Mike Patz and The Evictor

"Oh, but the moves are so good! Up in Eldo, climbing at The Rincon Wall. Sun shining so warm that even early December feels slippery. Those finger locks that are just good enough to let you climb past, but not hang out for too long. A few edges just where your feet absolutely need them. Even checking things out on top-rope, you were engaged. Your mind found the meditative state, the flowstate. The Place that climbing can deliver your pilgrim ass better than any extant transportation vehicle now at hand. (Except maybe music). You wanna go back. You want to get it figured out with the safety of that TR, and then you wanna pull the rope and see how it feels to climb it for real. You wanna go back. There's no denying that little fact."

My brain will exercise its incessant need to forget what I'm actually doing at any other given instant, and return my mental energies to that climb. Like any good climbing route that's just above one's physical, mental, and/or emotional pay grade, this is starting to take the form of obsession. I am nervous to admit, but I might have found a new project.

I noticed my mind first starting to stray toward The Evictor while I was dripping sweat in a yoga class this afternoon. The studio is miles from Eldo. There's no real reason to mentally be up on a wall while I'm physically in a yoga class, right in the middle of a perfectly nice warrior variation. My wonderful girlfriend not 12 inches away, and I started thinking about the crux sequence. "Stay in the stem. Elevator the hands up the seam. Oh, God. I can't believe that left hand works. Right hand next. Left foot up...stand up. Stand up. Tense and stand up. Breathe."



Climbing tries to teach me about the value of a present mind, but I get greedy. I'm getting torn out of yoga class by my memory of three little crimps and a nubbin of rock for my left foot. Obviously, I have yet to put my goal into full time practice. I want the pure focus that climbing provides to become ubiquitous in all my activities. The mindset I get while I'm climbing is a blueprint for my mind's eternal peace. Climbing is the way I've first found meditation. It can deliver a pure focus where only the present moment exists. All distractions disappear. That memory of climbing, ironically, tempting me away and making the realization of my goal all the more difficult.

Back to the mat. I battle with it, but for the latter half of the hour, I'm there in the class as much as I can be. The yoga feels decent, then good. Finally, my mind's wandering slows, and the movement is less hindered. My body fights back a little less, my breathing becomes a bit more regular and decisive. I feel my muscles shake, and the balance over my feet sways in my equilibrium's breeze. The lesson took a little hold, and I settled in for another chance at meditation.

* * *

Mike Patz first introduced me to that panel of red sandstone painted in neon lichen, proudly rising high above Eldorado Canyon. Splitting from an obvious corner up an improbable face, the route growls. There are just enough incipient cracks and rough edges suggest possible success. The chalk hints at aspiration. The gear placements sternly remind you to keep it together. Mind on the mat when you're up on that wall.

We started climbing together while we were both undergrads at CU. Beyond climbing, Mike introduced me to his devotion to success. He saw no contradiction with desiring a medical education from Harvard with continuing to climb 5.13. He shared his queries into the world's order, and wondered at an individual's self imposed limitations. Couldn't we believe that an individual perceives a limit to their total effort and output? What if we can believe that each person's ceiling is built by their own mind? I saw that for him, rigorous academic effort didn't neuter the chance for adventurer accomplishment. Mike believed his ceiling would allow for both. He willed it so. While I first perceived his success to come from luck, god-given talent, or something beyond himself, I came to realize that Mike tried harder than me. Certainly at climbing. Maybe at everything. And when I realized that, I could understand how he came to do The Evictor.

As I belayed, too scared to even try the route with a top rope, Mike would balance up above the trees. He calmly slotted in the available gear, and then climbed bravely above. He wasn't ascending for show, or trying to improve his standing in the community. He was acting on the understanding that trying with the entirety of one's being is honorable, and that doing so above a small but solid piece of gear, metaphorical or otherwise, was the manifestation of his flowstate. It was the denial of distraction. It was a living moment, manifest.

Years pass, and Mike and I continue to talk. As he and I get older, we begin to construct a dialogue about our shared passion that questions our own deeper motivations. We still love the visceral thrill of climbing. We're enamored by the power and the balance and the calm that this silly defiance against gravity demands. Lately, though, we've vocalized another area of resonance that each of us feels while we're climbing. This is more than just fingers and toes. This is emotional, mental. Spiritual? We each hope for "flowstate" every time we grab the wall. We share a desire for meditation, presence of mind. It's a tree I want to inhabit, but fell clean out of at a mid-day CorePower session.

I should probably find a way to climb up sit tight, focused only on the immediacy of a single second, if I want to ever have a hope of sending this project. Or any other. Vertical or otherwise.