Hippies in the Desert

Here is where I work to catch up on all the awesome things I did but neglected to blog about.  This episode: Lost World Butte, which Brent and I climbed in October.  Before we make a trip to Moab, it's always difficult to choose a route: should we climb a long, all-day tower?  Or maybe a lot of shorter routes?  Somewhere crowded?  Somewhere remote?  However, this route stuck in my head (and probably Brent's too) because it just looks so nice.  Observe.

The Road Not Taken is the route that goes up that butte.  The name is appropriate, as the large volume of sand indicated this route is not climbed much.  The area is about 20 miles outside of Moab, but most of that distance is covered on dirt roads, so it feels even more remote.  In fact, we didn't see anyone else the entire time we were there.  It was awesome!  But dirty.  The approach was kind of interesting, there was lots of non-sandstone rocks scattered about, like they had washed from the top of the butte during a storm.  But there's only sandstone up top, so I'm confused about it.

The first pitch was pretty short, and unchallenging.  Really, the greatest difficulty there was choosing what clothing layers to bring up.  I chose wrong, a tank top and shorts were not enough when we were climbing in the shade (80% of the route).  Then we had to move the belay, which was almost scarier than climbing.  We (Brent) picked up the rope and walked along a ledge that quickly got slope-y and sandy and scary.  He was at least willing to scope out the move with a helmet on.  But then when he actually moved the belay, I wore the helmet and spent the whole time trying to make an anchor while he actually moved.  Being the awesome climbing partner/boyfriend that Brent his, he had me rope up to make the treacherous moves he had just done without a rope.  Anyways, the second pitch was interesting, to say the least.  It was scary, to describe it accurately.  Remember how I said the climb was dirty?  Well, Brent spent quite a while just figuring out what rocks could be pulled on, and what was just mildly consolidated sand.  It kind of made him look like Winnie the Pooh, stuck in a honey pot.

Once he got up and over this difficulty, the actual climbing happened.  I couldn't see him, but I could hear rocks crashing down.  And I could feel his movements through the rope, and it sure seemed like he wasn't placing a lot of protection on the route.  When he finished he called out "Becka, this pitch is interesting, and it's completely within your limit.  OK?"  I thought that was weird, because it's usually something he says before I start a climb, not mid-route.  Then I got to the GIANT TRAVERSE!  It was horrifying.  I don't like traversing (moving horizontally, rather than vertically), I spend the entire time envisioning giant pendulum falls, which makes me climb slower and is exhausting.  This felt worse, because the foot-holds and hand-holds were really soft and always breaking off.  Anyways, I could see why he had given me a pep-talk, and proceeded to literally crawl through a 150-foot high sandbox, then teeter across a ledge to where he was belaying me.  It's pretty awesome climbing with someone who knows my weaknesses and helps me work past them.  Below is a picture of the long, exposed traverse (the route goes along that ledge above my head).

The 3rd pitch was also interesting, but less stressful.  It was a squeeze chimney.  Which is as grunty and physical as it sounds.  While the climbing isn't difficult, it's tiring.  This pitch was the first time the BigBro was used, which was awesome.  Below you can see Brent squeezing into the chimney.

At the top of the 3rd pitch I stopped to take pictures, because that's what I do.  I think my boyfriend's hot, especially when he climbs, and I must document it.  The 4th pitch was the hardest of them all.  Mostly the top section.  Here are some pictures of Brent climbing the most visually dramatic route I've ever photographed.  It was really beautiful.

Amazing, right?  The last 20 feet are really difficult.  And they're following a really long pitch protected by 3 pieces (total).  So as Brent worked through the off-width or lie-back moves required to clear the route, I shivered and fretted and eventually cried.  Yes, I cry when I get stressed watching others climb.  Luckily, Brent was far enough away he couldn't see it (and he was actually focused on climbing), and by the time I got to him I worked through that awesome pitch (awesome if you're the second), so I was happy again.

The sun was getting ready to set, so we took some quick pictures and ran to find the rappel anchors near the other end of the butte.

After finding the way back to our stuff in the dark, and getting back to the car (assisted by my GPS unit right before it died (literally died), we decided to spend the next day taking it easy.  We did some climbing, but mostly a lot of sitting by the fire and enjoying being all by ourselves in the middle of nowhere.  It was very hippie-ish, and very awesome.  

