On my desk sits a two-inch-high stack of paper: a photocopy of the second edition of Scenic Driving Colorado. I've spent the last couple months fact-checking the entire manuscript--making changes in public land management, revising acreages of state and national parklands, checking those oh-so-important address and phone numbers and websites that my readers rely on to find additioinal information.

Climbing reflects the dichotomy of human experience. It reflects Me versus Us/We; that dance of solitariness and togetherness that is part of every life and every relationship. On the one hand we each must climb alone. It is up to myself as a single individual person to use my hands and feet and experience and judgment to reach the top of a cliff, to reach safety. On the other hand, when I climb with a partner, with a friend, I am a member of a team. Two become one. I forge a partnership, a bond, with another person. We look out for each other. We keep each other safe. The rope between us is not only the physical link, an umbilical cord that connects us together, but it also symbolizes the common thread that connects us. It’s a slender thread that keeps us safe, that stops our falls, that safeguards our passage into an uncertain future.

It's Friday. Almost midday. I just tanked up with gasoline in the old truck and a few cups of coffee at La Baguette, a great French cafe in downtown Colorado Springs, with my elderly folks. Now getting ready to head south to Taos, New Mexico. Four and a half hours on the road, under a cloud-mottled sky that portends a cooler weekend. Sunday, don't forget, I'll be giving my photo program "The Climbers: Life on the Edge" at 11:30 AM at the Taos Center for the Arts.

The show is a collection of 75 photographs of climbers that I've made since 1971. Lots of great shots of famous and not-so-famous climbers, including Earl Wiggins, Jimmy Dunn, Ed Webster, Henry Barber, Eric Bjornstad, Bob D'Antonio, and John Gill...photographs of climbers as people, doing everyday normal things rather than heroic actions. A lot of the photographs will be appearing in my new book "On the Edge: The Climber's Life."

Baltimore, Maryland. It's early August. The heat and humidity are stifling. Outside at mid-day, walking the brick sidewalks at Goucher College, is like being in a blast furnace. Much more uncomfortable than a hot August day in Utah's Canyonlands where the dry air embraces you, a halo of shade lies beneath a scrubby juniper, and a soaring vulture seems to wait for your ripe bones.

I love the West. It's my homeland. The place I feel at ease and know my place and find uncluttered space with lots of elbow room and fine rocks to climb upon. But I am here enjoying Baltimore's uncomfortable weather in August, to further my education, finishing up a Master's of Fine Art degree in Creative Nonfiction Writing that I began two years ago. The low-residency program at Goucher is simply the finest in the country. The faculty is unsurpassed and accessible and skilled at imparting their knowledge of writing gleaned from their own work on books and essays as well as years of teaching writing at the nation's best universities and colleges.

Sometimes life throws you a curveball. Usually it's just to see if you're awake at the plate and not off in la-la land. Usually it's a swing and a miss. Strike 1! Sometimes you connect, fouling the ball into the seats, into all those people watching you where it usually beans some unsuspecting 40-year-old. Then sometimes you really connect. The ash meets the leather, the sweet spot gets sweeter, then everyone stands, hands shading eyes, and admires your big blast disappearing into the mists. We live for those big blasts. But last Saturday morning I got the curveball. Swing and a miss. Big time.

Last Friday, the day before the big Memorial Day weekend and the Indy 500, I climbed Independence Monument in the heart of Colorado National Monument southwest of Grand Junction. The last time I was at Indy, back in mid-April, the fierce wind, plummeting temperatures, and shards of snow flurrying across the canyon conspired to make me bail from Sundeck Ledge a scant 70 feet below the summit. My English mate Dennis, who has his own blog here on cave-digging in the old country, did manage to summit that day along with Joe Cook. But I was cold and frozen; my windbreaker offered inadequate protection from the wind so I took the easy way out and slid down the ropes to shelter and warmth. My last look at Dennis revealed eyes as big as saucers as he clambered up the unprotected chopped steps to the final summit overhangs. Back on the ground he told me, "Bloody 'ell, I had visions of being swept over that vertical east face by the wind." He didn't even sign the summit book, instead contenting himself with merely peering onto the summit from the safety of the last anchors on a ledge eight feet below and placing an "I was there" hand on top.

It sucks to be a climber in Kansas. Actually it sucks to be a climber at a lot of places. Louisiana, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, and Delaware for starters. How about New York City? Lots of good climbers live among the teeming masses there. Rat Rock, a rat-hole of a crag in Central Park, is where they go on summer afternoons to put hands to living rock when they’re tired of grabbing plastic. Or how about Carderock in Maryland just north of Washington DC? Three words describe it: Slimy, slippery, slick.

It's been a rough spring to be a climber in Colorado. The weather: up and down, up and down. Good one day and crap the next. Rain, wind, snow, and then sun. It's hard to make plans or to get out on the rocks. Last week I spent over in western Colorado and eastern Utah with my English buddy Dennis and it was like that.

On Tuesday we ventured into Colorado National Monument to run up Independence Monument, a proud 450-foot-high tower first climbed by the intrepid John Otto in 1911 via a pipe ladder. The sky was clear and the air warm as we walked up the trail with Gwendolyn. Ian and Joe were meeting us in half an hour. We stopped, chatted, made photographs. All was right with the world. But by the time we roped up in the morning shade of the tower's west face, the nice day was quickly disappearing. Clouds scudded across the sky. A persistent wind began to blow. By the time Dennis and I were at the bolts at the end of the long first pitch, it was getting downright cold. After two more pitches, we stood on Sundeck Ledge, a broad airy platform perched on the south ridge just below the summit. The wind gusted. We brought Gwendolyn and Joe up to the aerie. My son Ian, who was going to lead up behind us, had racked and roped up at the route base before his mobile phone rang. Work calling, unfortunately. He had to get back to the drill rig up by Rifle to sort problems with the directional drilling tool.