I’m lying on my back, staring up at the light filtering its way to me through the leaves of an oak tree. Dust motes, illuminated by the afternoon sun, float like dancers through the air.

It’s hot today. The sun has been baking The Valley floor all day, but my spot under this tree, lying on a crash pad is peaceful and cool.

Standing at its base, your language betrays you. We don’t have words for the size, for the complexity of what you’re seeing. Is it a mountain? No. A mountain protrudes up out of the ground, it has a peak and a summit, El Cap has neither.

I turn the key in the ignition and begin to drive home with a load of groceries sitting in the passenger's seat. A rumpled brown paper co-pilot who can only feed me.

I am the baby monkey in the lab. I am the fake cloth mother she holds. I am the plate of untouched food.

I wind up and punch it, trying to gain enough momentum to propel me the 20 or so feet I need to get to the next hold. It takes me three tries, but finally, at the apex of my swing, I press off against the wall and leap sideways into the air. All of this is made more hilarious by the fact that I am wearing a pink dinosaur onesie. I woke up that morning and chose style instead of practicality.

I hear the sounds of people moving around in the morning. Car doors opening and closing quietly. The click click pop and then whisper of gas stoves coming on. The quiet rumble of someone hand grinding coffee. I hear accented English good mornings. The upward bracing lilt of an Australian greeting collides with the mellow downward tone of a cheery Canadian ‘Hello!’. The long ‘o’s and drawn out ‘a’s make a tune out of the ritual.

Breakfasts with Eric started during a heat wave in Squamish, BC one summer. We’d parked our vans sliding door to sliding door in a dusty yellow parking lot at the base of the Chief. I slid open my door and felt the summer heat roll into me. I sat on the floor of my van with a cup of coffee, grinning a good morning to Eric as he rolled out of bed and did the same in his van.

And I know the odds. I know that if I manage to write a book and only 4 people buy it I should consider that a wild success. I know that there are hundreds if not thousands of other writers with the same dream who have more time and more connections than I do to make this happen. I know I’m just one speck in the sea of people clamoring to write that next great book.

And I know that if I don’t write a book, if I don’t at least try, I will have died early. I’d just be walking around in my Lucky Brand jeans, driving a nice practical Subaru, with an empty smile and an empty heart. All for $75,000.

There are a lot of lessons on the river. Lessons about control, going with the flow, being ready for whatever happens. I have never been good at letting go of control. But right here in this moment, I couldn’t control what was going to happen next. As I felt the water begin to pull the raft forward I couldn’t control where Cole was going to push the boat, I couldn’t control the rapids, I could only sit tight and hold on.

As we crested the horizon line, the eternity of that split-second dragged out. I felt myself let go of my need to control, my anxiety broke, and in we went.

The desert is made for heartbreak.

In the desert words fall empty and flat against the hard packed dirt. The silence of the open sky holds you while you grieve in peace. In the desert, everything is empty. The rivers are dry, the grass is dead, the skies are bare.

And it feels good to know there is a place in the world as empty as you.

While climbing, the Boulder Denim doesn’t ride up, the tight ankle keeps the jean material out of your way, and the high waist means I can move freely without having to hike my pants up every few seconds. The deep pockets are honestly the best part. Women’s jeans are notorious for having small useless pockets, but the Boulder Denim jeans prove that you can have a cute pair of jeans and deep pockets.

Matthes Crest is a mile and a half long fin of rock that juts out of the earth like the spine of a sleeping, long buried dragon. It looks almost sinister in the distance. A wall of impenetrable granite with only one cleft down the middle, an ominous gateway.

The Squamish sand lot. It’s a parking lot on the side of the sky to sea highway in Canada. It can hold maybe 8-10 cars if you pack em in real tight. Less if its the weekend and we’re trying to keep the tourists out. Many nights we realize there’s no room for one of the regulars, so we frantically re-shuffle the cars and make just enough space for one more econoline.

It’s 70 degrees outside. My air conditioner isn’t working and hot dry air comes blasting out of the vents. The check engine light is on, had been for the last 1,000 miles. 

I glance at the dashboard clock, 7:49am.

The water we were standing in was hot now, and would have been too hot to hang out in for long. The steam was denser, and the claustrophobic feeling more intense. I closed my eyes and imagined for a moment that I was in the throat of a giant dragon, walking toward its fiery belly.

I can’t overestimate the importance of women having control over the little things in their lives. It sounds so small, like ‘I want to listen to this song on repeat for the next 3 hours.’ Or, ‘I will be stopping to pee right now at this gas station.’ 

