The following excerpt comes from the chapter "Fear of Heights" in my forthcoming book of climbing adventure stories tentatively entitled Life on the Edge.

The late afternoon sun slanted across the Garden of the Gods as I rappelled down the west face of Montezuma Tower, a tall, skinny fin ascended by a classic route up its north ridge. My partner, already on the ground, had gone to retrieve the packs at the ridge base. Below the west face, I pulled the double rappel ropes and began coiling them. A beer-gutted Texan in a tight western shirt, the plaid kind with pearl button snaps, and a yellow, sweat-stained Caterpillar cap sauntered over and asked, “How ju fellas get yer grappling hook up that mountain?”

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.

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.

I took my gang to Oceanside Pier yesterday. Just me and my Peeps.. my Posse.. ok.. ok.. my kids.

It was a perfect SoCal day. Crystal blue sky... Good visiblilty into the ocean.. some thunderheads setting up shop on the mountains.

My boy, aged 4-and-a-half, wore long pants, a long-sleeved, flannel shirt, bandana around his neck, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat. Perhaps a bit over-dressed. He was pretty stoked.

Our plan was to walk out to the end of the pier, have lunch, and go back home. A nice simple day where neither I nor the kids were stretched to the breaking point. That was my plan.

There are never enough Beach days... I live 6 miles from the Pacific Ocean where the water is currently 70-74 degrees. Yet, we still only make it to the beach every other week.

Why??

Well, I have two kids.. 4-years-old and 20-months-old. When I was single, I was in the water every day where the water was actually cold. Now, I feel like a slug for my laziness.

Perhaps it's not laziness. Being a Stay-at-home Dad can be draining but that's not what I came to write about.

Today we went to Tamarak Beach.. ok.. not Tamarak proper.. but a bit south.. in front of the big chimney. What a great beach. The chimney seems to keep crowds down. I guess tourists don't know that what is behind you at the beach is.. well.. behind you.

Hello and welcome to my first entry into the blogosphere.

<> Last August, me and a team of cavers, filmmakers and microbiologists journeyed deeper than ever before into the sacred Mayan cave Naj' Tunich deep in the jungles of Guatemala. The results of this exploration will be aired June 25 on the History Channel at 10 p.m. Eastern time. If you'd like to see a preview of the show, go to my webpage www.cave-exploring.com and click on the link in the upper left corner. I'd love to hear what people think of the show. It was fun to do and a lot more work than I ever expected, but we had such a fantastic team that I can't really complain.

Road Rage! You know you do it. Don't give me that, I've seen you weaving all over I-25 with that angry scowl, and I can read a little bit of lips too. And your back window is shot out.

A recent survey, not to be taken with terrible seriousness, ranks 25 cities according to road rageousness:

https://www.autovantage.com/global/scripts/promo.asp?ref=avAUTVANonlgs01#methodology

"Prince Market Research, an independent marketing research company, was commissioned [by Autovantage, presumably] to conduct a nationally representative telephone study with consumers in 25 major metropolitan areas in the U.S. to learn more about consumer views on road rage. All telephone calls were conducted between Jan. 16 and March 23, 2007, during which period, a total of 2,521 interviews, lasting an average of six to eight minutes, were completed. No incentive was offered and the sponsor of the research was not revealed. The margin of error is +/- 2 percent."

Once again the Pac Northwest shows itself to be at the vanguard of civilized urban transport.

©Bert Gildart: In Organ Pipe National Monument, the skies (as I discovered this past month) are among the darkest found anywhere in the United States. Increasingly, that’s becoming a rare condition, and for photographers, the pristine conditions found in this remote Arizona national monument located along the Mexican border is very good news.

If you understand the theory, and know your camera, you can dramatize your landscape images by back dropping your foreground with concentric lines that ring themselves around the one star in the sky that does not appear to move—the North Star.