The Most Important Christmas Music

I am not afraid to admit that my Christmas music tastes have not evolved much since 1999.  The most important Christmas albums to me are the one's my dad had us listen to while we were doing all the traditional holiday things (setting up the tree, ripping open presents, eating silver dollar pancakes...).  The second most important album is the Hanson album I bought with the funds used to set up my savings account, because that's what I was really saving for.  It should be obvious I have intense feelings about such, so I will share my favorite Christmas songs, in order of awesomeness, with great excitement and exaggeration.
1.  THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS SONG EVER AND DON'T YOU DARE DISAGREE WITH ME!!!

I have fond memories of trying to blast to play this song as loudly as possible in my projection booth, in that past life I had the movie theatre.  Oh, it's amazing to listen to every time.  And I recommend watching the video simply for the kittens.  Kittens.

2.  I don't know if I've ever mentioned my intense love of Hanson as a teenager.  I know, a they had that long hair, and their music was really poppy.... That's why I love them!  At the height of their awesome-ness, they released a Christmas album that is altogether amazing, here's a sweet selection from a TV special that I totally tuned into in 1997:

Oh, that hair.  Love it so much!  In the course of searching for videos I found this adorable song about a Christmas sweater Hanson did more recently: http://youtu.be/C8QqWYwwioQ

3.  Andy Williams sang the best versions of Christmas songs ever!  I get a little sad listening to them now though, because he died this year.  Fortunately, his recordings live on.

It wasn't until today that I realized I like the singing/smiling/no-microphone way of delivering songs.

4.  It's difficult to decide whether I like Manheim Steamroller or GRP more.  I'm going to list GRP first, because their album is hardest to find, thus, more worthwhile to share here.  I'm not a jazz fan, but this whole album just speaks to me.

The video I chose is probably the cheesiest on there (but watch it, there's a shadow and snow dancing segment that is amazing), but I definitely recommend looking through the rest of the playlist here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxX4bntdCXE&feature=share&list=PL5DC6145345724C65.
And if you ever find a digital version of Szaksci playing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" let me know (the CD the listen to is scratched for the intro to that song and it's amazing!).

5.  Finally, Manheim Steamroller.  Because what would Christmas be without them?

I couldn't find a video of this song that made much sense (but there was an awesome YouTube effort composed almost entirely of pictures of Air Supply).  But GrooveShark is pretty cool.

So there's a hefty dose of Christmas cheer for you.

Love.

WARNING: Much sappiness here.
I've spent much of the last few days ruminating over the violence we can do with our words, and the violence people actually carry out against one another, and that's been kind of depressing. However, I can't look around my apartment/office without seeing signs of all the love in my life, and that's awesome!  There are even more signs of this because it's Christmas time.  Every morning I turn on my computer and Christmas lights at the same time, and I think that has been the key to my productivity lately.  Just look at the happy stuff I can find on my tree:

This is probably my favorite ornament ever.  Every year my parents give me a bear-themed ornament.  I've got lots of polar bear ornaments, as well as some black bears, stuffed bears, wooden bears and crystal bears.  But this painted ceramic bear has long been my favorite.  It's difficult to pin down why, I think it might go back to fond memories of decorating my parents house during the holidays and getting so excited to pull out the ceramics my mom had painted.  I love the way they look and sound and feel.  Especially the nativity set, I sure hope that's still around somewhere.  This ornament seems to represent all my happy Christmas memories.

I love this ornament, too.  It's something my grandparents got from Israel, that's really the only detail I know about it.  More importantly, it reminds me of my grandparents and how they loved me.  In fact, whenever someone calls me Rebekah, rather than Becka, I think of my Grandma Fisher.  Usually about how she would prefer me to have bangs and go by my full given name, but I can see that those desires come from a place of love.  As time passes, my dad's parents died when I was 8 and my mom's mom died when I was 15, it seems easier and more important to look back on all the time they shared with us and see how much they shared their love for me and my family.

I know, picture of a picture in a frame.  But, this particular picture, especially in its place on my wall, brings me exceptional joy.  I just love these kids, they're so funny and affectionate (when they want to be).  And this might have been the last time the three of them cooperated in a picture, but that makes me happy too.