I drove my van into the desert, and I didn’t drink. I spent nights alone in my van listening to the sounds of people slurring their words and signing late into the night around a campfire. I met a mormon girl with a German Shepard and we woke up at 6am to watch the pink sunrise with mugs of tea. The startling clarity of the morning sunk in through my eyes, my ears and my mouth, and it woke me up better than any cup of coffee. 

To be a steward of climbing, to take care of and preserve a sport is a strange concept. The sport is alive and well and does not need caring for. What needs tending to is the natural spaces this sport inhabits. To be a climbing steward in Yosemite is to protect the rocks, the trails, the vegetation, and the trees.

The best day of climbing I ever had, the air was on fire. 

It was summertime in Squamish, a small town just north of Vancouver in British Columbia Canada. This town, up until recently had been known as a sleepy kiteboarding destination and—to those who cared— a place where you could find some of the best bouldering in the world. 

We see two people soloing intersection rock in the distance, one is possibly naked and the other is wearing a pair of hot pink booty shorts. 

Mike grabs the binoculars, “Yep. He’s definitely naked.” 

5 minutes later the naked guy rides by on a bike. There’s a chalk bag clipped to his waist that is almost covering his junk, and he hollers loudly as he wizzes past. “ANARCHY!”

“Well,” Mike puts his hands on his hips, “that happened quickly.”

Last year I came up with a ‘Best gifts for Vanlifers under $50’ blog post.

It did pretty well, but I looked at it again this year and I have a lot more useful things to add to that list, so here is my Christmas gifts for Vanlifers 2018! Enjoy and make a vanlifer in your world happy this holiday season.

Kate and I are cruising down highway 191 headed back to Indian Creek after getting rained out of Castle Valley.

We had been planning on climbing the North Face of Castleton and Fine Jade, two excellent (and challenging) climbs, but the weather decided otherwise. 

I was lying in my bed, half asleep, when I heard the first knock. 

It wasn’t so much of a knock as a bang. Someone was pounding on the side of my house. In the large metal box that is my van, it reverberated around the small space and startled me awake. 

I blink and it’s morning.  

My shoulder hurts so I roll over onto my other side.

Nope. 

I blink again and the sun has risen higher in the sky. I’m on my back. I look over to see Mike with his puffy jacket covering his face. 

Nope. 

I never thought I would be bored at 500 feet off the ground. 

Standing on Ahwahnee ledge on the West Face of the Leaning Tower, I pace back and forth in anticipation. Or what amounts to pacing when you have less than 3 feet of space to move around in. 

Big wall climbing  is the culmination of all of the climbing skills I’ve been honing over the last 5 years.

It takes technical skills, mental toughness, physical endurance, and good communication with a partner. I borrowed gear from friends, grilled them on the terrain, looked over maps that climbers before me had drawn, and scrolled through comments people had left on the mountain project to try and prepare myself mentally and emotionally for the hardest thing I had attempted to date in climbing. 

Breath in. 

Breath out. 

Turn the key. Hear the rumble of the engine. Beep, beep, beep, beep, click. Roll the automatic windows down. Feel the warm breeze on my skin. Smell the wet grass and the still damp asphalt. It’s hot outside.

When you jump on you typically meet a few people who are riding the same wave as you. You’ll see them in Indian Creek, lose track of them for a few months and then see them again in Squamish. The circuit brings you around and around, like a merry-go-round of climbing destinations. After getting on, it can be difficult to get off. 

I’m standing on a hollow flake,

about 150 feet above the ground, and only 20 feet from the summit. Hidden Valley Campground is spread out below me, people are cooking around their campfires, chatting about the day and playing music. The pinyon pines and Juniper trees create shade in the late afternoon, while the orange white boulders create stools, tables and playgrounds for the park visitors. Normally I would be down there with them, enjoying the sunshine, stretching and talking, but right now I'm more focused on not dying. My palms are sweating. 

"How do you just show up to a new town?"

"Where do you park?"

"How do you know where to shower?" 

These are the first 5 things I do when I get to a new town.

I’ve been living in my Sprinter Van for a little over a year now, and during that time I continue to be surprised by the little joys of living in a van, the ones I didn’t expect when I moved in. I expected the freedom and the flexibility and the beautiful scenery, but I didn’t expect the pure joy of a nice parking space or the giddy feeling I get when the wind blows through the curtains on my open door.