Merging with Nature while Rock Climbing

An  Existential-Phenomenological

Approach to

the Experience of

Merging with Nature

while

Rock Climbing

Charles William Winstead, III

7/22/96

Table of Contents

Chapter Page

I. INTRODUCTION 7

Description of the topic 7

Importance and Relevance of the Research 11

Goals of the Research 12

II. LITERATURE REVIEW 18

Why do rock climbers climb rocks? 21

What is the climber’s relationship to 26

danger?

How are mystical experiences described? 29

In literature?

In sports?

In mountain climbing?

What related research has been done? 37

Csikszentmihalyi

Deikman

Pearson

III. METHODOLOGY 46

Theoretical Background 46

Gathering Data 69

Data Analysis 78

IV. RESULTS/ DISCUSSION 84

1) There is an experience of liberation from 86

everyday, ordinary distractions, fears and worries.

2)  During their experience climbers report 101

having felt very content and peaceful.

3)  Their conscious mind relaxes and the body 107

takes over.

4)  While merging with Nature, physically 119

strenuous activity becomes or is

perceived as effortless. 5)  One notices being intensely focused with 125

an increased sense of concentration.

6)  Many climbers experience heightened 130

sensory perceptions.

7)  Sensation that the rock/ Nature is alive. 139

 Holistic awareness of being a part of Nature.  144

9)  Mystical awareness or spiritual experience. 167

10)  One’s experience of time is altered. 177

11)  They regret that the experience is over, 182

the feelings linger on, there is a strong

desire  to repeat the experience as soon

and as often as possible.

V.  CONCLUSION 190

REFERENCES 206

APPENDIX A

Consent Form & 208

Confidentiality Statement

APPENDIX   B

Co-researcher Protocols 211

Written Replies &

Transcribed Interviews.

Abstract

This dissertation is an attempt to provide a clear description of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.  My main interview question was:  “Please describe your experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.”

I collected descriptions from 13 rock climbers who answered positively to the question “have you had an experience of merging with Nature;” agreed to participate in this study, and gave written descriptions of their experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.  These descriptions plus eleven taped interviews from a subset of the same group formed the complete body of data. This data was analyzed following the existential-phenomenological research method described here, and adapted primarily from Colaizzi, Giorgi and Polkinghorne.

a) Transcription of the interviews as close to word-for-word as possible.

b) Gather all relevant data, forming the collection of protocols. Bracket, and read the collection of protocols with an openness to the experiences described.

c) Prepare raw data for analysis, determine meaning units, and discard irrelevant material.

d) Organize related meaning units into clusters of themes.

e)  Validate theme clusters by reading each one looking for internal consistency.

f) Validate theme clusters by comparing them to the situated, contextual nature of the original protocols.

g) Determine relevant theme clusters, discard theme clusters not directly descriptive of the experience.

h) Put the voices of the co-researchers into dialogue.  Stitch related meaning units together with reflective commentary.

This analysis resulted in the following description of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing:

Through liberation from distracting thoughts the conscious mind transitions into a feeling of being content and peaceful. The body takes over and physically strenuous activity becomes effortless.  One notices being intensely focused on the here and now, with an increased sense of concentration that heightens sensory perceptions.  Nature comes to life and one perceives the essential interdependence of all things.  This spiritual experience occurs in a moment out of time. It passes leaving an indelible trace and a desire to repeat the experience.

Chapter  I: Introduction:

What this dissertation is about.

A) Description of the topic: My interest and background, expansion of title introducing reader to complexity of task.

“The sort of life I had was one that required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the human organism is created.”

I would like to introduce myself and this dissertation by recounting what frequently happens in conversations when I am asked to tell about myself by someone I have just met. I usually begin by saying that I am working on my Ph.D. in Psychology. “Where?” they might ask. At the California Institute of Integral Studies, I would respond. Or they might ask “Oh, are you going to be a psychologist?” Not exactly, I say and tell them that my degree will be in East-West Psychology, and it’s not a licensure program. I will be a psychologist, in the sense of someone who studies the Psyche,  but I won’t be a “licensed clinical psychologist.” I am more interested in teaching and doing research. “Well, could you go back later and get licensed?” Yes, I explain, but I’m not that interested in doing clinical work. “Oh,” they say, “what kind of classes are you taking?” Philosophy, both Eastern and Western Psychology, and some other things, but these days I spend most of my time working on my dissertation. “Aha, what is it about?” By this time I am usually tired of explaining all these details, and I try to take a short-cut: “the psychology of rock climbing.” “What!” Realization takes hold and interest is peaked, “What do you mean, the psychology of rock climbing?”

So I try to explain it all at once: “I’m taking an existential-phenomenological approach to the inner experience of the contemporary American rock climber; looking specifically at the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.” “Hmm … What do you mean by that?”

Oh, no! Now I’ve got myself between a rock and a hard place. Are they asking out of genuine interest and are they really willing to listen for the hour or so that it would take to explain all of the above? Or are they more interested in having a conversation regardless of content and are simply looking for an inroad to a common interest? Generally, their interest is somewhere in between wanting to hear all about my dissertation and moving on to more interesting gossip about schoolmates. Either way my explanations usually turn out incomplete as I tend to forget relevant points or conversation shifts before I finish a long train of thought. So, here we are and I am going to attempt to remedy this dilemma.

Existential-phenomenological approach:

I am using a qualitative research method to explore the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. My research method uses interviews and subjective reports as the basis for gathering data. I won’t be using numerical analysis, statistics, or hypothesis testing.  What I will do, is ask people about their experience, record their responses, and conduct thematic analysis on the responses looking for common themes, for the essence of the experience.

An inner experience:

In contrast to other scientific methods, existential-phenomenology regards subjective experience as core data. This method considers the inner experience of highest importance in understanding a phenomenon. Numerical abstractions about an experience are considered distancing and de-humanizing.

Contemporary American rock climbers:

This phrase de-limits my co-researcher group. I am  specifically interested in experiences had while rock climbing. By including this phrase in my explanation, it should be clear that I am only going to interview rock climbers. Living in America in the present day, the rock climbers I encounter are contemporary and for the most part American. While I did meet foreign climbers, they were, for the most part, on short vacations, and not able to fully participate in my study.

The experience of merging with Nature:

Ah, the experience of merging with Nature, this is the heart of my research. “Merging with Nature” is the latest attempt at naming an experience that I have had while rock climbing and also in other sports, and other circumstances. In the process of trying to get closer to understanding this experience, I have spent much time in contemplation, and have conducted several pilot studies. In one such study, I analyzed responses to a question about “spontaneous experiences of altered states of consciousness while rock climbing.” In another, I asked the question “why do you climb rocks?” Each of these questions left me with a feeling of coming up short of the experience. However, each attempt to reach understanding brought me into a broader perspective and somehow closer to the essence of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

While rock climbing:

This phrase narrowed my search. I was looking for people who have experienced merging with Nature while rock climbing. I suspected that the circumstances would create a different experience, i.e. rock climbers would experience merging with Nature differently than Yogis in sitting meditation.

B)  Importance and Relevance of Research: What does it mean? What am I doing here? What’s the point?

“I’m taking an existential-phenomenological approach to the inner experience of the contemporary American rock climber, looking specifically at the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.”

What does it mean? What does it mean to take an existential-phenomenological approach to the inner experience of the contemporary American rock climber? And what does it mean to look specifically at the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing? More specifically, what does it mean when I use the phrase “merging with Nature?”

What does it mean that I have no answers?

These narrow, specific questions point me to deeper questions of a philosophical nature. I find myself out on a rock, high above the valley floor, and I ask myself the question “What am I doing here?” Later, at my campsite with warm food in my stomach, I, again, ask myself “What am I doing here?” Back at school, at work, back in the everyday world of consensus reality, the question haunts me.

What am I doing here?

The question haunts me, and I am reminded of a time when I had the answer. For a brief fleeting moment, I knew the answer. “I am here now, and I am doing exactly what I am here to do, nothing more, nothing less.” Words limit the expression of a felt truth, and naming the experience must, by the nature of abstraction, create some error. The name is not the thing, and the label “merging with Nature” is not the experience. But I am still trying to understand the experiences that I have had. I know that I must be looking in the right direction, as I encounter people who can relate to the experience that I am talking about.  We struggle together to give words to an experience that may be indescribable. I know that I may not conclude with a complete description, but it seems that the effort will be worthwhile.

C) Goals of this dissertation: What have I done? What else has been done?  And what do I hope to accomplish with this project?

Being a rock climber, I wanted to do some work that would  help non-climbers understand the motivation behind rock climbing. Many who do not understand the sublime aspects of rock climbing have negative thoughts about rock climbers.  However, this may be a losing battle: there are some who consider any deviant behavior negative. Whether we are climbing due to a death wish, or in search of mystical experience, the stigma will still remain for many onlookers whose comments will be forever limited to “Good God, look at that guy, he must be crazy!” and “I would never do that!” There must be some reason that we take these risks. Part of understanding the rock climber’s motivation is knowing that these risks can be reduced with knowledge and skill.

“Two climbers joined together in one of life’s most intimate and fateful embraces. As they proceed up the mountain, each, in turn, places his or her life in the hands of the other in the faith that the other’s  skill and attention will not betray that trust.”

This experience is truly an intimate one, as anyone who has had it can tell. But, how can I go further and tell you of the infinitely complex rush of feelings that occur when trust, full trust is placed in the hands of another, that person saves your life, and then places his trust in your hands and you save his life within the space of an hour. From an external perspective, nothing could seem stranger, two individuals out to risk their lives, in pursuit of some intangible goal. That goal is not so simple, it is much more than a chance to risk one’s life, and to trust another.

“Mitchell compares this trust to that required to allow another person drive the automobile in which both of you are riding. He states that mountaineers choose their partners with ‘study and care’ and go to great lengths to avoid unnecessary danger.”

He makes the additional observation, which I have also noticed that:

“I personally never met a mountaineer who did not wear a seat belt as a hedge against the dangers of the highway”

In this research project, I will be focusing on the psychological aspects of the rock climbing experience. The primary focus will be the experience of merging with Nature.  I began researching this topic with other, related, areas of focus.  In an early pilot study, co-participants were asked to describe their experience of altered states of consciousness during rock climbing. In this study, six primary themes arose:

1) Immediacy of the onset of the experience.

2) The experience of a transcendental perspective.

3) The presence of unique bodily sensations.

4) Sense of “oneness”, “no-self”, or “unity”.

5) Effortlessness of actions.

6) Lack of thoughts.

This pilot study was extremely useful in that it provided  a method for testing the feasibility of examining this topic on a larger scale. Since then, I have continued literature reviews during which the writings of Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi have been prominent. In one of his earlier works, Csikszentmihalyi  writes about the movement of the sport of rock climbing from Europe into America. In a later work , Csikszentmihalyi describes what he calls the “Flow” experience. After developing his theories on “Flow,” Csikszentmihalyi generalized the “Flow” experience as one that is found in many settings and activities and conducted research into the optimal conditions for the occurrence of these experiences.

Of particular relevance is the way he describes the experience and the similarity to the themes that were found in my pilot study. In a paper presented in Optimal Experience,  Csikszentmihalyi describes the following themes:

1. Merging of action and awareness

2. Centering of attention on limited stimulus field

3. Loss of ego (or transcendence of ego)

4. Feeling of competence and control

5. Unambiguous goals and immediate feedback

6. Autotelic nature.

I experience an immediate felt sense that these two sets of themes describe nearly identical experiences. What are the implications of intrinsically rewarding (autotelic) activities in the face of a culture wherein so many individuals are employed in non-intrinsically rewarding professions?  Csikszentmihalyi worked with this information to try to reform public education, and searched for ways to improve work conditions.

It is my hope that in studying the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing, I will arrive at a deeper understanding of human potential. My personal goal is to reach a deeper understanding of the experiences of merging with Nature that I have had. However, understanding my own personal experiences requires that I look at them in the larger context of a social situation, the rock climbing community. By doing this, I notice that similar experiences occur, not only for other rock climbers, but also, for people in many different situations. Understanding these experiences may broaden our understanding of the range of potential states of human consciousness. Adding this work to the body of research on states of consciousness should benefit future researchers, as well as provide alternate modes of looking at and experiencing the world. By providing examples of transcendental states of consciousness, and examining how these states are achieved, more people may have these experiences. If this is so, then this dissertation may be a small incremental addition to the effort to improve the world and help to decrease suffering on a global level.

However, before these lofty goals may be sought, we must first attempt to describe the phenomena, so that we know what it is that we are talking about. Then, and only then may we attempt to reach higher goals.

Thus, the basic goal of this research is to describe the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. All of the other goals I have mentioned are secondary to this primary goal. If the first goal is not reached, how can the rest follow?

The purpose of phenomenological research is to describe the structure of an experience, not to describe the characteristics of a group who have had the experience. Rather than seeking to describe the mean and standard deviation of a group as it relates to the experience, the phenomenological concern is with the nature of the experience itself.

In order to begin the process of seeking our primary goal, I have reviewed available literature which concerns experiences similar to the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. The next chapter presents a summary of that review.

Chapter II. Literature Review

What other people have written  about

related subjects.

They called me mad, and I called them mad,

and damn them, they outvoted me.

Much madness is divinest sense -

To a discerning eye -

Much sense - the starkest madness -

‘Tis the majority

In this, as all, prevail -

Assent - and you are sane -

Demur - you’re straight-away dangerous -

And handled with a chain.

I would like this chapter to function as a guide taking persons not familiar with rock climbing into a deeper understanding of the experience. In a process parallel to that followed by the novice, we will begin with external perspectives. How is the climber viewed by those unfamiliar with the sport? On the one hand the climber is viewed as crazy, and on the other, the climber is regarded as hero. While the climber may adopt one or both of these perspectives occasionally, the internal perspective is much more complex. The rock climber may be viewed as a member of a distinct sub-culture which has its own exoteric and esoteric knowledge.

“Subcultures are specialized knowledge areas which include a distinctive history, lore, ritual, techniques and other specific forms of information associated with or around which behavior occurs”.

The public perspective holds the broadest exoteric circle of knowledge about rock climbing. When this general perspective attracts the interest of a potential climber, he or she seeks out a guide. Some experienced climbers seek out potential new climbers to teach. Through these two dynamic social interactions the sub-culture grows. The first entry into the rock climber’s sub-culture occurs when the novice is taken out and ‘shown the ropes’ by their guide. At this point the novice has little room for self-directed activity; they do what they are told in order to avoid injury. Over time the novice gains experience and learns the sub-culture’s language. Should the novice desire to continue this learning process, they will purchase a safety harness, special rock climbing shoes, a pear-a-biner, and a belay device. They may continue to purchase gear and develop their technical skills, but the next significant rite of passage occurs when the novice attempts their first lead climb. When this lead climb occurs, the novice begins to act in self-directed manners. However, an experienced climber is usually present when the novice first leads. On the lead climb, the novice is for the first time relying on their own abilities and skills for their personal safety. After this act, the novice becomes a climber. Further significant advances in experience may occur in non-sequential order, first lead fall on natural gear, first time teaching a novice, first multi-pitch, first night spent on a wall, etc. Each event provides the climber with experience and knowledge. This sport, like other activities which require extensive practice and dedication, occasionally provides mystical experiences to its practitioners. Before we discuss the esoteric experience of the climber, let’s tour through the exoteric levels.

In our discussion of how the rock climber sees himself, his companions and the sport itself, we will tackle the following questions:

A) Why do rock climbers climb rocks?

B) What is the climber’s relationship to danger?

C) How are mystical experiences described?

1) In literature?

2) In sports?

3) In mountain climbing?

D) What related research has been done?

1) by Csikszentmihalyi?

2) by Deikman?

3) by Pearson?

A) Why do rock climbers climb rocks?

Although perhaps universally applicable, the question “why do you do that?” is asked more frequently about climbing than many other activities, such as going to work, eating, sleeping, etc. Like many other sub-cultures climbing has its legendary response to the question.

