Steph and I talked about this as we drove from the Campground sector and up over Pakhuys Pass, down into the valley. It’s a beautiful drive: at the top, you can see for miles to the north. It’s an endless land of rocks, and, if you time it right, your view at the top will be complemented by a sunset that stole the colors from a tequila sunrise and amped up the saturation a bit. The view brightened our spirits and took the sting out of the day. We may have felt shitty (read: heavy) climbing, but, hell. We were in the Rocklands, after all, only halfway through our ten-week trip. Life was good.

We were unloading our car when James, one of the owners of Alpha Excelsior, came up, looking grim.

Stephanie,” he said gently, “Your family called. Something happened. It’s an emergency.”

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on her face when she heard those words. It stayed that way, an indescribable look of fear and shock, as she learned over the phone that her mother had suffered a brain aneurism only a few hours before we became aware that anything was wrong. She wore that look when she went to bed that night in tears. And while she had calmed down, the edges of that look were still there as she glanced back at me, helpless where I stood, before she disappeared through security at Cape Town International the next day on her way home.

I drove back to the Cederbergs in the dark, alone, scared for Steph and for her mom and for her family, a bit in shock myself. I could not shake the look I had seen on her face, nor could I shake one of the last things she had said to me: “keep climbing. Send. For me.”

I’ve never written a trip report, but, then again, I’ve never been on a trip quite like this one. Ten weeks in the Rocklands. Long enough for the habits of home to fade into new ones and for driving on the left side of the road to become normal. There are definitely upsides to being a teacher. Looking back now, it was a special trip, and not just because of what happened to Steph’s mom. As such, I’m not going to spend time giving you the beta for where to stay/eat/get wifi (live a little and onsight it… or ask someone else), nor am I going to waste your time describing what I think are the best climbs (we’ve all seen the videos and know the classics – which live up to their status as such – and, besides, we climbers are notoriously and predictably in love with whatever climbs we happen to send, above all else). I want to talk about a few things that maybe don’t get aired out too often, about the times when climbing isn’t important (which, we will see, seems to be exactly the same time when it is most important), about continuing to try hard when you watch people walk your project, and, finally, about when not sending is ok.

I couldn’t climb the next day. I had wanted to, you know, to get my mind off things, a tactic I had often used. It felt stupid. I felt stupid. Steph’s mom was maybe dying, and here I was, half way around the world, while she was 30000 feet above it, pulling on little rocks in Velcro shoes. Stupid. I called it a day early.

When I spoke to Steph online that night, after she had landed in SLC where her mom was being kept, I stretched the truth a bit.

“Yeah, it was good,” I said when she asked if I had gone climbing that day and how it had been. “It was hard, knowing what’s happening, but it felt good to be outside and move around.”

“Good,” she said. “It does me good to know you’re out there climbing still. God knows I need as much to stay normal in my life as possible right now, and thinking of you climbing makes me feel better.”

We said good night shortly after, and I thought about what she had said. Climbing, for me, has always been a selfish thing, a thing I did solely for myself. I tried to balance my selfishness out a bit, first by teaching climbing to kids and then by being a teacher, but I could never escape how utterly self-involved I was as a climber. And hadn’t the way I couldn’t climb that day been another expression of that? But now it seemed that, for the first time, someone else was dependent on me climbing, in a way I didn’t fully understand.

The next day I went out again, swallowing how pointless it seemed and actually did some climbing. I tried a project, took some video. I thought about Steph and climbed so I would have something to tell her that night. It was hard, but what I had told her the night before turned out to be prophetic. It was good to be outdoors and it was good to move on the rock. And, strange as it seemed to me, it felt good to climb while not only thinking of myself.