The above photo is exactly twenty years old!

It was 1993 and my bass player and I were driving back to New York from Oregon. After breaking down outside Wala Wala, Washington, and almost hitting a moose in Idaho, we stopped at Custer’s Battlefield and then Devil’s Tower.

Devil’s Tower—for those of you who have incredibly never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind—is the core of an ancient volcano in Wyoming, where the UFOs land. When we got there, there was a climbing party about an eighth of the way up, making it look oh so easy.

Two years later I went back to Wyoming and climbed the Tower with a college friend. It actually wasn’t a very hard climb. (Getting down was another story).

Yesterday, I went over to my local crag and climbed an old favorite route with a guy I’ve been climbing with since the Clinton administration.

What’s my point?

I don’t know maybe I’m just getting old and weird, but I’ve noticed something lately: The people who have been in my life the longest—my true friends—are the ones I’ve shared a rope with… or a stage.

Rock on/on rock!