“During the winter following the (Mount Everest) expedition of 1922 George Mallory visited the United States on a lecture tour. One evening, after a talk in Philadelphia, a member of the audience approached him and asked the inevitable question: “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” Mallory considered a moment and gave his answer: “Because it is there,” he said.”

This legendary response,  though it may be either deeply meaningful or wholly unsatisfactory, perfectly expresses the frustration felt by any climber who attempts to bridge the gap between those who understand and have had their own experience of climbing and those who do not understand, those who have not had their own experiences.

Mallory’s answer finds acceptance with climbers because they need no other answer. It is unacceptable to the non-climber who seeks deeper understanding of the climber’s motives. As one who seeks to bridge the gap between climber’s experience and the non-climber’s understanding, I feel that I must go further in this exploration of the climber’s motives.

“When we ask ‘why do men climb mountains?’ the simplest answer, even if an evasive one, is that most men and women do not.”

This quote gets to the heart of the question in a way that Mallory’s does not. “Most men and women do not,” refers to the fact that most people are simply not inclined to go climbing. It may also be another way of saying that those who do climb, do so because it is something that sets them apart from others. This quote also directs us to think about why, in a more general sense, some people choose to do things which are out of the ordinary. With this simple quote, we are led into such complex questions as: What is the nature of being human? What is free will? What does it mean to be an individual as opposed to a hive unit? and Why are we here?

“… Let us return to the question of why people climb. The traditional answers offered to this question have been of four major types. Climbing has been accounted for variously as a ridiculous, sublime, purposeful, or natural activity. ‘Ridiculous’ here denotes the basic assumption of some that climbing mountains is essentially a foolish enterprise and that its participants must be emotionally ill, morally corrupt, or both. ‘Sublime’ calls attention to those who focus upon the artistic, poetic, spiritually uplifting, or even transcendental qualities of mountaineering while ignoring the more prosaic character of the climbing enterprise as cold, hard, and sometimes dangerous work. The third type includes explanations of climbing as a practical, purposeful, and even necessary job to be done, usually in the name of scientific inquiry. Finally, there are accounts of the modern-day mountaineer with the central theme that climbing is natural and requires no explanation.”

In the first type noted by Mitchell, we find the ‘crazy’ explanation mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. This explanation is understood as an external perspective derived from ignorance and fear.

The second type,  ‘sublime,’ with its reference to the “artistic, poetic, spiritually uplifting or even transcendental qualities,” will be of greatest interest to this dissertation. Although some attention will be given to the ‘cold, harsh reality of climbing as hard work,’ it is the transcendental qualities which will be of greater interest.

The third type, ‘scientific inquiry,’ has some relevance to this dissertation. As both a climber and a researcher, I would have to say the climbing itself comes first, with research following second. It might be said that I choose to research climbing because it was a fun and convenient topic. Another reply may be that I research this topic in order to reach a deeper understanding of my own personal motives as they relate to climbing as well as a deeper understanding of the ontological nature of my climbing experiences. However, Mitchell does make a pertinent comment on the experience of conducting research in this field.

“In some circles, mild ridicule may be directed at those who continue to mix research and the mountains. I have been chided from time to time for carrying a field notebook into the mountains and conducting interviews with climbers found there. ‘Who do you think you are, the Roper Poll?’ echo the detractors.”

In the fourth type, we find a category for Mallory’s non-explanation ‘because it is there.’ We can now translate Mallory’s answer in this way: ‘because it is the natural thing to do.’ Another description of the naturalness of climbing follows:

“Climbing is a joyous, instinctive activity; unless restrained, most children will scurry up trees, garden walls, building facades, and anything else steep and enticing. While society, in the form of parents, teachers, and the law, discourage these activities, some determined individuals persist and eventually find their way back to the peaks. [They follow] the suggestion of one climber ‘to remember our arboreal ancestors, retreat intellectually a couple of million years and make like monkeys, defying gravity with our own impetus.”

Yet another explanation may be brought into consideration. This explanation focuses on the twin ideas, that climbing feels good and that it is fun. These characteristics hold true for a broader range of activities than climbing.

“… Artists, athletes, composers, dancers, scientists, and people from all walks of life, when they describe how it feels when they are doing something that is worth doing for its own sake, use terms that are interchangeable in their minutest details. This  unanimity suggests that order in consciousness produces a very specific experiential state, so desirable that one wishes to replicate it as often as possible.”

Csikszentmihalyi, describes this ‘very specific experiential state’ as ‘flow,’ and we will return to his work for a more thorough discussion later in this chapter.

In a dissertation on surfing, a similar experience is described:

“A number of respondents allude to various pleasurable sensations they feel while surfing and which apparently derive from their experience of the feedback which comes from muscular movement. Following Harris (1973), ‘kinesthetic satisfaction’ is the term given to the enjoyment of physical activity as a result of kinesthetic feedback in one form or another.”

As noted above, this experience may occur in many different activities. As I delve deeper into motivation and experience, I will occasionally refer to other sports which have similar experiential foundations. For now, however, I will return to climbing, and go even deeper into its esoteric levels, into the climber’s perception of the sport.

B) What is the climber’s relationship to danger?

“The significance of overcoming physical dangers [while street-racing motorcycles] is not unlike that in rock climbing, reported by Csikszentmihalyi (1975b) and Mitchell (1983). But the risks taken in the bosozoku  run are far more unpredictable and unmanageable than those of rock climbing. In fact, some climbers regard driving a car or walking down the street as more dangerous than rock climbing.”

While attempting to explain my desire to climb rocks, I have frequently heard variations of the rebuttal ‘but, it’s so dangerous, you could get hurt and/or die.’ To this I usually respond that climbing a mountain is safer than driving a car to its base. Sure, climbing may be regarded as safe when one compares it to other activities, but that is not why anyone climbs. As Csikszentmihalyi so accurately points out, it is the significance of overcoming physical danger that matters. There is a particular experience when one is aware of mastery and control over risk and danger that is pleasurable. That sense of mastery would be diminished if the risks were taken away. The risks must be real, and the climber must know that danger exists, and that some climbers do get injured and some even die.

“The climber is … aware that accidents are an ever-present possibility. Yet he does not glory in the danger of his sport but continually seeks to limit dangerous circumstances to a minimum. Danger is avoided whenever possible; difficulty is prepared for by learning safety techniques, use of proper equipment, and careful planning.”

Some accidents result from uncontrollable circumstances, such as avalanches or rockfall, but most result from human error. Even the dangers of avalanche and rockfall can be ameliorated by specialized training and knowledge, such as courses which teach one how to recognize unstable snow formations.

How can we understand the relationship between the climber’s risk-taking activities and the dedication and energy devoted to avoiding unnecessary danger? We find one clue in Pearson’s interpretation of the Surfer’s behavior:

“Physical activity as the pursuit of vertigo is defined as ‘those physical experiences providing, at some risk to the participant, an element of thrill through the medium of speed, acceleration, or exposure to dangerous situations, with the participant usually remaining in control. In that he usually approaches vertigo without actually achieving it, the experience becomes the pursuit of vertigo’”.

But Pearson doesn’t stop there. He finds, and I agree, that there is more to these activities than meets the eye.

“I think surfing tends to liberate the individual from petty matters of life and puts him on a closer relationship with nature. It makes one appreciate the immensity of the world and the universe - so do bush walking and many other noncompetitive sports. Noncompetitive with people, maybe with nature it is competitive - e.g. climbing a mountain, riding a wave…”

Note how he compares surfing with climbing. In the following quotes, Pearson gives some attention to the deeper esoteric motives for these similar sports, surfing and rock climbing.

“Surfing enables man to prove himself and show others what can be done on a wave.”

“Surfing enables man to test himself on a wave and in the testing find out more about himself.”

In these two quotes, one could easily substitute ‘rock’ for ‘wave.’ Pearson continues with a discussion of even deeper motives.

“Surfing is metaphysical in essence, it can be a competition with nature or a union with nature, it is an ego builder.”

“Surfing is a moment of total involvement, total loss of self-consciousness - just being”

“Surfing is an experience which allows an individual to realize himself - it’s one of the ultimate existential situations, pure communion = I = Thou.”

In these three quotes the substitution that could be made would be ‘rock climbing’ for ‘surfing.’ With these, I would like to bring in the idea of mystical experience as a possible motivation for rock climbing.

C) How are mystical experiences described?

1) In literature?

I

There was a time when meadow, grove,

and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Appareled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;-

Turn wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can

see no more.

II

The Rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the Rose,

The Moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare,

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where’er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the

earth.

In the above poem, Wordsworth describes both the heightened sensory perceptions that he had in past experiences, and expresses a bit of a melancholy over the passage of that form of perception. In another work, he describes an memory from his youth which can be interpreted as an experience of rock climbing:

Nor less, when spring had warmed the cultured vale,

Moved we as plunderers where the mother-bird had in high places built her lodge; though mean our object and inglorious, yet the end was not ignoble. Oh! When I have hung above the raven’s nest, by knots of grass and half-inch fissures in the slippery rock but ill-sustained, and almost (so it seemed) suspended by the blast that blew amain, shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time while on the perilous ridge I hung alone, with what strange utterance did the loud dry wind blow through my ear! The sky seemed not a sky of earth and with what motion moved the clouds.

From another section of the same poem, we get a taste of the fanatic desire that drives people to climb:

With an unswerving line, I fixed my view upon the summit of a craggy ridge, the horizon’s utmost boundary; far above was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

She was an elfin pinnacle; lustily I dipped my oars into the silent lake, and, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat went heaving through the water like a swan,

When, from behind that craggy steep till then - the horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge -

As if with voluntary power instinct upreared its head. I struck and struck again, and growing still in stature the grim shape towered up between me and the stars, and still,

For so it seems, with a purpose of its own and measured motion like a living thing, strode after me. With trembling oars I turned, and through the silent waterhole stole my way back to the covert of the willow tree, there in her mooring-place I left my bark,- and through the meadows homeward went, in grave and serious mood; but after I had seen that spectacle, for many days, my brain worked with a dim and undetermined sense of unknown modes of being; o’er my thoughts there hung a darkness, call it solitude or blank desertion. No familiar shapes remained, no pleasant images of trees, of sea or sky, no colours of green fields; but huge and mighty forms that do not live like living men, moved slowly through the mind by day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

2) In sports?

The experience of merging with Nature is not limited to poets, monks, or meditators. As we have already discussed, evidence supports the statement that both rock climbers and surfers have mystical experiences. I would like to present similar experiences as they occur in other sports. The experience of the rock climber may be compared to that of the long-distance runner. It is common knowledge that running may produce an altered state of consciousness. It is called the “runner’s high,” and some research has been conducted into the spiritual nature of this high.

Somewhat less well known is the experience of the “zone” as an aspect of intense concentration in football.

“He had felt it in the huddle when the winning play was called — a subtle but powerful shift in his consciousness. All the tension and frustration of the long afternoon fell away from him. He knew the whole game hung on this one play, but that knowledge seemed distant and insignificant. When he came out of the huddle, he was aware that everything had changed. It was as if all the spectators had disappeared. The giant stadium had somehow become a small, intimate place. The sound of the crowd was also gone. There was only silence and a sense of infinite calm.

As he took his lonely stand to the right of the rest of the team, Jackson was aware only of Pitts, the opposing cornerback, waiting for him on the other side of the line, and his friend Joe Marco, calling signals over to his left. It wasn’t that he heard (authors emphasis) the signals. Marco’s words came to him, rather, as a physical connection, joining him in some strange way with Pitts, his opponent. At the snap count, Jackson found himself running effortlessly out toward the flag at the side boundary of the goal line, with Pitts matching him stride for stride. He seemed to move in slow motion, a part of some larger movement that included Pitts and Marco as well. He had absolutely no desire to elude his opponent. That Pitts was there with him, in the ideal position to defend against a pass, seemed a necessary aspect of the larger perfection. And though Marco was fifteen of twenty yards behind them  now, his every movement was necessary to theirs. Jackson knew exactly what Marco was doing. Somehow, without turning his head around to look, he could ’see’ the quarterback rolling out to the right behind his interference and starting to fake a pass.

All of this took only a few seconds, but for Jackson it could as well have been an eternity. Now, as he approached the flag, he felt himself drawn in a tight arc to the left. He  did nothing to turn himself. His logical mind, in fact, would have forbidden him this move back against the flow of the play. But he did turn hard to the left, just as a comet swerves around the sun, and this turn itself seemed to draw the ball from Marco to him. It was exactly as if a series of invisible levers and pulleys connected them in such a way that he could not turn sharply leftward without drawing the ball to him. In the same manner, the ball could not be thrown to him without his swerving to the left. The invisible machinery was intricately interconnected. And it also required that Pitts turn in a slightly wider arc so that he couldn’t possibly interfere with the pass.

Turning, Jackson stretched out his arms and drew the ball, softly gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight, to his belly, just a split second before the onrushing safety man could knock it away. Tenderly, he took it down with him, to the earth, enfolding it there with his body and arms. Only then did the sound of the crowd come back to his consciousness. It came gradually, in distant waves, from another world.”

There are many aspects to this experience that might be related to the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. This is not the place to do a full phenomenological analysis of this description of the “zone” in football, but I would like to highlight several of the relevant aspects of the experience here described.  First, this description starts out by talking about “a subtle but powerful shift in consciousness. This altered state of consciousness is similar to that experienced by the rock climber. The next few sentences describe a shift in relevance of sensation; certain aspects of experience cease to be relevant and others take their place. The result is an experience of “silence and a sense of infinite calm.”  There is a discussion of the effortlessness of action found also in the rock climber’s experience and a holistic connection to the experience of the moment. This experience takes place in a bubble of time, where the usual subjective ways of measuring time are altered. This experience is combined with an alteration of sensate experience such that a pass can send the ball flying toward its receiver so that it comes “softly gleaming in the afternoon sunlight.” There is a return to “normal” consciousness which takes place in a gradual, stretched out way. As we will see in later chapters similar aspects of experience are reported by rock climbers describing merging with Nature.

3) In mountain climbing?

Wrestling with the Self on Mount Everest, by James Lester contains an excellent first person account of a mountain climbing experience. What follows is the first person account which forms the backbone of the Lester article:

“When we bivouacked that night I was much clearer in the things that counted to me, than in recalling time, temperature, etc. That was a destruction of what I understood when I had to relate that junk into a foolish microphone. I could see my body lying on that rock and snow, but that didn’t matter. I cared not if I came back, for life had been found (again - not the first time I felt that) which transcended mere physical survival. I knew that we would survive anyway … I felt like I could peek into the other side of life and understand death. Physical space, distance, time, etc., completely vanished. I thought of calling X several times, but he could never hear me 12 miles away anyway. Everything was gone and I was alone. Yet in that strange singleness I was a part of everything in the universe. Things mattered to me so much that the details and trivia became repulsive. I reached a void where everything became one, and I knew that I could never turn back to normal life without destroying whatever I was capable of doing. I knew that I would have to go alone in life. That most of my relatives would scorn me … It seemed to me that I understood so many things that I was dangerous. I was quite sure that I was not emotionally strong enough to bear looking at myself critically.”

Here we have read a report of an experience that occurred during a mountain climbing expedition.  As in the football report, I will simply point out various relevant aspects of this experience to show its similarity to the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. In many ways the experience of mountain climbing and the experience of rock climbing are quite similar. The two sports are closely related and there is much crossover in terms of participants, environment, training requirements, physical difficulty, the usual remoteness of the area, danger, etc.  In the description above, we find evidence of an altered state of consciousness, including a shift in relevance of meaning. Once important, “details and trivia became repulsive.” In this experience, the climber “reached a void where everything became one.” I must assume that the everything in this statement includes both Nature and the climber and that becoming one in this instance compares to the merging experience talked about in this dissertation.

