Away Down South in Dixie

First off: shouts out to Morgan for driving through her very first thunderstorm with minimal panicking! 

Five state lines, the World’s Largest Spur, and more bluegrass music than I care to admit later (I have had the Civil War-era Dixie marching anthem stuck in my head for the last 6 days and even though it is a racist and problematic song I see no end in sight to the earworm (please send help)), we celebrated Morgan’s birthday and our final week on the road in the southeast United States.

Morgan and I have both made several pilgrimages to Stonefort in Chattanooga before. One of the most exciting things about climbing outdoors is visiting the same routes again and again. Unlike gyms, the routes outside never change--only you do--so they offer a kind of metric that you don’t find indoors. When you finally send an old project, it’s irrefutable proof of progress--and progress has been made! Morgan bagged her first V6 (happy birthday, indeed), I cruised a V4 that I was not even close to last March, and we have officially started projecting a couple V7s. I know grades are subjective and don’t mean anything, but it feels pretty good to know that I am getting better and stronger at this thing that I love (and thank goodness, I put enough mileage into this sport that I would hope to see some kind of growth). 

Our last stop on the Send Train was The New River Gorge in beautiful West Virginia, where some of the CRG gang made the trek to meet us there for the weekend. Cue classic climbing trip montage of climbing until you bleed (literally), crag shenanigans, dinners together, escape rooms (wait, what?), singing songs, campfires, etc etc. 

I write this from the comfort of my forever-home (though I am technically homeless and living on the streets at the moment #justanotherstatistic) climbing gym in NYC, where I will be chilling for the next month until Morgan’s wedding. This was the plan all along, and though I have already officially moved out of this city, it somehow feels more real this time. At least for a while, these are the last gym sessions I will have with these people; the last trips I will take with them; the last moments we will share. And then things will be different. We’ll keep in touch and visit each other often, of course, but I know it will be different (hard as it is to admit). I guess that’s just how it is when you move away. Better to have loved at all though, am I right? Maybe it’ll be like revisiting a crag and we’ll just come back stronger every time. In any case, these times will be cherished and forever immortalized in these blogs posts (or for as long as I keep paying for the domain name).

And to Morgan--my main squeeze, my sister-wife--thank you for accompanying me for the last month. You brought so much encouragement and comfort and joy (and state factoids) to our time abroad. I hope this was everything you wanted it to be, because I really could not have asked for a better van-partner or friend.

Posts might be farther between than they have been, but I’m hoping to fill in the Outdoor Dining and Recipes (maybe) sections of the website a little bit during this next month while I have an abundance of free time. Thank you for following me on my advantures; I’ll see you soon! 

XOXO