carbage pressed on the southern coast, more plastic than fish.

 Free Lunch, or poison?

I dearly want to go back to Dresden Sandstone, in the old days I would have hitch hiked and dossed down in caves, and it would've cost me nothing but time! Today most places don't allow hitch hiking, or it's kept to a minimum, and you can't stay in caves in Dresden, it's verboten!

 7c, six bolts, about 130 foot, free becomes a relative term.

The above climb is fast receding, I won't have the level soon, old age will forbid it, or the social police will drag me away as being to old to risk my life. A friend posted a photo of an early attempt at Salathe wall just before Todd and Pianna did it, he didn't, he had other things to do, his life was not free. In reality Freedom is way too big a word for humans. It's a term that can only apply to animals, not social and confined humans.  

Big fish, was free, now dead.

Free, not really, already caught it was dying at 18 meters depth! Trapped in line it drowned, I couldnt free it, perhaps I,ll eat it, or feed it to the stray cats. The stray cats are free, they breed, and most die, some live a short while, and breed before they die, some climb the tree they are born under, but they don't have a word for Free climbing, they beg for food as there arnt the free animal resources in the village to sustain them. Am I like one of these stray cats I wondered today? Like them, I have no concept of freedom. I felt free for a few hours climbing over rocks and swimming this morning, but then I do not go back to my cave, I go back to my apartment, and clean my expensive carbon fins, and classify my day into words. Maybe I,ll drink several beers…… and fall off my balcony…shades of ….a friend… who once new freedom… and couldn't cope with the chains of being ordinary.