There was another description in this study which seems relevant. It comes from the same climber and describes the same event. This description is found in a letter, written several weeks after the first, to another climber from the same expedition:

“There was no space, no time, no sense of losing life. It did not matter whether this type of life was lost or not, for life as I knew then transcended all physical manifestations of body. I was looking over the areté into the other side of the universe, and could more fully view the life I was still a part of. I was wafted into the ethereal space about me, I thought of calling to the others, but it seemed they must be miles away … nothing mattered any more. This is not a pessimistic view of death, but an extremely optimistic view of life in its richest sense. I knew who I was. It is a shocking thing to know so much about oneself in such a short time. It was as if twenty years had been telescoped down into a few short fleeting minutes, and that I had better do my utmost to remember all I could.

The trivia of life disappeared behind the broad, powerful outlines of existence and truth. The most unrealistic and fantastic in life became reality. The world I knew was turned upside down. I reached a void of seeing man’s insignificance and simplicity. Man vanished into nothingness, but in that nothingness lay the strength and dignity which man’s soul is capable of. I was one with the universe … As with a third eye which looks down from somewhere. I could view myself in relation to my surroundings, not only physical surroundings, but the trappings of my very being. I looked forward, not backward, I saw what lay ahead for me, and was strengthened to understand life in entirely new contexts.”

In this second description, we find yet more examples which might lead us to a deeper understanding of the experience we are only just now beginning to tap into.  There is an holistic experience of being a part of the universal surroundings. There is a subjective shift in the experience of the passage of time.   Trivia disappears and Truth becomes known. This climber reports “I was one with the universe,” and is transformed so that they now understand “life in entirely new contexts.”

D) What related research has been done?

1) by Csikszentmihalyi?

The main dimensions of flow- intense involvement, deep concentration, clarity of goals and feedback. loss of a sense of time, lack of self-consciousness and transcendence of a sense of self, leading to an autotelic, that is, intrinsically rewarding experience

Csikszentmihalyi interviewed a number  of subjects in diverse activities, including music composers, chess and basketball players, dancers, surgeons, and, related to the work here, rock climbers. He found the motive for involvement in all of these activities is the intrinsic reward they offer their participants. When these activities are fully explored by their members, a kind of personal transcendence is experienced which Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘flow’.

Csikszentmihalyi describes his motivation in conducting the above mentioned research:

… Individuals who spent great amounts of time in strenuous activities for which they got no money and little recognition. They included amateur athletes, chess masters, rock climbers, dancers, high school basketball players, and composers of music. Basically what we wanted to find out was how such people described the activity when it was going particularly well.”

And some of the preliminary findings:

Despite the obvious difference between such endeavors as climbing rocks and writing music, a common set of structural characteristics was found to distinguish those patterns of action that produced flow from the rest of everyday life.

One writer who has provided deep insights into Csikszentmihalyi’s work is R.G. Mitchell.  Mitchell presents a summary of distinguishing characteristics of the “flow” experience:

To develop a theoretical model of enjoyment we need to consider three elements which constitute and potentiate the flow experience. First, for flow to be achieved, it is necessary for freedom of choice among a wide range of uncertain outcomes to be possible. Second, the actor must creatively fashion from these myriad uncertainties some limited task within the limits of his or her perceived abilities. Third, he or she must achieve a level of involvement such that consciousness of the task at hand and the doing of it blend, that action and awareness become indistinguishable.

These characteristics combine in the familiar pattern of play, as described in the following.

Play is any sequence of patterned actions which a person perceives as being a result of his voluntary choice and which he pursues primarily because he enjoys the experience.

Pearson stresses the importance of play in Csikszentmihalyi’s theories with this definition:

Play, in reference to flow, is defined “as a context  in which flow may be experienced.”

‘Flow’ has certain connections with this current research project. Both ‘flow’ and merging with Nature seem to occur in various groups of people while they are conducting certain activities, with rock climbing being one of those activities. What is ‘flow?’ Let’s see how Csikszentmihalyi defines ‘flow.’

Flow denotes the holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement. It is the kind of feeling after which one nostalgically says: ‘That was fun’ or ‘that was enjoyable’. It is the state in which action follows upon action according to an internal logic which seems to need no consciousness intervention on our part. We experience it as a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment; between stimulus and response; or between past, present, and future.

What is it about ‘flow’ that is so special? Csikszentmihalyi describes the response of individuals who have had flow experiences:

They all find in such experiences (flow) a rare fulfillment that they try to recapture as often as possible. The question then becomes, What must one do to find this harmonious state of mind?

Unfortunately, the question of how to find a harmonious state of mind seems beyond the scope of this dissertation. As will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3, the main focus will be describing the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

Therefore, we must leave Csikszentmihalyi’s interesting questions for future research.

2) by Deikman?

Accounts of mystic experiences can be categorized as (a) untrained-sensate, (b) trained-sensate, and (c) trained-transcendent.

Experiences of the ‘untrained-sensate’ are characterized as spontaneous mystical experiences occurring within the sensory field, without influence by any specific practice designed to incur mystic experiences. ‘Trained-sensate experiences also occur in the sensory field, but this time resulting from a directed practice designed to incur such experiences. ‘Trained-transcendent’ experiences seem to take the experiencer beyond the sensory field into a transcendental realm, and result from following a training designed to do so.

In Deikman’s description of ‘untrained sensate’ mystic experiences we find the following comments:

Nature and drugs are the most frequent precipitating factors. James cites the account of Trevor to illustrate a nature experience:

For nearly an hour I walked along the road to the “Cat and Fiddle,” and then returned. On the way back, suddenly, without warning, I felt that I was in heaven - an inward state of peace and joy and assurance indescribably intense, accompanied with a sense of being bathed in a warm glow of light, as though the external condition had brought about the internal effect - a feeling of having passed beyond the body, through the scene around me stood out more clearly and as nearer to me than before, by reason of the illumination in the midst of which I seemed to be placed. This deep emotion lasted, though with decreasing strength, until I reached home, and for some time after, only gradually passing away.

There are numerous themes to this report. Nature and drugs are cited as precipitating factors. The experience occurs “suddenly” and “without warning.” There is an intense inner experience of peace, joy, and assurance. James describes “being bathed in a warm glow of light.” There is a blurring of the distinction between internal and external experience. His relationship to his body is altered, his sensory perceptions are heightened. One theme in particular, a deep emotion that lingers, is referred to here specifically:

Spontaneous conversion experiences are also noteworthy for their influence on a person’s life. Typical of all mystic experience is a more or less gradual fading away of the state, leaving only a memory and a longing for that which was experienced.

Expressions of other aspects of mystical experiences can be found in Deikman’s article. Here we find a statement about ‘Unity’ that combines a theoretical approach and some clues into experiential aspects:

Unity can be viewed as a dedifferentiation that merges all boundaries until the self is no longer experienced as a separate object and customary perceptual and cognitive distinctions are no longer applicable.

This description certainly classifies as describing an experience which could be understood as either a mystical experience in general, and as an experience of merging with Nature. Following this discussion of ‘Unity’ or ‘merging,’ Deikman continues with descriptions of ‘heightened sensory perceptions’ as they occur in mystical experiences:

In certain accounts of untrained sensate experience there is evidence of a gain in sensory richness and vividness. James (1929, pp.243-244), in describing the conversion experience, states: “A third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective change which the world often appears to undergo.

Underhill (1955, p. 235), describes this change: “clarity of vision, a heightening of physical perception,” and she quotes Blake’s phrase “cleanse the doors of perception.”

Authors report perceiving a new brilliance to the world, of seeing everything as if for the first time, of noticing beauty which for the most part they may have previously passed by without seeing.

Deikman’s experimental research on the mystic experience led to his presentation of the “five principal features of the mystic experience:”

(a) intense realness

(b) unusual sensations

(c) unity

(d) ineffability

(e) trans-sensate phenomena.

Experimental research on meditation drew out the following descriptions. In this study subjects were asked to focus on a blue vase while meditating.

(a) an increased vividness and richness of the percept

(b) animation in the vase

(c) a marked decrease in self-object distinction … “I began to feel, you know, almost as though the blue and I were perhaps merging, or that vase and I were … It was as though everything was sort of merging …

(d) syncretic thought and a fusing and alteration of normal perceptual modes.

3) by Pearson?

Here is a study which explores the surfer’s experience, focusing on aspects of that experience which are similar to the aspects of rock climbing that we are researching.  Although the following categories were developed to assist the quantitative analysis of the surfer’s “open-ended” responses, they provide an interesting set of “themes.”

Let’s examine the categories are they are given by Pearson:

“Social- Psychological Reasons”

1. Social Experience - Affiliation

2. Mastery of Environment

Surfing is a test against nature.

3. Vertigo, excitement, risk-taking

(Surfing gives) an excitement that comes from forms of speed and skill.

4. Technical skills challenges - (physical prowess)

A collection of skills of almost unique application, providing numerous challenges.

5. Competition

6. Ascetic Experience

7. Self-Actualization potential

8. Interaction with Environment (man-nature relationship)

Surfing is a way of appreciating nature by almost taking part in it.

9. Exercise, Health, and Fitness

10. Fun, Pleasure, Joy, Vivification

11. Kinesthetic Satisfaction

Fluid moving, feeling expressed in energy.

12. Cathartic, Compensatory

One way to get away from the “artificiality of the establishment” and appreciate the “real” living.

13. Aesthetic Experience

14. Whole Way of Life.

“Opportunity Set Reasons”

15. Economic

Surfing is a sport which can be undertaken at little or no cost.

16. Geographical Resources

17. Facilities Available

18. Significant Others and Reference Groups

19. Miscellaneous

Many of these categories could be applied to rock climbing. For example, #2 Mastery of Environment talks about surfing as a test against Nature. Rock climbing is just such a test. As in #3, rock climbing provides the excitement of vertigo and risk-taking. As in #4, rock climbing requires a unique collection of skills and physical abilities. I especially appreciate Pearson’s inclusion of relationship with Nature found in #8, specifically “Interaction with Environment.”

In the following chapter, I will present my methodological reflections, method of data gathering, analysis and presentation. This will serve as a prelude to my report on the description of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

Chapter III. Methodology:

How I did my research.

A) Theoretical Background - The way other people thought about what they did, and how they influenced me.

“As it is in political life, in the politics of science we also sometimes run into ideological dictatorships, when one way of thinking predominates in the profession and begins to drive out all conflicting views. It can also happen that a certain mind-set develops and becomes accepted without much awareness of it on the part of the participants. In such a situation, it will take a radical alternative view to make us aware of our implicit assumptions and silently operative precomprehensions and prejudices, and summon us to reflect on the meaning of our doing and on the adequacy of our concepts.”

“A numerically significant faction of psychologists, those variously described as humanistic, transpersonal, and existential-phenomenological psychologists, has decided that the ruling majority paradigm in contemporary psychology, behaviorism, and its attendant methods of research and therapy, behavior modification, is deficient in significant ways and has become part of the problem, because its underlying paradigm provides us with a reductionistic, mechanistic, and uninspiring conceptualization of the nature of man and human reality, with a robot-understanding of human interaction, and a caricature-vision of who we are.

In this chapter, I would like to explore the philosophical foundations of existential-phenomenological research methods. I will describe the method I used in gathering data. Then, I will describe the actual steps that I have taken in the analysis of that data. In my writing, I have attempted to move away from abstract terms and use language which points more directly toward things as they are.

An example where I attempted to put this idea into action is in the use of plain non-jargonistic English in my sub-titles. Titles such as Introduction, Literature Review, and Methodology are not very descriptive of the content of my writings. Thus, I have added sub-titles which, I hope, point more directly to what is meant in the titles.  I would like to affirm the value I hold that this material be accessible to any reader. While I attempt to describe the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing, I cannot assume that every reader has a technical background in existential-phenomenology.  With the intention of being as clear as possible, it seems that I must start this section on method by giving an introduction to existential-phenomenology. I will do this by examining some of the ways that existential-phenomenological research methods in psychology differ from mainstream empirical/positivistic research methods.

“The major (and perhaps most critical) issue is that people are not viewed as just objects in nature.”

With this quote, Valle et al. summarize one major distinction between the positivistic natural science approaches and the existential-phenomenological approaches to psychology. In addition to being viewed as more than just objects, our experiences are seen as more complex than observable behavior. More than objects, we are subjects; we think, feel, and can reflect on our experience.   The source of information in research psychology shifts from observation to experience as a reflection of  the merger of existentialism and phenomenology.

Along with the shift from observation to experience came a shift in the goals of psychological research. Before existential-phenomenology, a scientist may have observed a subject responding to a stimuli without ever asking that subject about his or her experience of that stimuli. Observation based psychology interpreted such observations as reflections of internal experience. For example, a study may have operationalized anxiety as “the number of times a subject looked at his or her watch.” This study then, may have asked subjects to solve a difficult puzzle. Subjects who looked at their watch more often would be said to have experienced more anxiety. Existential-phenomenology questions the practice of ‘operationalizing’ that which is being studied. The hypothetical study above may have been presented as a study on anxiety. An existential-phenomenologist would insist that before such a study could be conducted we must first return to a search for an understanding of the experience of anxiety.  Is anxiety equal to looking at one’s watch?

In a more general sense,  existential-phenomenological research methods follow Husserl’s call to return to “the things themselves.” Colaizzi describes this call and  discusses what he calls the “three-fold program” of phenomenological research in the following quote:

The return to the things themselves, the meaningful study of psychological phenomena, … requires us as psychologists to endeavor to descriptively identify what each phenomenon is. Identification of phenomena must, then, become the crucial first step in psychological research, and must become the new hallmark of psychological methodology. [Author’s emphasis] Only then does phenomenological psychology accomplish the following three-fold program: the phenomenological return to the things themselves; the investigation of phenomena in a meaningful way; and the relinquishing of the grip maintained by the technological attitude.

These “programs” are actualized in phenomenological methods by inquiring directly about experience, moving into the subjective experience and away from the manipulation of variables. Polkinghorne describes the goals of phenomenological research somewhat differently:

The aim of phenomenologically informed research is to produce clear and accurate descriptions of a particular aspect of human experience.

When experience is the source of knowledge about things, and we have been called to return to “the things themselves,” we begin by describing our experience.

The purpose of phenomenological research is to produce clear, precise, and systematic descriptions of the meaning that constitutes the activity of consciousness.

Furthermore, we are encouraged to investigate the meaning of our experience. Once we have done so, we are encouraged to share our findings with others. How is this different from traditional methodologies?

The purpose of phenomenological research is to describe the structure of an experience, not to describe the characteristics of a group who have had the experience. Rather than seeking to describe the mean and standard deviation of a group as it relates to the experience, the phenomenological concern is with the nature of the experience itself.

The foundation of existential-phenomenological research is an interest in explaining the nature and meaning of our experiences. What is the outcome of a course of study which bases itself on such an interest? Wertz gives one statement of the “product” of phenomenological research:

The products of these operations are succinct, orderly descriptions made out of original expressions of their authors (the researcher’s additions, deletions, and transformations being limited to trivial grammatical changes). These procedures aim at helping the researcher center directly on the phenomenon as put by her describers.

Such a “product,” being so different from the numbered lists and abstract theories commonly produced by natural science research studies, must have new standards of validity.  In the natural sciences, a research project is judged by how well it meets the standards of repeatability and objectivity. For example, a study may be judged by how well the research scientist eliminated the possibility of subjective experience and opinions interfering with the data. Another scientist may attempt to determine the validity of the study by attempting to repeat the conditions under which the study was conducted and then check to see that equivalent results were obtained.

In phenomenology, validity is evaluated by different standards than in traditional experimental research methods. Here, validity is not judged on scales of objectivity. When the goal is description of a phenomena, validity is judged by how well the reader comes to understand the phenomenon being described by the researcher.

Compared to positivistic-natural science, existential-phenomenology takes a different view of human experience, has different research goals, and different ways of judging the validity of research. With all these differences it should come as no surprise that existential-phenomenologist utilizes different research techniques as well.  What are the standard research methods of existential-phenomenology? Unfortunately, this is not an easy question to answer. My attempts to find the definitive existential-phenomenological research method have been fruitless. This search has taken me through descriptions of numerous and varied methods which all proclaim that they are not representative of the final development of existential-phenomenology.