Turn out, Brent is an excellent present-wrapper.  In particular, he is gifted at incorporating electrical tape not only as an adhesive, but as gift-decoration.  I usually don't save wrapping paper, but I had to pull this off a present he gave me because it just makes me so happy every time I look at it.  So happy, in fact, that I've taped it to my living room wall so I can be happy all the time.

No picture here, because it's really hard to take pictures of birds through windows....

I really am psyched that it snowed.  I've spent the last few weeks wondering if my decision to buy a ski pass this season would prove a bad idea.  But the local resort will actually be opening this week and snow makes everything better (except driving, which Phyllis the Forester can handle just fine).  Also, whenever there is a storm, black-capped chickadees and dark-eyed juncos visit my bird feeders, and I dare anyone to watch a chickadee feed in their front yard and not smile.

So that's it, I live a happy, sappy life.  Complete with camera and blog.

Adventures in Rock Climbing

 “We do not deceive ourselves that we are engaging in an activity that is anything but debilitating, dangerous, euphoric, kinesthetic, expensive, frivolously essential, economically useless and totally without redeeming social significance. One should not probe for deeper meanings.”  Allen Stock (1967)

As you may well be aware, I really enjoy rock climbing.  It's may favorite thing to do with Brent, it's my favorite thing to do on vacation, and lately its my favorite way to challenge my ego.  I've been climbing for a few years now, and the first year was so amazing.  I'd found this brand new thing that was so fun and made me feel good, and I was progressing with it really fast.  Then I started to get scared.  Then I actually started to become worse.  It turned climbing from this awesome way to decompress after a hard days computer work, to something that left me feeling like a loser 50% of the time.  So I've spent much of the last 6 months mulling over ways to bring rock climbing back to something that fun.  I've come up with three ways to do that:

1. Take up trad climbing (on lead): 
2. Lead climb more often sport climbing
3. Make small goals that are cause for frequent celebration.  

And it's kind of been working.  Last weekend I got to go with my awesome climbing friends (Brent, Karina, Emma) to St. George, where we spent three days just climbing.  There were some victories:

• lead three new trad routes
• reviewed 4 of the 5 papers I needed to
• had many laughs and there were many great pictures taken

There were also some defeats, which I'll not put in bulletted form, because they don't deserve to be highlighted.  However, I should note that I cried and that I purchased a frozen lasagna, thinking it would be awesome, but it took two hours to cook and that's not awesome.  Anyways, there were a number of really important lessons that I also learned on this trip:

• Don't over-protect the easy top portion of a climb, it will make it difficult to come down from, thereby making me feel silly by the time I finally make it to the ground.  
• Climbing routes without knowing the rating is an effective way to feel successful.  I don't go in expecting any more difficulty than the route presents and don't need to temper my success by saying "it's only 5.*."  
• Mongolian BBQ is awesome.  
• Keep setting goals, but try to meet them before the cold sets in.  
• Let Brent drive, I get cranky when I can't find something or must choose where to park.  

The first day we went to Black Rocks, it's a pretty short basalt crag, but there are a ton of climbs all in short succession, so we were able to get a lot of climbing done.  Getting there was mildly traumatic, while it is just outside of town, there was construction for like four miles, leaving the parking lot smack in the middle of a construction zone.  After much driving up and down, we finally decided to park about a mile away, and I decided I would let Brent drive more often when things get a little stressful, because I get irrational when I can't find exactly what I want (be it a parking lot or camp site or Emma's house).  I brought my clipboard along, thinking that because there were three climbers, I would have a lot of time to review papers.  I was wrong.  However, I did have a lot of time to lead things.  Which was good.  

Karina started the day off with a strong sport route lead.  One of my favorite things about watching her climb is that she's very graceful, she makes deliberate moves and the way she clips just looks so nice.  I also find it inspiring that even though she can be a little scared of leading, like me, she keeps doing it.  And she's doing well at it.  

This was my first trad lead of the day.  I chose this picture mostly because it was the least awkward position I was photographed in (and I enjoy having all those gears hanging off me).  I've got a weird one-legged stance when I clip.  I enjoyed this route, there were some ledges that were challenging for me to get past, but there were also plenty of great places to protect the route (read: over-protect).  The top was a bit challenging, as I had to monkey over to the chains, but all-in-all, it was my first success of the day.  

Here is Karina on her first trad-lead ever!  About 15 minutes prior to this she had declared she would be leading anything else that day.  Fortunately, she is a warrior, and just had to go up this route.  She looked so strong and protected the route so evenly, my heart nearly burst with pride.  

