High on my list of 1,000 things I'll never do before I die is rock climbing, but I was absolutely mesmerized last month during the 19-day quest by Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson to conquer the summit of El Capitan's Dawn Wall in Yosemite Park.
John Muir described El Capitan in his book, Yosemite, as "a plain, severely simple, glacier-sculptured face of granite, the end of one of the most compact and enduring of the mountain ridges, unrivaled in height and breadth and flawless strength."
The Dawn Wall quest inspired another expedition--one closer to my bookish heart--during which I discovered Ansel Adams in Yosemite Valley: Celebrating the Park at 150 by Peter Galassi. The term "coffee-table book" does not begin to do this work justice. "Monumental" seems a more appropriate description of the approximately 150 images by the legendary photographer, including stunning shots of Half Dome, Cathedral Rocks, Royal Arches and, yes, El Capitan.
As I was closely following the climb by Caldwell and Jorgeson, I also learned about Valley Uprising, an intense and entertaining new documentary film that chronicles their predecessors in Yosemite. I was surprised to discover a link to a novel that had a profound impact on me a few decades ago.
NPR noted that the film's story "begins in the 1950s, when beatnik culture was emerging in San Francisco, just 300 miles from Yosemite." Nick Rosen, who co-wrote and directed the documentary with Peter Mortimer, said, "This was really not only the birth of climbing but the birth of American counterculture. A lot of these early climbers were inspired by a book Jack Kerouac wrote in 1958 called The Dharma Bums."
Full circle: "Ah Japhy you taught me the final lesson of them all, you can't fall off a mountain," Smith (Kerouac) says. Japhy (Gary Snyder) replies: "And that's what they mean by the saying, When you get to the top of the mountain, keep climbing." --Robert Gray, contributing editor