“The translation of the philosophical methods developed by phenomenology into functioning research practices for psychology is unfinished.”

Giorgi makes a similar allegation in the following quote:

“As indicated in the Introduction, it is beyond the scope of this section to give either a detailed breakdown or full theoretical justification of the psychological phenomenological method that is in the process of being developed. That will be presented in a future work. Here only a sketch will be provided so that the reader can understand the reasons for the major steps of the method (and its variations).”

If, as Giorgi said in 1985 and Polkinghorne in 1989, phenomenological methods are in the process of being developed, where does that process lead? What is the goal of such a process? One may imagine that the end result would be a standardized phenomenological method.  However, in the case of phenomenological research methods, it may be that reaching a consensus is not possible.

“Previously, we have commented on the traditional tendency to force psychological contents to conform to the dictates of the experimental method. If this is to be taken seriously as a criticism of the research procedures of traditional psychology - and we intend it to be taken seriously - then, in opposition to experimentation as THE traditional method, it follows that there is no such thing as THE phenomenological method. Instead, the phenomenologist employs descriptive methods, with emphasis on the plural. Each particular psychological phenomenon, in conjunction with the particular aims and objectives of a particular researcher, evokes a particular method.  This leaves us in the unenviable position of trying to spell out phenomenological research methods and procedures while simultaneously maintaining that there is no single method or procedure, but only methods and procedures of description. The most that can be accomplished here is to point to several descriptive procedures, indicate the differences between them, and point out how each are appropriate in their respective ways, hoping that these will coalesce into a general understanding of phenomenological methodology.”

Perhaps this general understanding may be approached by reviewing the methods used by earlier existential-phenomenologists. Fortunately, some of this work has already been done. Polkinghorne compared the methods of several and developed the following general statement:

“Methods based on phenomenological principles, by contrast [to positivist psychology], function as general guidelines or outlines, and researchers are expected to develop plans of study especially suited to understanding the particular experiential phenomenon that is the object of their study.”

Hycner made a similar study and quoted Keen as saying

“… unlike other methodologies, phenomenology cannot be reduced to a ‘cookbook’ set of instructions. It is more an approach, an attitude, an investigative posture with a certain set of goals.”

Hycner presents his variation on existential-phenomenological research methods “as an attempt to sensitize the reader to a number of issues that need to be addressed in analyzing interview data rather than as a ‘cookbook’ procedure.”

Colaizzi makes the same point in the paragraph immediately preceding the presentation of his method.

It must be emphasized that these research procedures of analysis that I employed should be viewed only as typical, and are by no means definitive; furthermore, they usually develop with much overlapping among them, so that both the listed procedures and their sequences should be viewed flexibly and freely by each researcher, so that, depending upon his approach and his phenomenon, he can modify them in whatever ways seem appropriate.

How do researchers using existential-phenomenology communicate without a common method as medium of translation?

“[Researchers] may share, differ, agree or disagree at least in principle on many a procedure and finding, but this need not lead to any sort of groundless subjective or inter subjective relativism. By precisely specifying her interests and procedures, mutual understanding in reference to the phenomenon itself is always possible.”

Although we cannot find its definitive  research method, perhaps we can determine the defining characteristics of this approach, of this attitude, and of this posture called existential-phenomenology.

What have we learned so far? The researcher formulates a general plan within certain guidelines, both philosophical and practical. Some aspects of this plan are derived from the researcher’s understanding of existential-phenomenology. Other aspects are formed in response to practical limitations encountered in the application of those philosophical foundations in the real-life research situation. As many of these practical limitations are impossible to predict at the onset of each phase of the research, space is allowed for variation from the core technique. The researcher must be aware of and stay within certain basic philosophical guidelines when modifying techniques to meet circumstantial limitations. Polkinghorne compared a number of methods and developed  the following statement concerning these basic philosophical guidelines.

“A general format for the phenomenological investigation of consciousness by psychologists follows a three-step procedure. The investigator must:

1. Gather a number of naive descriptions from people who are having or have had the experience under investigation.

2. Engage in a process of analyzing these descriptions so that the researcher comes to a grasp of the constituents or common elements that make the experience what it is.

3. Produce a research report that gives an accurate, clear, articulate description of an experience. The reader of the report should come away with the feeling that ‘I understand better what it is like for someone to experience that.’”

The researcher begins by collecting numerous first person descriptions of an experience (called protocols). Then, this collection of raw data must undergo a process of analysis.  As this process of analysis is the key to the research method, we will discuss how it is done in detail. The researcher begins analysis by adopting a perspective known as bracketing. In bracketing, expectations and presuppositions are acknowledged and attempts are made to limit their effect on the interpretation of data.

“Bracketing means that one puts out of mind all that one knows about a phenomenon or event in order to describe precisely how one experiences it… Husserl introduced the idea of the phenomenological reduction, which after bracketing of knowledge about things means that one is present to all that one experiences in terms of the meanings that they hold out for consciousness rather than as simple existents.”

The concept of bracketing may be confusing, it is important to be aware that no one can “forget” what one knows about a thing. Such a temporary forgetting of a thing combined with an innocent approach would imply a transpersonal perspective. For every thing that we know is inextricably tied up with every other thing that we know, and ultimately with the basic knowledge of one’s own existence.

Merleau-Ponty questioned the possibility of achieving this perspective as a researcher. He states that “the most important lesson which the reduction teaches us is the impossibility of a complete reduction”  What this seems to imply is that it is impossible to bracket out “all” that one knows about an experience. I agree with Merleau-Ponty, however, when he states that the attempt seems worthwhile. For it seems that in the process of uncovering ever deeper presuppositions we may gain deeper insight into a topic.

As an adopted perspective, bracketing allows the researcher to approach his or her material with a fresh perspective. In its application to data analysis, bracketing may take many forms. One form of bracketing filters out situational aspects of descriptions so that the essential may be seen more clearly.

“The eidetic (essence) epoché  (abstention) is a ‘bracketing’ of interest in the particular and specific instances of an experience in order to grasp its structural principles.”

Particular and specific instances of an experience are reported in the separate protocols but it is the structural principles of the experience that holds the interest of the phenomenologist. The essence of the experience is beyond the separate examples and is approached through the search for essential structures. This requires identifying the common themes that appear in the descriptions.  How does this process of analysis begin?

“Because a whole protocol or a collection of protocols cannot be analyzed simultaneously, they have to be broken down into manageable units.”

When Polkinghorne states that ‘they’ have to be broken down into manageable units,  he refers to either ‘a whole protocol’ or a ‘collection of protocols.’  As the phenomenologist generally works with multiple protocols,  we will focus on the way the collection of protocols is broken down. It seems as though the first step must be that the collection of protocols  is broken down into manageable units.  In the absence of a clearly defined answer as to what constitutes “manageable units,” we will attempt to determine how other researchers have done their analysis from this point.

Polkinghorne describes a step in Van Kaam’s method, which seems to include a description of what may be the ‘manageable units’ described above.

“A ‘sufficiently large random sample of cases’ is taken from the pool of protocols, and a list is developed that contains ‘every basically different statement made by the subjects.’”

What is done with that list of “basically different statements?” Wertz  talks about using multiple protocols and discusses some of the issues around what to do with the separate and distinct parts of the descriptions.

“Since there are often several descriptions of each research situation (e.g. subjects’ own, others’ and interviews) and each description may be long and complex, the data must often be grouped and integrated. Interviews may be transcribed, and answers by different subjects to the same question may be placed together. What is done depends of course on the kind of data collected and the kind of analysis required. The groupings may be different for a researcher interested in preserving the integrity of each individual’s experience from one interested in comparative findings across individuals according to distinct themes; it all depends on her aims and the demands of the phenomenon. Several operations appear to be somewhat general in applicability and do require reflections as they are performed, though they may be enacted highly implicitly.”

When I read that “answers by different subjects to the same question may be placed together,”  my response was simply ‘Of course.’ Of course they can be put together. Isn’t that the goal of phenomenological analysis?  First the protocols are divided into manageable units and then those units are grouped according to themes. When themes are determined they are formed by a grouping of similar quotes. How those groups are formed is now in question. As we see in this quote from Wertz, the decision of how to form groups may be at least partially determined by  the goals of the researcher.

“The groupings may be different for a researcher interested in preserving the integrity of each individual’s experience from one interested in comparative findings across individuals. ”

Throughout my experience with phenomenology, I have been aware that a synthesis of multiple expressions of a common experience is the result of analysis. It seems to me that the goal of describing the essential structure of an experience is one that goes beyond the individual expressions of that experience. Hence, it is more important to me, as a researcher, to reach an understanding of the essence of the experience than preserving the separate and individual expressions of that experience.

This brings us back to an important point. When such decisions are left up to the researcher there is bound to be disagreement. However, there seems to be general agreement over the steps we have discussed up to now. The protocols are divided into manageable units and those units are grouped according to themes.  The way that these themes are formed seems to vary depending on the nature of the phenomenon being researched, the amount of data being analyzed, and the goals of the researcher.

During the remainder of this discussion of the general guidelines of existential-phenomenological research methods, I will present the methods of several researchers. I will include commentary and in some cases discuss where I have differed in my method. However, I will not provide a full discussion of my methodological steps until section C of this chapter.

In the next example we encounter a research step which does not attain to universal acceptance. Polkinghorne describes the step that Colaizzi takes after dividing his protocols into themes. “The phrases as they appear in the protocol are transformed into the words of the researcher.”  Colaizzi describes the danger in this step:

This is a precarious leap because, while moving beyond the protocol statements, the meanings he [the researcher] arrives at and formulates should never sever all connection with the original protocols; his formulations must discover and illuminate those meanings hidden in the various contexts and horizons … in the original protocols.

It is interesting that Colaizzi warns that this step is “precarious” but continues to suggest its application. In my data analysis, I have chosen not to follow this step. However, I have included a corresponding step.  Rather than transforming the phrases gathered in the descriptions of my co-researchers, I formed themes from related quotes and then developed a statement that represented each particular theme group. To see why I made this change, let’s compare this step with Colaizzi’s next step.

“Colaizzi’s next step is to cluster the individual themes to produce a further reduction into general themes (theme clusters) that are common to all the subjects’ protocols.”

Individual themes are the ‘meanings’ of each statement, as interpreted by the researcher. General themes represent the ‘meaning’ of each group of quotes. What I have done is to group quotes which express common themes without altering them, and then developed a statement that expresses the theme of each group.  Thus, I arrive at general themes without having altered the phrases of the co-researchers. In this step, I conserved the integrity of the individual descriptions a little further into the process of analysis.

On the other hand, I kept my eye on the group nature of the final description and formed my general themes from the collection of protocols, not separately from each protocol.

In Colaizzi’s fourth step, he determines the general themes in each protocol. In a later step, he combines those themes. In the following discussion of the differences between Colaizzi’s method and my own. I will refer to his method as “single protocol analysis,” as he analyzes each protocol separately before synthesizing their general themes. My method, which determines the general themes of the collection of protocols will be referred to as “group protocol analysis.”

First some of the similarities. Colaizzi’s method has the eventual goal of determining themes common to all protocols.  Single and group methods of analysis both attempt to elicit the common themes of the phenomenon being researched.

The difference between the two methods can be found by a deeper examination of Colaizzi’s discussion of his fourth step :

“Repeat the above for each protocol, and organize the aggregate formulated meanings into clusters of themes. The difficulties involved here are similar to those discussed in step 3, but more so since there is an attempt here to allow for the emergence of themes which are common to all of the subjects’ protocols.”

Let’s focus on the first part of this quote: “Repeat the above for each protocol, and organize the aggregate formulated meanings into clusters of themes.”   It seems as though what gets repeated is the division of the complete text of the interview transcription (formed by the co-researcher’s response to hearing his or her written reply, and the transcription of the researcher reading aloud that written reply) into separate meaning units and the process of giving those units names expressing their meaning.

We must also look at how the movement from one protocol to the next occurs. Here we directly encounter the decision whether to choose single or group protocol analysis. As the determination and subsequent naming of meaning units progresses does the researcher proceed in a strict, linear progression from the first line of the first interview to the last line of the last interview? Or is it acceptable to read segments of multiple protocols and postpone divisions of quotes until certainty arises that those divisions are the correct ones. For example, what should be done when there is confusion over whether two parts of a single quote express two different themes, versus the possibility that three different parts of the same quote express three different themes?

Before we attempt to make a decision on this issue, let’s bring in another opinion. Polkinghorne describes Giorgi’s methods:  “Giorgi describes the six steps he used in working with a single protocol (for example, the transcribed text of one complete interview).”   To continue the discussion we began with Colaizzi let us look at how Giorgi’s methods work with “a single protocol” compared to working  with the entire collection of protocols.

Giorgi’s work with the single protocol results in a ‘situated  general description.’ However, according to Polkinghorne, Giorgi “advocates the use of multiple subjects in phenomenological research.”

“The researcher moves through six steps with each subject’s protocol, developing a separate general description of the situated structure for every one.”

This suggestion that a separate general description be developed for each protocol is the standard or traditional way that multiple protocols have been worked with. But, Giorgi allows that it is not the only way.

“If the researcher begins, however, with multiple protocols, Giorgi allows that producing a general description for the situated structure for each protocol may not be necessary.”

It may actually be preferable to go directly from the meaning units to the general structural description, bypassing the ‘situated’ description. Polkinghorne describes Giorgi’s 7th step:

“7. Thus an additional step is required to produce a single general structural description. For this final description, the term situated  can be dropped if all of the subjects ‘can be subsumed under one typology’ (p. 20 ). In this step, the researcher directly synthesizes the transformed meaning units from the various protocols into a final general description.”

Among existential-phenomenologists there is general agreement that “a single general structural description” is the goal of a phenomenological investigation into an experience.  However, as has been shown, there are various means of reaching that goal. Let’s look at the pros and cons of using either single protocol analysis or group protocol analysis.

With single protocol analysis, the situatedness of each individual co-researcher is given detailed analysis. Themes developed reflecting each person’s individual experience are combined into a general set of themes. This method allows the researcher to understand each experience in fine detail which richens the understanding of the general experience. However, by following this method the researcher may unwittingly and unknowingly give higher value to one experience over all others. This may occur due to the incomplete nature of bracketing. When the researcher  has determined themes from the initial protocol, he or she moves to the second protocol and attempts to begin fresh, bracketing his or her understanding of the experience all over again. However, bracketing is always incomplete and the themes determined in the second protocol are influenced by the themes determined in the first, and so on.  It seems that this influence would necessarily increase in strength as the number of protocols analyzed increased.

With group protocol analysis, the researcher is able to bring the different voices of each co-researcher into dialogue as themes are developed.   Group protocol analysis starts with the complete collection of protocols, giving each protocol equal opportunity to inform the development of themes.  This method gains efficiency by going directly to the general themes but loses sight of the special individual nature of each co-researchers experience.

In the final analysis, it appears as though each method of protocol analysis has benefits as well as drawbacks.  One would hope that a method could be developed which would retain the positive aspects of each. However, it seems that the use of one style would preclude the use of the other. That which dis-advises the use of single protocol analysis, the incomplete nature of bracketing, also prohibits combining the two styles, group and single protocol analysis. For once themes are determined they carry over into subsequent determinations. Once again, the researcher is forced to make a decision based on his or her research goals. When the researcher is primarily interested in the individual nature of each co-researcher’s experience, he or she may choose to risk single protocol analysis. When the researcher’s interests point to the general nature of the experience, it would seem that group protocol analysis would be chosen. Each method culminates in the description of phenomena.

In the following sections, I will examine how I gathered my data, followed by an analysis of the specific steps in the method I developed to analyze the particular data that I gathered.

B) Gathering Data - How I went about doing the field work aspect of my research: meeting rock climbers, soliciting participation, written replies, scheduling and conducting interviews.