This was the most challenging route I did all day.  The route runs up from the left, so there was a little overhanging portion and I had to smear (push my feet against a blank face, rather than on a small hold) and do some other moves I haven't done before on lead.  This was one of those climbs I did a lot of learning on, and because I've learned that attitude is everything, I'll focus on the learning rather than the struggle: 1) keep moving, standing is exhausting; 2) bring slings (at the beginning, no need to have your friends throw them to you); 3) topping out is easy, don't make a placement that will drag the rope horizontally, it's difficult to remove).  

Then the sun set, we went home and waited a few hours for lasagna.  The next day I got up early to work on some homework at McDonalds.  For all the bad things I want to say about their food, I enjoyed my latte and the free interwebs.  Then Emma came!  And we went to Bluff Street Cracks.  This crag holds a special place in my heart.  I went there two years ago with Brent and Emma, and it was one of those times where I realized I had a pretty big crush on Brent.  It was also the first time I tried crack climbing, it's different enough from face climbing that I just flailed (literally, that is the only situation where I will accept that description).  

To illustrate my point, here are some pictures from our January 2011 visit: Brent lead like a champ, Emma following and utilizing the crack system appropriately, me following with my entire arm in the crack looking for a face hold in there.  That's not how it should work, instead of pulling off holds, a crack climber often jams their fingers/hand/foot into the crack and them uses the friction generated there to move up.  It took me about three months to figure that out.  

 Here is Emma leading that same route in 2012, looking awesome.  Emma climbs with a lot of confidence, it's great to watch.  She gets so excited to try new routes she can't suppress her grins, and that gets me excited to climb.

Here's Brent on the same route, with Emma photographing.  She took some really great photos, a lot of them showed that we were making some intense faces while we climbed, but they were really fun to see.  Brent also looked really good on this climb.  

This blurry picture is a sign of my defeat.  That thin seam to the left of Joseph Meeks engraving is where I tried to lead that day, and I only made it half way.  There were many things I could point to that added to my defeat, but I'll just say that I need to work on my confidence on routes that have mixed ways of climbing.  And trust myself when I see other routes that are probably more my style. 

Our last day there was my birthday!  We went out to the Woodburry Road crags in the Beaver Mountains.  I thought the area was pretty stunning, in a really lonely, windswept way.  The picture at the beginning on this post is the view from our crag.  This area is limestone climbing, and the way the rock has weathered makes it really pretty sharp, so our fingers and toes were pretty shredded by the time we got done.  But one of the coolest things about climbing in St. George is that we were easily able to climb on three different types of rock (basalt, sandstone, limestone) in three days.  

Emma charging up a long 5.11, displaying confidence and skill.  We talked about changes she made to life in general, including the way she climbs, after a trip up the Grand Teton, and it's inspired me to look more at how I assess risk myself and see where I can improve.  One of the things I love so much about climbing with these friends is the deeper conversations we invariably have.  My friends are great.  

Brent photographing Emma on the same climb.  I was also inspired to maybe someday get a fancier camera, but I'm not sure when that would happen.  Either way, it was a lot of fun to add photography to the day's adventures.  

And of course, this shot.  I must take a group shot at the end of our trips.  Just looking through these makes me grateful for my friends and look forward to more climbing trips.  

Here we all are in May of 2011, when we went down for Karina's birthday week.  

And here in March 2010, where we all actually met and climbed for the first time.  It was a great Spring Break!  I can't help but smile when I think about all the laughs Karina and I shared while trying to negotiate roads.  It also makes me incredibly happy to know that we're all still climbing together.  I love these people.  

And I'll leave this with Joshua Trees.  Because they're cool.  The transition from Juniper dominated hillslopes to Joshua trees marks the transition from the Great Basin desert to the Mohave.  An undoubtedly rough transition for the first settlers in the area, who thought the arms of these plants looked like the Biblical prophet Joshua, pointing to the promised land.  

A Poem About Grad School and Technology

Twelve straight hours of making maps and graphs
     makes me crazy
     makes me everything blurry
     makes me question why improved technology is such a freaking great thing.

All the time spent tracking down info on the web
     gets me distracted
     gets at my confidence
     gets me agitated that there's so much stuff I could never search it all.