It is always preferable to do nothing than to proliferate de-humanization under the innocent sounding names of pure research, non-human research, or systematic research.

In phenomenological research methods the primary data are most often descriptions of individual experiences of the phenomenon being researched. In selecting individuals for participation in my study, I held to the basic criteria that “experience with the investigated topic and articulateness suffice as criteria for selecting subjects.”

I sought out research participants while out on personal rock climbing trips. Climbers demonstrated the ability to meet the above criteria, namely having rock-climbing experience, by being in the same locale where I went to go climbing and by being noticed preparing to climb. Due to the dangerous nature of the sport, climbers who were actively engaged in their climbs were not interrupted. Using exploratory gestures, as described below, I attempted to solicit their participation in this research project .

“How does one know whether a gesture toward innovation will strike a responsive  and sympathetic  chord in others or whether it will elicit hostility, ridicule and punishment? He answers the question in terms of exploratory gestures. Innovatory “feelers” to test the reactions of others could be put out by increments so small, tentative and ambiguous as to permit the actor to retreat should the signs become unfavorable, without having become associated with an unpopular position”.

Over the course of the summer of 1994, I spoke with around two or three hundred climbers,  telling them that I was working on my dissertation on the psychology of rock climbing, using a phenomenological approach. At this point, responses fell into two general categories, interest or lack of interest. Responses asking for more information about the research indicated interest. If they asked what it was about, I told them that the topic of my dissertation is  the inner experience of the contemporary American rock climber. At this point, I  attempted to adopt a passive stance with these potential co-researchers. Climbers who did not seek further information about the research were not questioned. This was my primary screening device. This method allowed individuals to freely choose to enter into dialogue.

Climbers who sought more information about the research usually asked for some clarification of the terms used in my description of the topic. These questions usually took the basic form of “What do you mean by…?”  No-one asked what I meant by “contemporary American rock climber” as this seemed to be self-evident to Americans climbing rocks in the present day.  This leaves two phrases which may be questioned, “phenomenological approach” and “inner experience.”  To all questions about the meaning of these terms, I  responded by discussing the phenomenological method in the following manner.

In using phenomenological research methods, the researcher presents the co-researchers with a question that asks about their experience of a phenomenon. The first question that I asked was: “Have you had an experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing?”

If they responded affirmatively, I asked if they would be willing to participate in my research study. I told them that it would involve a written description of their experience, and a follow-up interview. If they agreed to participate, I asked for  their telephone number, and mailing address. There were sixty-one climbers who shared their personal information, of these thirty-three reported having had at least one experience of merging with Nature. Once I received this information, I began a series of contacts with the “mergers.” I kept notes on these contacts, and a representative sample follows:

Sent request 8/6, follow up call 8/11, left message 8/16, follow up 8/17., Contacted 10/6 - says he will work on it, called 10/17. Received Description 11/4, called to set-up interview 11/28: left message, called 11/30: left message, Interview 12/8 @ 2 p.m.

Copies of the consent form and request for written description were printed out and mailed immediately. After a couple of days passed, a follow-up call was made to verify that the co-researchers had received the information and to remind them of the study. Contact was maintained in this manner until a written description was received  or a desire to dis-continue participation in the study  was expressed.

Out of thirty-three reported mergers, thirteen returned written reports.  Upon receipt of a written description, it was read and transcribed in preparation for the walk-through interview. Following this I called to schedule the interviews. I continued to call and leave messages, when necessary, until an interview was scheduled. Then I conducted a walk-through interview and brought home a recording of the interview. By way of describing the walk-through interview, I have included this sample of the way I explained the process to a co-researcher at the beginning of the interview:

Basically the way I conduct these interviews is to remind you of the question, and then to read from your description and you can respond in terms of whatever comes up for you, and in terms of how what you wrote relates to the question. And the question, just to remind you is: Please describe your experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

The move toward seeing the people we encounter as equal participants brings with it an increased respect for the value of that person’s inner experience.  It is here that philosophical guidelines encounter practical limitations. The researcher is interested in guiding the interaction in a specific direction, gathering data from an independent individual. Yet, the researcher does not want to bias the specific content of each individual’s response.

Dialogal research demands that the researcher be dialogally conversant with his subjects at some phase of the research. But dialogue takes place only among persons on equal levels….  [It] takes place among co-researchers.

What is the nature of the relationship between co-researchers? Obviously, the power dynamics of prediction and control common to experimental methods are significantly altered. The phenomenological researcher does not attempt to either predict or control the behavior of his or her “subjects.” Polkinghorne explains:

The reason for the move (from “subject” to “co-researcher, research partner, research collaborator, or co-author”) had been to emphasize that phenomenological research interacts in a personal manner with those asked to provide examples from their experience. People are not to be treated as experimental objects for the use of the researcher; the role and responsibility of the participants is to share their experiences with the researcher.

The role and responsibility of the researcher is to balance the need to honor and respect the experience of co-researchers with the desire to collect data.

The full participation in the dialogal approach engenders contacting the co-researchers not as researchers but as persons…  The dialogal approach must take place in a situation of trust.

For those accustomed to viewing scientific research through the lens of objectifying techniques of “predict and control,” there may appear to be a conflict between this philosophical guideline “contact co-researchers … as persons … in a situation of trust,”  and the practical limitations or constraints of  “I need to record this encounter on tape and make sure that my co-researcher talks about the topic I am researching.” This issue is solved by the listening style described below:

Not only must the interviews be taped and transcribed, but the researcher must be present to his subject(s) in a special way. While his subject does provide him with data, the researcher must realize that his subject is more than merely a source of data: he is exquisitely a person, and the full richness of a person and his verbalized experiences can be contacted only when the researcher listens to him with more than just his ears; he must listen with the totality of his being and with the entirety of his personality. One can be present to the totality of a person only by being totally present to him; one must be present in every imaginable way; the researcher must assume the stance of imaginative listening.

How do the techniques of imaginative listening, and encountering co-researchers as persons, help one to gather data?  The researcher must  be able to adopt both active and passive roles in the encounter.  In contrast to objective science methods, where the research is done by the researcher on or to the subject,  here the encounter is one of dialogue. Both the researcher and the co-researcher adopt passive and active roles.  The researcher actively initiates the dialogue with a question. The researcher then passively listens  to (and actively tapes) the response. The co-researcher is passive in hearing the question and active in responding to it. Another active role of the researcher occurs when the co-researcher does not reply to the question in terms of actual experience and begins analyzing the experience, or discussing other outside elements.

The production of phenomenological protocols requires that subjects’ awareness be redirected toward their own experiencing. The way the researcher frames questions can help subjects to report their experiences rather than to give worldly depictions. By asking, What did you experience? or. What was it like for you? instead of, What happened?, the investigator is more likely to elicit experiential data.

These are the main guidelines for conducting the walk-through interview. I attempted to limit my input to reading the written reply word-for-word and pausing and allowing the co-researcher to reply fully to each phrase or sentence. This technique was not always found to remain true to the primary objective of encountering co-researchers as persons, and remaining present to the lived situation.  The primary way that this method, when followed in a rigid manner,  was deficient showed up when it forced the researcher into a mechanistic or robotic relationship with the co-researchers. When necessary, I became more active by re-directing the co-researchers to their experience.  The walk-through interview was an excellent guideline for this research , as a technique it was helpful for maintaining focus on the task at hand, avoiding straying or tangential forms of conversation, and limiting the amount of time necessary to gather a complete interview. In short, I was able to gather data using this technique and it required very few variations in response to philosophical guidelines and circumstantial necessities.

In summary, I met rock climbers, engaged them in a dialogue, and asked if they had experienced merging with Nature while rock climbing. If they replied “Yes,” I asked if they would be willing to participate in my research study. If they were willing, I requested a written reply to the question “Please describe your experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.” This written reply plus the transcription of their walk-through interview formed the sum of the data for that individual, their protocol. The following section describes the steps used in conducting thematic analysis with the collected protocols.

C) Data Analysis - How I worked with the written replies and interview materials after gathering data.

a) Transcription of the interviews as close to word-for-word as possible.

b) Gather all relevant data, forming the collection of protocols. Bracket, and read the collection of protocols with an openness to the experiences described.

c) Prepare raw data for analysis, determine meaning units, and discard irrelevant material.

d) Organize related meaning units into clusters of themes.

e)  Validate theme clusters by reading each one looking for internal consistency.

f) Validate theme clusters by comparing them to the situated, contextual nature of the original protocols.

g) Determine relevant theme clusters, discard theme clusters not directly descriptive of the experience.

h) Put the voices of the co-researchers into dialogue.  Stitch related meaning units together with reflective commentary.

In the presentation of this summary of the steps that I have taken in the analysis of my research protocols, I am entering into the difficult arena of concretizing a flowing, intuitive process. Any attempt to express this process in a step-by-step manner encounters the inevitable linearization of an intuitive circumambulation of the central themes. None-the-less, the following section presents a general summary of the steps of analysis that  I followed once all the data was collected:

a) Transcription of the interviews as close to word-for-word as possible.

This step simply deals with the practical necessities of transforming gathered data into a manageable form. “As close to word-for-word as possible,” refers to instances where transcription of exact words are impossible or unnecessary. Impossible cases may occur when parts of the interview are either garbled or missed due to technical difficulties. “Unnecessary” refers to those words that have no reference, i.e. “uh, I mean, like, well, and…” Words which in context are nothing more than audible exhalations and markers of change in thought were not always transcribed.

b) Gather all relevant data, forming collection of protocols.  Bracket, and read the collection of protocols with an openness to the experience described.

Compare all interviews with their written descriptions, making sure that all parts of the written descriptions that may have been missed in the interviews are included.  This step is a simple matter of making sure that all gathered data is available before I begin thematic analysis. The raw data consists of thirteen protocols, eleven contain both written replies and interview transcriptions, and two protocols are written replies only. This step is where I made the final check to determine that I actually had all of the raw material present.

During bracketing, an attempt is made to leave all pre-formed expectations behind, in order to be more fully present to the material.  While going through the raw data, themes arose spontaneously in a pre-reflective manner. These themes presented themselves as possibilities, not fully thought out nor confirmed. At this stage there was no concrete proof for the existence of a theme.  However, these intuitive recognitions form the basis of later thematic organization of related meaning units.

c) Prepare raw data for analysis, determine meaning units  and discard irrelevant material.

I carefully read through the protocols, looking for all places where meanings shift. As I read through the protocols, I stopped to separate the differing elements of each transcription into separate meaning units. Those parts which expressed one aspect of the experience which was recognizably different from another aspect of the experience were separated. I labeled the beginning of each new meaning unit with the co-researcher’s first name or initials, and deleted all non-relevant meaning units.

Reading through the protocols, I simultaneously marked relevant meaning units and deleted irrelevant data. Examples of non-relevant material which was deleted: “This is my cat.” “We were climbing in Nevada.” “I was with my friend Bill,” “I gotta tape Seinfeld at 8:00.”   There was no need to divide or separate these tasks.  Caution was employed and any meaning unit that appeared potentially relevant was retained. For example, it was not clear if references to participation in other sports has relevance to the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.  Retention of these statements allows for the possibility that they may, later, show themselves as important metaphors for understanding the central experience, merging with Nature while rock climbing.

d) Organize related meaning units into clusters of themes.

Based on the pre-reflective encounter with potential themes, related meaning units that seemed to express a common theme were grouped together.  I always allowed for the possibility that a potential theme cluster could have been discarded and its meaning units recontextualized. While reading the collection of protocols, new  potential groupings of meaning units occasionally presented themselves.  I continued to organize meaning units into theme clusters until all meaning units were accounted for.

These theme clusters were then each separately thought over and an attempt was made to imagine what that part of the experience felt like. Several words were chosen which approximated the essence of that theme, then the next theme was given similar attention. As this process continued, the essence of each theme began to express itself in a more convincing manner and a statement of its essence began to arise. When all meaning units were accounted for and all theme clusters were marked by a statement of essence, this step was complete.

e) Validate theme clusters by reading each one looking for internal consistency.

While engaged in this step, I asked the following questions of each theme cluster: “Does this theme cluster consistently represent a unique theme?” “What is that theme?” “What other ways might these meaning units be grouped?” “What other meaning units might be included to enhance this theme?” “Which meaning units do not belong with this theme?”

Distinct themes were retained. Inconsistent themes were amended. In the extreme case where formed theme clusters were later found to contain unrelated meaning units, they were rearranged and/or their constituent parts placed in more appropriate theme clusters. Re-reading each theme cluster helped make it clear when  a consistent theme was formed naturally.

f) Validate theme clusters by comparing them to the situated, contextual nature of the original protocols.

Compare each theme cluster to the original protocols.  Does each theme cluster represent a majority of the protocols? When theme clusters are formed from a small number of protocols or even a single protocol, this fact must be reflected in the discussion. Obviously a theme cluster which is supported by all of the protocols will have a stronger case for its representation of the general essence of the experience. Theme clusters supported by a smaller number of protocols will be seen as more special cases, more reflections of the situatedness and context of the individual(s) than the general essence of the experience.

g) Determine relevant theme clusters, discard theme clusters not directly descriptive of the experience.

After a first set of 20 themes  were determined (step d), and validated (steps e and f),  another cut, similar to that made when separating relevant data and irrelevant data (step c), was made by examining each of these themes to gather the more directly relevant.

Imaginative variation techniques were applied to each theme. Of each theme, questions such as the following were asked: Is understanding this theme necessary or even helpful for increasing the reader’s understanding of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing? Is an attempt to increase understanding of this theme worthwhile or meaningful?

Themes that were determined irrelevant to the focus on the experiential aspect of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing were set aside.

h) Put the voices of the co-researchers into dialogue.  Stitch related meaning units together with reflective commentary.

Like mortar in a stone wall, the separate meaning units are held together with commentary. Each of the relevant theme clusters were re-read and their meaning units sorted into groupings of further detail.  All materials not helpful in expressing the essence of the theme or repetitive were cut from the analysis.

Descriptive statements follow each meaning unit as segues into following meaning units. The resulting mix of commentary and co-researcher statements forms the description of that theme. The combined set forms the description of the experience of merging with Nature.

Chapter IV. Results

The answer to my question.

A) Introduction - How the results will be presented.

The products of these operations are succint, orderly descriptions made out of original expressions of their authors.

In this chapter, I would like to share the results of my research into the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. I will do so by presenting eleven themes, arrived at by following the method presented in Chapter 3. As described in the preceding quote, these themes are descriptions consisting primarily of quoted meaning units drawn directly from co-researcher protocols. I say ‘primarily’ as these descriptions are not merely lists of clustered meaning units. I have tried to make these individual bits and pieces of descriptions hold together as coherent reflections of different essential aspects of the whole experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. Statements where I have asked for clarification or otherwise used words not exactly as they were presented in the written replies are marked C.W. I have marked those places where I am reading from the written replies with the name (disguised) of the co-researcher, these have quotation marks. Direct transcripts of co-researcher statements are marked with the co-researcher’s name and are in Chicago font.

The following is a list of themes that were considered directly relevant and/or particularly helpful in reaching a deeper understanding of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

1) There is an experience of liberation from everyday, ordinary distractions, fears and worries.

Barry, Jim, Lee, L.W., Michael, Robert, S.M., S.T., T.B.

2) Feeling content and peaceful.

Barry, Lee, S.A., S.M.

3) The conscious mind relaxes and the body takes over.

B.H., Michael, S.T., T.M.

4) Physically strenuous activity becomes or is perceived as effortless.

Jim, Lee, S.M., S.T., T.B., T.M.

5) One notices being intensely focused with an increased sense of concentration.

Barry, Robert, S.M., T.B.

6) Many climbers experience heightened sensory perceptions.

Barry, B.H., Jim. Lee, Michael, Robert, S.A., T.B.

7) Sensation that the rock/ Nature is alive.

B.H., D.W., Michael, S.A., T.B., T.M.

Holistic awareness of being a part of Nature.

Barry, B.H., Jim, Lee, Michael, Robert, S.A., S.M.

9) Mystical awareness or spiritual experience.

Barry, B.H., D.W., Lee, Michael, S.A., S.M., S.T., T.B., T.M.

10)   The experience of time is altered.

Lee, S.A., S.M., T.M.

11) They regret that the experience is over, the feelings linger on, there is a strong desire to repeat the experience as soon and as often as possible.

Jim, Robert, Michael, S.A., S.M., T.B.

B) Results - Analysis and commentary.

This section consists of the presentation of theme clusters, relevant meaning units and commentary. Each theme will be discussed separately. A summarized overview of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing will be presented in chapter V.

1) There is an experience of liberation from everyday, ordinary distractions, fears and worries.

(Barry, Jim, Lee, L.W., Michael, Robert, S.M., S.T., T.B.)

In this theme, the experience of liberation from everyday, ordinary distractions, fears and worries is discussed. Although some would say that being aware of such things is a sign of responsibility, others feel a need to put such things aside.  This is a transitional theme in that it reflects the process of putting aside one’s everyday life and moving into the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. As such, this seems to be an appropriate theme with which to begin our discussion. In order to reflect this transition, let’s begin by describing “everyday, ordinary distractions, fears and worries.”

In a style used by many of my co-researchers, Lee uses descriptions of what merging with Nature is NOT to point indirectly to it, as it seems to be more elusive and harder to describe directly.

Lee. Yeah, because it gives me the feeling of being detached from “all this.” When I say “all this,” I mean all this Front Range activity. All the hordes of people, the traffic, the noise, cars, whatever. The only reason I live down here is because Gwen is finishing school. I set it up so that I could come down and climb. And the climbing is good. On a day to day basis, I fucking hate it down here. Because there’s so many people, I’m not from the city. This isn’t me. I’m not from here. I’m from a small town,  Crested Butte. Small and quiet.

What is “all this?” “All this” is the life we live when we are in the city.  According to Lee, “all this” is not “small and quiet.” Let’s see what else Lee has to say about city life.

Lee. Down here, I just feel like I’m existing. Driving and growing old at stop lights.  Every block, growing older just sitting there. When I get up there, I just feel alive. Every minute counts, every moment counts. Whereas here it’s different.  For example, going to work I go through milestones. Eight to ten. Ten is my break, that’s my first milestone. Second milestone is lunch. I get to lunch and the day is more that half over with. And you want  the day to go. It’s your life that’s disappearing as you are hoping that time will go faster so that you can get off work. That’s just existing, not living. That’s how  a lot of people have lived their lives, just existing.

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that way, but after hearing Lee put it in these terms it is difficult to accept and be satisfied with a less than optimum lifestyle. In Lee’s written description, he contrasted city life with being in the mountains and climbing. He described life in the mountains and especially climbing as life where he felt “alive and free.”  I asked him to elaborate on this description.

Lee. (“Alive and Free?” Can you describe that?) No worries. No regrets. No time, time doesn’t matter. It’s probably idealistic to think that you can be like that all the time. Not having to work, and not having to pay your bills. Just live in a cabin up in the woods and be able to climb all the time and do whatever you want. To be completely at ease with what you are doing and who you are.

It may be idealistic to think that one may feel alive and free all of the time, but at least Lee knows where he can go to feel like that at least for a little while.  In a similar vein, Robert talks about how we forget what life can be and grow accustomed to a limited aspect of the fuller picture.

Robert. Today, I’m distracted by some of the everyday things in life that I am doing. And you actually lose that connection and I think that a good example is how people are treating the environment.  They don’t realize that they are actually doing it to themselves. If they were to take a knife and cut off their finger, they would see it as ridiculous. People would see that as something that’s wrong. Yet, when you’re polluting, you’re doing almost the same thing, you’re cutting off your own air. But, we’ve distanced ourselves so much from everything that we don’t see it as wrong.

S.T.’s description gives us an idea of what can be left behind and continues by describing the world that is encountered while rock climbing. Here we may see how it is that rock climbing squeezes out distracting thoughts.

S.T. You didn’t think about work, you didn’t think about your wife, about finding a campsite the next day, you didn’t think about any of those things, it was just your little world that you were in, and you were in it with somebody who was a good friend, and everything was positive, confidence was high, you were having fun, we never from that point on talked about ‘God, where does the route go?’ at least not in any negative way, we searched the whole way, but it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, shit,’ we talked about world politics as we  re-racked. So, that confidence thing is pretty much the essence of the whole deal.

When  S.T. mentioned not thinking about regular things, I wanted to get him to talk about what took the place of those things. In order to re-focus the discussion on the actual experience, I asked him to describe the “little world” he had mentioned.

S.T. We were in our own little world.

C.W. Can you describe the parameters of that little world, or what that experience was like?

S.T. Yeah, it’s little ledges, it moves along with you, and you’re looking up at the rest of the route occasionally, but it really, a lot of times, I don’t know if you’ve climbed at night before, but that is the ultimate in ‘your little world,’ you have a head lamp on, and so you have a little spot, four or five inches diameter and that’s your world, when you come up on a crevasse, that’s part of your world, and then you pass that crevasse and it’s not part of your world. This was in the daytime, so this was a little bit bigger than that. The world was, in the biggest sense, was the North West Face of Half Dome, at times it was a five foot section of a difficult crux on a pitch, every once in a while you would get intrusions into that world … there were a couple of guys over on a route called ‘Queen of Spades,’ doing the second ascent, it’s really heinous  A4 nailing, every once in a while the guy on the porta-ledge, would turn on the boom-box, and play some Grateful Dead, and you would get that coming into your world, but they were the only other party on the whole face, so there weren’t that many interruptions, and they seemed to be pretty quiet, and they were several hundred feet over to the side. So, that’s kind of the world that we were in at that time.

When your attention is focused on several square feet and the nearest people are far away and they are focusing on their several square feet, worrying about paying bills is a long way from entering your mind. It seems to me that not only is one’s world condensed spatially but also temporally. The past and the future are forgotten in the awareness of the now.

T.B. There are many reasons why climbing is a part of me now. Getting outside and focusing on climbing and putting away all of my cares as far as work, relationships, what I have to get done, bills I have to pay, or whatever. Climbing strips all that bullshit and gets down to what is real. Which is rock, and sky and muscle … It’s complex in a way, but it’s simple in a way. It’s sort of the lowest common denominator.

T.B. It gets rid of the noise in my head, work, relationships, bills to pay… Occasionally, some noise shows up, like if it’s lightning and the hair stands on end.

Although T.B. mentioned that climbing helps her to get rid of the noise in her head, she also talks about how doing this improves her experience of climbing.

T.B. I definitely think that one of the keys is getting rid of all the bullshit in your life. When that happens everything dissolves.

T.B. All of the daily life, trivial problems sort of dissolve when you have a good day climbing.

Both T.B. and S.T. seemed to find it easier to talk about what disappeared when they experienced merging with Nature while rock climbing. So, I found it necessary to ask T.B. what she experienced in the absence of daily, trivial problems.

T.B. Instead (of daily, trivial problems) … It’s so hard to talk about. It’s hard to put words to sometimes. Because for me, all of my senses come into play. I don’t know if it’s like a dream state, or some kind of euphoria that replaces what’s going on in your life, or that replaces thinking ‘oh, this is hard.’

So here we have a brief description of what replaces daily trivial problems. There is an experience where all of the senses are activated, and this experience is compared to a “dream state” or “euphoria.”

C.W. Would you say that that ‘dream state’ or ‘euphoria’ is parallel to the experience of merging with Nature?

T.B. I think so. Because it’s sort of how I perceived the question. When you reach that state, and so many times when you’re climbing you’re not killing the environment when you’re out there. It doesn’t impact on Nature like going out to a bar, or driving your car.

After that brief description, T.B. returned to what the experience was not. This was common in the interviews and I’ll give another example of it here.

L.W. To be one with nature is essentially to be free from the unnatural surroundings in which we live our daily lives. Urban living, work, traffic, interaction with other people, (women in particular) all serve to distract us as human beings from harmony with nature, and consequently with ourselves as a part of nature. I suppose we all have different ways of renewing that bond, but rock climbing is mine.

We can pick out some descriptors of the experience of merging with Nature in between the statements of what it is not. According to L.W., we find that merging with Nature is “to be free,” to be in “harmony with Nature” and “with ourselves.”

How is this different in rock climbing as opposed to other activities?

Michael. During the climb, it was, … you know how you’re running through thoughts in your head, you’re constantly thinking of other things, just like when I go jogging, I never think about my jog, in fact it’s the furthest thing from my mind. I always think about what’s going on in my life or other matters, and that’s what was going on. The whole experience itself, brought about this, the peak experience, brought about a more intensity, meaning that I could experience these things in a much deeper way  because of the affective component being more intense.

While it may be possible to think about balancing your checkbook while jogging, it is much more difficult to think about other things while climbing. Unless the climbing is on easy terrain:

Barry. “The first few pitches were pretty easy. In fact they were a little bit too easy. I remember mentioning to my partner how it was hard to really get into it because of the ease of it.”

Barry. It’s just that when I am climbing I like it to be at a certain level where I can really get into it. That’s something I really  like about when I am done, a lot of times,  coming down, I feel refreshed.

Barry. All the little shit that was bothering me,  it has disappeared, it’s all gone. It wasn’t all that hard. Some of the stuff … I remember  just sitting out there and all this stuff was bothering me,  my mind was wandering about a lot and it wasn’t very hard getting going. I remember feeling, like, ‘this is wasn’t what I expected.’ I look forward to  really getting into it when I go out there.

So it’s not just any climbing that allows this liberation from distractions. The climbing must be sufficiently difficult for this to happen.  Perhaps this explains the following quote from Lee.

Lee. So, that doesn’t happen on every pitch or even every climb necessarily. But it may happen after five pitches one day, and then another day you might  not really get it because you might have floundered on a route. You might have other things on your mind. So you don’t necessarily get the peaceful feeling. I get it most of the time, I get the peaceful feeling.

If the climbing is not sufficiently difficult it remains possible to have “other things on your mind” and you won’t get the “peaceful feeling,” Lee’s name for the experience of merging with Nature. It is not something as simple as an increased difficulty level that makes the difference. If the challenge is unmeetable, there is no opportunity to enter into a flow state.

Another condition that has an effect is the visual environment.

When you can see the city skyline on the horizon, it is harder to forget about returning to work on Monday.  Even nearby traffic constitutes a distraction.

Barry. “This is what I love so much about alpine climbing, no crowds, no artificial noise.”

Barry. It gets you in tune hiking through all that stuff. Getting in there, you get a chance to soak everything in. It makes it a lot different than climbing in the Canyon, all the people, like where were at today, the traffic going by. Yeah, there’s no distractions anywhere.

Barry .“No distractions, no crowds, no artificial noise. Just you and the mountains”.

This statement from Robert reminds me about the experience of lack of distractions, describes what those distractions might be, and talks about the omnipresence of Nature.

Robert. “When I go out climbing the fact that you get into surroundings that are moving with a more natural way helps me remember what nature is.”

Robert. You get away from your computer, you get away from your car, you get away from all of the other things that you were thinking about. It’s kind of all that background noise. You are able to eliminate that. You don’t have to go out climbing, you can just go out for a walk, a hike. But it’s easier to remember Nature, when you’re standing in the middle of a more apparent nature. Because Nature is everywhere you go, but some of it’s more easy to recognize. Both Denver and Rocky Mountain National Park are nature, but RMNP has a lot more to recognize as nature than, let’s say downtown Denver.

Eliminating background noise is the result and getting out into Nature and doing something there, such as rock climbing, seems to be the precipitating action. This “noise” that Robert talks about is what we normally consider everyday thoughts.

Now, let us try to turn toward the experience of getting rid of those background thoughts.  Barry relates this experience to meditation.

Barry. “Clearing out all other thoughts, a simple form of meditation.”

Barry. That’s one of the reasons I really enjoy it (climbing). You can really get into it, you don’t notice it, it just happens while you’re out there. You just really get into it … Later on, after you’re done. You realize that was great, that was excellent, that’s just what I was looking for.

It’s just when things are really working and you’re in there and it feels great. Like I say, you don’t notice it, but later on you notice the feeling of being refreshed.

It’s something that you don’t  really realize that you’re into it until you’re done, because if I was thinking “wow this is great I’m not thinking about anything else,” I would be thinking about something else. So it doesn’t enter, it doesn’t happen all the time.

This experience is one where value judgments are not made and the mind exists in a clearer state. Jim also compares this state to meditation.

Jim. It was almost like meditation, I don’t know if you meditate at all, or know anybody that does, but basically you will do a sort of mental exercise that helps focus your mind on a very specific object, whether it’s counting your breath, visualizing a candle flame, whatever it happens to be, on rare occasions you will attain a certain clarity when you do that. Well, this was like that times 10 or 100, just the … there were no distractions, you talk about a clear mind, it’s just a complete ability to focus and concentrate, without the interference of emotion, that was the big thing, there wasn’t fear, there wasn’t terror, there wasn’t concern about ‘what’s going to happen next?’ It was just, this is what has to be done:  This step has to be taken, the toe has to be placed, this ledge has to be chopped, it was, it just had to be done, and there was no other thought than that, and it was going to be done, to there was a real sense of calm and confidence that things were going to work out the way they had to.

Jim puts the experience of merging with Nature on a very high plane. In his description he begins by comparing it to meditation, then to the rare occasions in meditation where a higher level of clarity is achieved, then he concludes that merging with Nature is 10 or 100 times higher or more intense than those special occasions in meditation.

I have included this statement from S.M. here to bring in a reminder that these types of comparative statements are retrospective. During the experience, such comparisons would seem irrelevant.

S.M. In the moment I wasn’t really aware of other people, or … It was more an awareness of the experience of just being there, so it was in retrospect that I became aware of my experience of the view, and …

Only in retrospect does awareness of the change in consciousness return. In retrospect, a detached viewpoint can be held, but during the experience there is only awareness of being there.

Robert. “just a heightened awareness of my presence in, with and in relationship to my environment.”

Robert. I guess, when it’s right there in front of you and all else has been set aside. I guess it’s just that much easier to see, it’s much clearer. And a lot of it has to do with your focus, on what you’re doing. Climbing, in a way, demands your focus on one thing; if you’re thinking about how your car’s running, your house payments, your school bills, you’re not going to be there. You’re going to be think about that other thing. But climbing, demands that you’re there in the moment thinking about what you’re doing. I think that the risk involved, help you devote your attention to that one thing.

Robert. (C.W. “Setting all else aside?”) You can’t be thinking about other things and still accomplish the climb.

S.T. makes a similar statement concerning how climbing helps one achieve this state of consciousness.

S.T. (C.W. The lack of interruptions, the concentration had narrowed down your focus?) Exactly, big time, and that is just one of the best things about climbing.  Everybody asks why you climb, it’s tough to vocalize those things.  But that’s a big part of why I climb. (What is that?) That you just get so focused, that everything else, you don’t even think about… it’s an escape.

It may be an escape, but it seems to be a pleasant one. Here is another statement from Robert describing how climbing narrows your focus into the present moment.

Robert. There’s just one thing that you’re trying to do. There wasn’t anything else that you were thinking about.  You were there in the moment, you didn’t necessarily worry about the last bolt that you had clipped into,  you were not necessarily thinking about the next bolt you were going to … It was more of a ‘I had to take care of this move at a time,’ living in just that immediate moment.

One move at a time, and nothing else enters into the picture. S.M. describes what might happen if this state of concentration is not reached and how she moved beyond her fear.

S.M. “If I had thought about some of the moves, I probably would have been too frightened to try them.”

S.M. [Instead of thinking about the moves, I was] Doing them. Just doing them.

Fear sometimes results from an over vigilant awareness of objective dangers. They always exist, but paying too much attention to them can hinder climbing performance, enhancing the danger. To climb well is to find a balance between risk and challenge, between bravery and recklessness. This brings back to mind the idea that the climbing must be of an appropriate difficulty level to achieve the maximum experience.