Pointing and clicking around in PowerPoint/Excel/Word
     makes me hunch
     makes my world seem smaller
     makes me feel like a monkey with a mouse that gets no reward for clicking the right
          button.

Hours spent searching for web tutorials on Arc/Access/SigmaPlot
     gets me excited
     gets me confused later
     gets me concerned that the same post can lift my hopes and dash my spirits.

Being in grad school for years on end
     has made me cry (often)
     has made me feel successful (less often)
     has made me so nerdy and excited about science all that other stuff is worth it (most
        of the time).

Christmas in the Air

Becka's List of Happy Things:

• Juncos and Chickadees visiting my bird feeder
• My christmas tree is up and my ornaments are awesome
• I'm making progress rock climbing
• Hot cocoa and tea
• The semester is over and I'm going to read more for fun!

Here I will try to hide heavy feelings among descriptions of fun and adventure.  I often repress the thing "I just need to get off my chest," because if the internet has taught me anything, it's that un-weighting yourself online is just asking for trouble.  However, I feel ready to burst and my general technique of writing it down in my disposable journal has not been effective.  There's been a kerfuffle around the internet about feminists within the LDS church.  Initially I watched this with great wonder, it's a difficult position for these women to be in, and one I felt a great deal of empathy with.  But it just snowballed into a flame war between faithful feminists and faithful anti-feminists, and just got me discouraged (note that both appear equally faithful to me).  Discouraged that feminism has turned into a dirty word, discouraged that small misunderstandings (perhaps even poor reading skills) can turn the friendliest people I know into more of the angry internet folks, and discouraged that a situation ripe for really meaningful discussion could just ruin my day like it has.
This whole thing has ruined my day because it's brought about this awful deja vu, reminding me in vivid detail of my own struggles with faith, and ultimately the decisions I made to no longer count myself among the faithful.   The biggest reasons I am not faithful, of course, are very personal and were very difficult to acknowledge; admitting the things I no longer believed in was a very painful process, something I did not take lightly, and something I still revisit.  However, deciding not to attend church any more was much easier because I simply felt that I did not belong and attendance became a stressful event that was not uplifting at all.  There were some very important friends who made me feel very loved, and I still cling to those relationships, but the overall experience was one of outsideness.  One of the more upsetting aspects of these feelings is that they came from the followers, not the leadership.  I still like to hope that the message of Christianity is one of love and inclusiveness, one of the benefits/purposes of religion, in fact, is membership in a group.  Unfortunately, identifying those who are in the group can often lead to pointing out those who are not part of the group.  I'm not convinced this is a necessary practice, but for many it seems the easiest way to encourage solidarity is to mock those who feel differently.  It's in this simplified environment that I felt like there was no place in Relief Society for someone like me who was questioning things, including what I wanted to accomplish with my life (i.e., marriage, travel, education, career).  When I was younger, I felt like it was assumed that I would live a traditional Mormon life, but in my 20's, this was assumption was stated explicitly and effectively turned me away from those loudest voices in the congregation who were telling me I was "worldly" and other things (perhaps selfish) for not ardently planning my future family.  Especially when I was trying so hard to make a substantive, deep life for myself.
The whole point of that rambling narrative is that the goals I had set for myself seemed counter to what I was hearing from other women in my congregation.  And now I feel like I'm being pushed further from the church by the Mean Girls in Relief Society.  I'm struggling with how I should proceed, how I can avoid being reactionary.  If I simply keep things shallow, avoid any discussion of subjects that bring out the mean in people, I will lose the deeper discussions that really mean a lot to me.  If I completely reject all the people who are saying things that hurt me, whether they intend it or not, I push away people I love along with those I could live without.  And in the end, I really do try to avoid being fearful and reactionary.  So I'm left crying, wishing I wasn't so sensitive, and wondering if perhaps Facebook will prove to be the biggest feature in the decline of polite society.
But I've got a better plan, I'm going to play Christmas music on my piano, blog about my awesome friends and family, make sugar cookies, and plan a vacation to somewhere warm and ripe for adventure.  In the end, I live a really great life, full of great people, and I can work harder to make sure the discussions on Facebook don't disproportionately affect my mood.  
*Point of clarification: I should note that it was comments about the wearing pants to church movement (really, those against the movement) that have me so upset.  I don't generally despair like this.