T.B. “Yesterday was different because nearly all objective dangers were removed.”

T.B. Since I was bouldering,  which in the beginning I say ‘bouldering, that’s not really climbing,’ but it is. I don’t choose to really solo much because something could happen, but bouldering is really close to that because you are really focused and you don’t have gear to deal with, you don’t have to worry about your belayer because you have no belayer. It‘s a  more pure, more simple thing.

In this statement from T.B. she refers to an absence of objective dangers. As this is nearly impossible to achieve, we must assume that she means that these dangers were absent from her awareness. As she had earlier talked about how fear had kept her from enjoying her climbing, we may assume that on this day she had returned to a climb where the difficulty level was a suitable match not only to her climbing ability but also to her fear level.

T.B. “I was climbing free of equipment, free of a partner, and most importantly free of that paralyzing fear.”

T.B. It was a perfect day,  I wasn’t far off the ground, perfect weather,  I didn’t have to worry about lightning, ice,  rockfall, anything. There was nothing to worry about at all.  Sometimes bouldering, I will only go so high, or won’t do certain problems because I don’t want to break my ankle. For some reason, that didn’t even enter my mind.

T.B. I was mostly staying low, but when I did go up high it was really casual and I felt solid, so I wasn’t thinking ‘eek! I’m going to fall and break my ankle.”

She was able to break through her fear and return to the enjoyment of climbing. Again we have a reminder of what was absent (fear) in that experience of merging with Nature.

During the experience of merging with Nature there is no sensation of fear (neither too little nor too much), regardless of the conditions.

Jim There was no sense of fear whatsoever, there was the reality that we probably weren’t going to survive, but somehow that didn’t really have much of an impact,

S.M. begins with fear, and in a move parallel to Jim’s acceptance of the inevitability of death, makes a decision to go on anyway. The result is a transformation of that fear. Compare Jim’s statement: “There was no sense of fear whatsoever” with the following statement from S.M.

S.M. “my usual fear of heights was absent.”

S.M. It wasn’t until we got ready to belay down that it occurred to me ‘Gee, I’m not even afraid!’  Usually I’m afraid when I’m standing on the edge getting ready to go down. I have that fear or that anxiety … whatever.  It wasn’t there.

Intense, subjectively experienced fear was followed by a release wherein the objective conditions have not changed, only the sensation of fear and the perception of danger.

We have mentioned several aspects of fear. Both perceived  danger and actual danger can leave the climber in the grip of fear. This fear can increase or decrease over time. This can happen gradually or suddenly. As S.T.  describes below there can be many ups and downs in the course of a single climb.  Although he and his partner had started out feeling confident, S.T. soon began to feel unsure of himself and was becoming overwhelmed with worries and apprehensions. This changed with  some positive feedback from his partner.

S.T. “I don’t even remember what he [my climbing partner] said but suddenly things clicked.”

That clicking is what S.T. described as the beginning of his experience of merging with Nature.

S.T. It’s just mainly a turning around of an attitude, from frustration and negative thoughts to more confidence and positive thoughts.

S.T. goes further and describes his new attitude.

S.T. “All of the worries and apprehensions fell away like the #1 Camalot Clay dropped off the 31st pitch of the Nose the previous year.”

S.T. It was just like when you take a backpack off,  it just felt like, up to that point, up to the point where I got back onto the rock, everything had been fairly negative, a long hike in, the bear got a bunch of our food, I didn’t feel like I got a good night’s sleep… It felt like a weight was lifted off me, that confidence was back, and we were having fun, and from that time on, everything was positive and there wasn’t any doubt from then on.

When worries and apprehensions fall away the feeling of relief is like taking off a heavy backpack, confidence returns and one’s experience becomes more positive.  Let’s turn to a look at what happens as this feeling fades away.

Jim. “As I lay in the bag with Ruth, feeling the agony of returning circulation to my legs and feet, I could also sense the diamond-like clarity of the past hour or two leaving my body.”

Jim. Yeah, it was almost as if as the physical sensation returned, it was almost associated with the warming process in my legs and feet, it was like coming back to the everyday world again, you know, everyday consciousness again. Suddenly, there was time for other thoughts to start seeping in like, questions and doubts, speculation. Where before there hadn’t, I don’t know if there wasn’t time for it, it was irrelevant, and so they didn’t happen.

C.W.  What do you mean?

Jim. Those sorts of thoughts, I don’t know why, but I wasn’t bothered by them during that period. And they weren’t there, And all of a sudden, as I started warming, sort of normal consciousness started to return.

Jim. The one [the diamond-like clarity] was being replaced by the other [normal consciousness], very very slowly, and I could feel it, I could feel the exchange happen.

As the feeling fades, “normal” consciousness returns. Thoughts in the category of doubts and questions replace thoughts of climbing and staying alive. There was a gradual shift and return to everyday, ordinary day-to-day distractions and worries.

2)  During their experience climbers report having felt very content and peaceful.

(Barry, Lee, S.A., S.M.)

In this theme, we will discuss the descriptions climbers gave of feeling content and peaceful. The statements included in this section are those which most clearly express the central ideas of this theme. We’ll begin with S.M.

S.M. I just felt so at peace and so comfortable.

The climber feels good, they feel peaceful, and they feel comfortable. Lee provides a similar statement.

Lee. It’s simple, the (peaceful) feeling is simple. It is a feeling of wholeness, happiness of contentment, of content.

These natural sensations change the climber’s relationship to other aspects of life, and provide a sense of belonging.

S.A. “feeling like this is where I really belong at that moment, and nowhere else.”

S.A. Right. Yeah, and maybe I felt that, too, in the other experience. There’s just this overwhelming, satisfied feeling of contentedness. I guess that’s what being content is; feeling that that’s exactly where you should be and where you are, and that’s perfect. You get so elated when you feel those really good vibes. ‘What could be better, this is perfect?’  It’s kind of self-sustaining. I want to keep going out and getting into those situations, it feels so good, and it feels so natural. Especially when I feel good vibes or energy, or whatever you want to call it, in nature.  You feel like ‘It supposed to be this way, this is supposed to happen, and this is right.’ It kind of validates my feeling that it’s right. A lot of people think ‘Oh, it’s crazy to climb.’ I’ve had thoughts that I’m wasting my time, I could be spending more time with my wife, or people, or forming better relationships with people, or whatever. It’s a confirming feeling that ‘this is worth it,’  this is the right thing for me, because I’m responding to it really favorably.  I don’t get these feelings in other normal situations, so it’s more positive than the other good parts of whatever I may be doing.

Climbing feels good and whatever arguments that may have been advanced that another activity may be more appropriate or productive are negated by the pleasure of the experience. Not only is the experience pleasurable, it is simple in its purity.

Barry.  Nothing else seems to matter, that’s it.

Barry. It’s just when things are really working and you’re in there and it feels great. Like I say, you don’t notice it, but later on you notice the feeling of being refreshed.

Barry. From doing it and really giving it everything. I don’t know how else to describe it. Refreshed and exhilarated.  You know what I mean!

Climbing seems to provide a catalyst for this experience, but in the actual moment the climber’s experience transcends the physical activity of rock climbing.

S.A. And I kind of, for a minute, felt removed from climbing, as if I were just kind of, I was just hanging out  on a stance, totally comfortable, not really using effort to be there, like I normally would, not really thinking about pro, just observing and saying ‘Wow, that’s beautiful,’ and just kind of feeling like ‘God, I’ve just merged with this, I’m part of this, and it’s part of my fate to pass through this and see it.’ And it’s fleeting, when I felt it, it just … within a few seconds or moments or whatever, I go ‘Oh, yeah, it’s time to climb again, or it’s time to think about pro,’ and then it kind of goes away. But I still have this feeling of ‘Oh, that was a nice experience.’  I just kind of climb through. It feels ephemeral, it feels like it’s not going to last long, because you know, you’re always driven to get to the top, to get off, so that you don’t get benighted, so, but you stay safe, and so… It kind of felt like ‘I’m just passing through, it’s nice to see it.’ Without any regret, necessarily, accepting it and feeling good that I felt it.

The climber feels no need to grasp the experience, they are content with the moment.

S.A. “Even though I realize that I’m just passing through. Still, I’m filled with satisfaction, appreciation, [and] happiness.”

Much of Lee’s description and interview revolves around this aspect of the experience.  He equates “merging with Nature” with what he calls “the peaceful feeling.”

Lee. That’s (the peaceful feeling) probably my connection with what you are saying, with merging with Nature. Your brain is flat-lining. You are  not worried about things that you might worry about during a normal day. You are at peace with yourself completely.  That’s what I get from climbing, a lot of the time, not all of the time, maybe 3/4 of the time.  With climbing, you get to the top and it’s just you and your partner.

In order for Lee, to reach “the peaceful feeling” conditions have to be right. One of those conditions is that he has to be climbing with someone he trusts.

Lee. One of the things that my original climbing partner and I, when we first got into climbing, he was my hiking partner and my ski buddy… we never had to do a lot of pitches in a day.  We could do four pitches, five pitches, or one or two pitches. We both at the end had this really peaceful feeling. We’d get really stoned and we’d talk about it. We would be really mellow and we might just sit on top of the crag. It would still be two o’clock  and we could still climb if we wanted to but we didn’t feel the need to because we had this peaceful feeling.

Lee. So, that doesn’t happen on every pitch or even every climb necessarily. But it may happen after five pitches one day, and then another day you might not really get it because you might have floundered on a route. You might have other things on your mind. So you don’t necessarily get the peaceful feeling. I get it most of the time, I get the peaceful feeling.

Another aspect of this peaceful feeling is that it is unpredictable. There is no set formula that guarantees its achievement.  As Lee says, there is a certain aesthetic quality to the experience that cannot be forced or rushed.

Lee. Have you ever been with people that always seem as though they have a plane to catch somewhere? I don’t have that feeling, I want to enjoy it, to prolong it. There’s not a lot of those moments, you don’t get that a lot. So maybe that is the immersification, just allowing yourself to hang out and not having to catch the plane. Just be there and enjoy it. That’s what it is all about.

Lee doesn’t make it clear which comes first, the relaxation and enjoyment, or the lack of urgency. They seem related. When one comes to the rock with a feeling of urgency (having a plane to catch somewhere), one cannot ease into relaxation. When one relaxes, the sense of urgency dissipates and is replaced by the peaceful feeling. Lee gives an example:

Lee. …Getting up there and full-on having that feeling where you just don’t need to leave. There’s no sense of urgency. You can revel and bask in your accomplishment. Allow yourself to be immersed in the feeling of that moment and take everything in. What is going on around you, and remember it.

Lee. (C.W. Are “immersing yourself in the moment” and “taking it all in” the same?) I think they’re different but they’re the same. You can take it in but not become totally immersed in it. Maybe getting up there and puffing a few bowls, and just really letting yourself hang out for a while.

Here Lee has described several important aspects of his experience. He describes a lack of urgency, which allows an immersion in the here and now, opening him up to a more holistic awareness of his surroundings (Nature).

Lee. I might go to Lumpy Ridge and do one route and get to the top and have that peaceful feeling and not have to climb at all for two or three days. I might be peaceful for a few days or just a few hours. I get back  down to the bottom and might be psyched for another climb or not. I don’t know. It’s different. Different times are different. I don’t know how to say that.

What does it mean to be peaceful? What is it that allows this feeling to occur?

Lee. It wasn’t the actual moves on the rock, but it was because it was the moves on the rock that allowed you to get that point where you could feel that way. So, I don’t know if it is a means to an ends or what’s going on there? Do you do that to get there, or is it just a result from doing that? Am I doing it because of the moves? Moving on the rocks feels fun. It doesn’t feel like a laugh-y, giggly  kid-type feeling, though. I’ve never laughed my way up a rock. I’ve felt real content, and really confident and really psyched. But never that really giggly laugh-y kid-type feeling. It seems more serious. So, I’m not sure if I’m doing it for the moves or for the feeling I get afterwards.

Lee. I don’t  think I’m necessarily climbing just to get to the point where I get the peaceful feeling. It’s a direct result of climbing.

How or why this feeling occurs remains to be seen. Climbing is an integral part of this experience, but is not a directly causative factor as one could go climbing and not have this experience.  This usually does not create a lot of concern for the climber, who accepts  the experience as it comes and doesn’t question its source. Barry’s description refers to this state of being content.

Barry. “But in the meantime, I am content with just soaking up the views from the belay ledges.”

Barry. “As we follow our route around to the west the climbing turns more difficult. … Upon joining my partner on the table sized summit, he sarcastically asked me if my mind was still wandering. Ha, Ha.”

Barry.  (C.W. Was it?) No. It was really good, it was hard but everything was there. It was great climbing. Excellent. You could really get into it. It was perfect actually, when you get up there that the bottom was real easy, as you work your way up, and then you get to the top, and you’re not all worn out you could really get into it.  You weren’t really struggling, you could power through stuff.

Barry brings up an interesting point, the relationship between the physical activity of rock climbing and expenditure of effort. When the physical expenditure was low (the climbing was easy) his mind was able to wander and he was not paying much attention. When the physical effort increased his enjoyment of the climb increased.

In the next theme we will look more closely at this aspect of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

3) The conscious mind relaxes and the body takes over.

(B.H., Michael, S.T., T.M.)

The contents of this theme pre-dominantly come from one climber, B.H.  He concentrated his description on this particular aspect of experience. Thus, I will present this theme following B.H.’s description and alongside his description, I will include similar points from other climbers.

B.H. begins by describing a particular type of rock climbing that usually requires a lot of focused physical and mental effort.

B.H. “Difficult bouldering requires a great effort of concentration.”

B.H. “A difficult bouldering problem is a brief series of moves which are far beyond one’s on-sight climbing ability; hence, completion of such a problem requires many rehearsal attempts.”

B.H. With difficult bouldering … rehearsal is key, for me, because when I approach a problem that’s way above my ability level it may take me a hundred tries to get through the first two moves out of five.

These “problems” are micro-capsules of larger more difficult climbing routes. Bouldering problems are places where the climber can attempt a physical challenge far above that climber’s usual difficulty range. This is made possible because the “crux,” (the most difficult part of the climb) is only a few feet above the ground. The bouldering problem narrows the climb down so that all there is of the climb is the crux. This type of climbing allows a very focused perspective.

B.H. I have to think about how to move to get the moves to work.

This seems to contradict the stated essence of this theme “Conscious mind relaxes and the body takes over.” One must realize that this thinking about the problem is preliminary to actual success in completing the problem.  Look at how B.H. describes moving from thinking about the problem to success, and the difference in what is experienced in each stage.

B.H. There’s like a very, very particular way that each part of your body has to be arranged for you to hold on to even the first movement. So, you can go through a hundred attempts to get the right positioning of hands, body, feet, everything to hold onto the move. And  once you can do that, you go through another [hundred] attempts until you can move off the move and then another hundred to latch on, etceteras.

B.H. The thing is that by the time you’ve perfected the one movement through multiple rehearsals and you’ve moved on to the next movement, That first movement that you have perfected through multiple rehearsals  no longer takes any conscious thinking to do, your body automatically arranges itself in that position.

Through the use of a kinesthetic intelligence, the move is memorized by the body. This form of memorization is called having the move “wired.”

B.H. So, by the time I have the whole move wired, the whole problem wired; what leads to success is the lack of conscious thinking about the move.

B.H. Everything is second nature.

B.H. So, doing the moves, having done them so many times, it frees … you don’t have to use your mind to do them. Your body takes over and it does them and it knows what to do because it’s wired. So then, your mind is free to do other things.

Conscious thinking is required to facilitate learning the move, but once it is wired, conscious thinking gets in the way. B.H. describes this process.

B.H. You have to first understand how you relate to the move before you can do it without thought.

B.H. To get the move right takes a lot of thinking, I don’t know … when you’re moving … it’s a different type of thinking when you’re moving and thinking about how to move. It’s not like thinking intellectually. You’re tracking your body’s motions with the mind and you’re trying to understand how each particular position affects your performance on the move. All of that’s very conscious. If it’s a really hard problem that consciousness has to be very acute because the slightest deviation from the correct type of movement will cause you to fail. It takes acute awareness to get the movement right, but once you’ve got it right it’s in your movement enneagrams, in your head. And it’s wired into your body and no longer requires that conscious level of awareness. So the body will still perform the moves, but without the mind’s concentration on the move.

These bouldering problems will often have a series of difficult moves within ten feet of rock. One move leads to the other and to complete the second requires not only completing the first but leaving the first in the exactly proper way, so that one is prepared for arriving at the second.

B.H. “However, as I perfect a particular detail, my attention shifts away from that detail and on to another.”

B.H. That’s what I mean by  saying that you take a great amount of acute awareness [to get] one move and when you’ve perfected it, you move your awareness onto the next part of the problem,  and you no longer think about the first part.

B.H. “By the time I am ready to complete a problem, each physiological detail is second nature; my mind is free from focusing on details.”

B.H. It’s real interesting because you don’t know ahead of time when you’re ready to complete a problem. You’ve been paying a lot of attention all of the way through the problem, each time you’ve been perfecting moves. And then, at some point you start thinking that you’ll probably complete it, and you start making dry runs at it, and each time you do it, you think that you’re going to get it. But, I think that what’s happening to me, I think, during those dry runs, when I’m not getting it and I’m thinking that I will, is that my body has not yet perfected those little tiny details. So, I’ll get to that detail  and my mind which should be free, will have to focus in, to re-adjust something, and that will also, … that focus in on a specific detail will make me lose the ability to complete the problem at that time. So, I’ll come off and not finish it. So then another time, I’ll get through farther and I’ll think I’m going to get it and there will be another little detail that I don’t have right. And then I’ll have to focus in on that and I’ll lose it again.

My interpretation of this is that “focusing in on a detail” refers to the use of conscious mind processes, and that “the mind is free” refers to the experience of having the kinesthetic mind or body take over, thus filling one’s complete mental sensation field.

B.H. But the final time that I get a problem, I’ll go through the whole thing without any concentration on a specific detail, and that moment of entrapment, when you’ll lose the focus, those never occur and you make it through the whole problem. That’s the lack of focus.

Here we have an extended period of time where the rational mind is squeezed out and all mental sensations or thoughts are exclusively kinesthetic.

B.H. While you’re completing this problem the time that you don’t need to focus in, your mind is free from that focus. So, I don’t know … You’re mind does some interesting things while the body is that,  while your body is that intense on things that it has rehearsed without the need of the mind to direct the body … In some way the mind seems to extract itself from the experience, because it’s not needed. Yet what the body’s doing is so intense … I’m not sure how exactly the attention of the mind focuses, but I seem to sometimes, when I complete that problem, while I’m doing it I’ll feel like … like my body, my mind will be tracking those movements of the body, but it will be expecting the body to do each thing it does, it’s already done them.

The decrease in the dominance of the rational mind and the rise to prominence of kinesthetic awareness is what I am referring to in this theme, “the conscious mind relaxes and the body takes over.” Learning to ride a bike is another activity where the thinking mind is required during the learning process, but is not required once one knows how to do the activity. In the successful completion of the bouldering problem, thinking stops and doing takes precedence.

B.H. “On the final go at a problem, when I complete it, I occasionally attain to a different state of consciousness, one removed from the common state of focus and concentration.”

B.H. If I walk up to a problem and try it, I have to think about it.  Left foot’s on this tiny crystal, and my right hand’s on this tiny hold, now where’s my left hand going to go … and I have to think about where it’s going to go. But when I’ve got that move wired and I know where my hand’s supposed to go, or my body knows where it’s supposed to go. I’m no longer cognizant, it just happens.

A memorized kinesthetic movement frees the mind. Here the climber may have a similar experience as a dancer executing a choreographed leap.

Before we move into a different experience described by B.H. we should talk about some reports from other climbers that provide a bridge between two experiences that B.H. presented as extremes. Here T.M. describes the difference in climbing when it is characterized by intellectualization and when there is more of an experience of merging with Nature.

T.M. “The original task was to describe one instance of this, (“feeling close to nature while rock climbing”) fully and completely. However, I found I could not do that.”

T.M. “The moments of feeling closest to the rock are either too fleeting…”

T.M. It’s mostly the feeling … As the hand goes from one place to the next, you have this merging feeling, but as soon as you find the hold and become more intellectual again then it is gone. It’s perhaps because … I don’t know. But perhaps it’s because of an intellectual tightening of conscious activity. Because it’s dampened by that kind of activity. Then, times when climbing is the least logical and intellectual are the times that it’s most likely to happen and since one is often going back and forth between different modes of thinking, that would cause it to be fleeting.

T.M. “while placing one foot higher, moving one hand over rock to find another hold - or too amorphous.” Amorphous meaning that you can’t always pin it down and give it a shape.

T.M. “The question remains for me, “What does it mean to feel close to nature while rock-climbing?”

“When climbing is the least logical and intellectual,” those are the times when merging with Nature are most likely to occur. This experience is fleeting because the conscious mind returns and interrupts the flow of the merging. This relates to the idea of kinesthetic intelligence as the merging state of the mind. That it is fleeting is something that we have already discussed, along with the idea that focusing on a bouldering problem provides a container within which the experience of merging can be extended. T.M. gives a description of what is going on with attention and awareness during her rock climbing experiences.

T.M. It’s like a reaching out of awareness. It’s first of all, sort of a, by moving and not necessarily thinking about where you’re moving, the moves have to be easy, which allows this to happen, when there’s a difficulty all of your attention is gone there. So your attention remains nearby. Your attention can’t wander because you still have to move but your awareness can wander because you don’t have to see all of it. So there’s a separation of attention and awareness. Attention  no longer… Attention is hanging loose, and awareness is also allowed to wander just a touch, but not too far. And that is when you start to see a sense of what the rock feels like under your hands. The age of the rock as it comes through your hands. I had on shoes so it comes through the hands. You can see that and you can see the Earth moving as it needs to. My favorite part of the awareness is always the feeling of the rock. It’s so slow.  Eternity.

What is that shift in awareness that occurs when attention is allowed to wander? Is attention a more intellectual experience and awareness something that happens within the body? When attention is allowed to wander and awareness comes to the fore, T.M. reports greater connection to her bodily sensations which may be indicative of a movement into kinesthetic intelligence or awareness.

Now we move into another category of experience that B.H. describes as similar to the experiences had while engaged in difficult bouldering. Here he uses a metaphor similar to that of T.M.’s, that of attention wandering away from the body. This may be understood as a decentralization of attention which is usually centered in the body.

B.H. “Again, though, the experience of merging comes from removing attention from the actual movement of the body.”

B.H. That’s because the rock is quite easy. So, as I move up it,   I don’t really put thought into the correct sequence because my ability can overcome misreading the sequence or whatever. I’ll constantly move up the rock whether I’m moving in the best sequence or not. It’s the farthest away from bouldering that you can get, you can always make up for mistakes in sequence.

This experience is different from difficult bouldering where intellectual or rational thoughts are excluded as the needs of the kinesthetic mind/body are so great. Here the intellectual or rational mind is granted a certain amount of freedom.

B.H. “If I establish a steady rhythm of movement and of breathing, and if the climb is well within my ability level, occasionally (but more rarely than with bouldering) my body will move upward unconsciously”

B.H. I just mean there that since the moves are easy… Well, there’s two requirements: One, the moves have to be well within my ability level so that I can make up for missed sequences. The other is that I need to establish a rhythm, where, maybe I’ll be moving one limb per however long. Where I just fall into a pattern, overcoming and becoming with the sequence. So that no matter what I keep my rhythm without thinking about it.

When the body moves upwards unconsciously, the rational mind is allowed to wander, such as described by T.M.

B.H. “Occasionally but more rarely than with bouldering, my body will move upwards unconsciously thus freeing the mind.”

B.H. I’m freed from thinking about how to move upward, like the rhythm is taking over, I don’t need to think about it. Is my right hand here,  my left, what’s going to go next … I don’t need to think about those things. Well, sometimes … This is why it’s more rare … sometimes when I’m freed like that … let’s say I’m with my partner Dana, my wife, I’ll think ‘will she be able to do this move, will she be able to get out this piece of pro,  how will she feel,’ I think those things and that distracts from the experience of oneness. They’re all moderate pitches, but rarely the aesthetic value of the rock will come in and impose itself on me, although the climbing is so easy that you are moving without thinking you aren’t thinking about distracting things. You come back out of yourself, out of focus, and everything else comes into view.

B.H. mentions an experience of oneness which he describes as being precipitated by this certain type of climbing. When one moves out of the self, coming out of focus there is a decentralization of the self. When everything else comes into view, this is the replacement of the smaller version of the self with a new expanded view of the self as one with Nature.

B.H. “The awareness thus achieved is the same as described above, but of a less profound, less intense nature.”

B.H. Yeah, it’s more rare. The experience from the bouldering is so quick, it’s so … hmm. Here in the moderate pitches, it’ll last for an hour if it’s that long of a climb to finish, or half an hour. You’ll lapse out of it occasionally to put in a piece of pro. Or you’ll  occasionally lapse out of it and realize that you’re thinking this way and start evaluating the experience while you’re climbing. But there will still be full minutes of the experience.

This experience is less intense in that the shift is less complete. When the rational mind is excluded, its influence cannot alter the experience of merging. But that extreme of a shift cannot be held for as long as the more subtle experience that occurs when the rational mind is simply given space to wander. In that case, it wanders but “not too far.” The leash onto which the rational mind is attached is the omnipresent requirement to be aware of safety needs and procedures. Some of these procedures can be automated or memorized, but never omitted.

S.T. That’s probably the essence of what I would call the merging with Nature, being in a somewhat, not hostile, but potentially hostile, and definitely highly technical and dangerous environment, where you’ve got to be thinking constantly, always checking knots, always backing up things, watching your partner, and that confidence is how I would describe the merging.

It is important to note the distinction S.T. makes between a hostile environment, a potentially hostile environment, and a highly technical and dangerous environment. Rock climbing takes place in environments that are not hostile, rather they are potentially hostile. A hostile environment would be one which actively causes harm. A potentially hostile environment holds danger ever-present in passive waiting. Thus we have the further clarification of the potentially hostile rock climbing environment as one that is highly technical and dangerous. What keeps the climber safe is his or her ability to master the technical demands of the sport.  Fear and other distractions can keep the climber in a closed, non-receptive state, overcoming these mental barriers corresponds with positive experience.

S.T. I think merging with Nature would almost have, in my definition anyway, would have to be a positive experience. And that’s probably not true in the strictest sense. But for me, I wouldn’t call it a negative experience of merging with Nature, I would call it something else. But the mental barriers that you have, if you don’t break through them, or if you don’t overcome them somehow, you’re probably not going to have a positive experience, and therefore not merge with Nature.

I would like to focus on the “mental barriers” S.T. has described. He states that “if you don’t overcome them” you won’t merge with Nature. In Michael’s case the “peak experience” occurred and was followed by a period of mental thoughts during which he attempted to incorporate the experience.

Michael. That peak experience … wasn’t something that happened abruptly, it was something that happened during the initial part of the climb, the ascent. And then afterwards, I still had a lot of the same kinds of thoughts, but it wasn’t the same. I think, on my way down, I was trying to re-evaluate, not only what I experienced going up there, but what I told you about reaching the summit.  As far as trying to deal with, you know, coming about with some kind of different belief system that would incorporate some kind of existential substance, or whatever. And the whole experience itself was filled with a lot of emotion and a lot of fear,  a lot of anxiety,  a lot of overall distress.

Michael. I had thoughts racing in my head the whole time, trying to put everything together. And the fear that came from that.

In the process of attempting to understand the experience, Michael had “thoughts racing in his head.” During his “peak experience” we may understand that these thoughts were absent. The return of thoughts brings emotions such as fear, anxiety and distress. During the experience of merging with Nature, we move out of thoughts and negative emotions. This movement has the specific effect of liberating us from our everyday distractions and worries.

4)  While merging with Nature, physically strenuous activity becomes or is perceived as effortless:

(Jim, Lee, S.M., S.T., T.B., T.M.)

This theme describes what  happens when the sensation of struggling and having to expend effort diminishes or disappears entirely without any objective change in the difficulty of the physical activity. T.B. describes this experience:

T.B. “I had some of the moves ‘wired’ and others I had to work through — but the movement flowed.”

T.B. That’s what I was speaking of earlier. Sometimes when I climb everything is methodical and forced.  Sometimes I have to force myself to work out the moves. But on days when it flows … I like it best when I feel like my climbing is flowing on something that I have never even seen before. That’s part of working with the environment, kind of falling into the environment. It doesn’t always happen though. Sometimes it’s a struggle, but on that day everything came together, and it was good.

Flowing, not methodical, is how the experience is described. There’s a “falling into the environment.” Falling seems to imply that the movement into merging with the environment is effortless. Once in, activity flows easily. Everything comes together and what is it? It is experienced simply as “good.”

S.M. points to the moment where her experience shifted from the difficulty of the task, to the ease of it.

S.M. “I quickly became so focused?” When I finally made that move, when I just went for it and made that move the first time I tried it. And then the rest of the climb was just like second nature, I was just going right up.

“Crux” is the name given to the most (objectively) difficult part or section of the climb. In Lee’s experience he passes through this difficulty easily.

Lee. “I climb well, leading past the crux pitches with amazing ease.”

S.T. describes climbing a difficult (1800’, 24 pitch, Grade VI) route on Half-Dome in Yosemite valley. As Lee stated above, S.T. also describes being “amazed” at how easy, effortless and casual the climb turns out to be.

S.T. “Looking back, I’m amazed at how casual it seemed at the time. just out for one of those 1800 ft., 24 pitch, Grade VI day climbs.” The casualness that we felt on the route, after the first few pitches, was just amazing to me, it’s somewhat of an accomplishment to do Half-Dome in a day, it was just like we were out climbing for the day. And it wasn’t ‘Oh, God if we don’t get to the top, are we going to be able to rap off,’ that type of thing. It was just, ‘there’s the next pitch, let’s climb it.’  And we were at the top of this, the top of this, the ledges on [pitch] 17, it’s just a matter of time before this is done. It didn’t turn into a chore, it was fun the whole time, there were small ups and downs,  but overall the whole thing was on a pretty high kind of pegging the fun meter.  That amazes me, that it was fairly casual, at the time, I would have thought we’d have been a little more worried.

It’s as if during the experience, it never occurs to the climber to be worried or even that there might be a reason to be worried.

S.M. “I didn’t have to look around or worry about if I could make the next move.”

S.M. Well, before, I would see something, and I would be like ‘can I reach it,  is it going to hold, and can I pull myself, and if I get here where can I go?’ If something looked really difficult or out of my reach I was afraid to lunge and go for it. I was looking around… To get to that first ledge took me as long if not longer than to do the rest of the climb, and it was only about one-fourth of the climb, because I was going so slow and I was worried about making the wrong move or whatever.

While she was “just” climbing, S.M. still had her worries. When she entered the experience of merging with Nature, the usual concerns about making the wrong move and possibly falling disappear. When this happens the activity seems to fall into the comfort level of the climber. Or should I say the climber rises into an ability level that matches the climb perfectly, not too easy nor too hard?

S.T. (Everything flows?)  Everytime you need a handhold you find one, it may not be that good, but it feels good, and everytime you place your feet they’re solid, you don’t notice dirt in the crack, rope drag, you don’t notice any of these negative things,  it’s all very positive experience, there’s no going up and finding out ‘Oh, I’m out of sequence,’ backing back down and trying it a different way, it’s just continuous motion, no stopping, having to shake out because I’m pumped, having to search around for the next hold, it just flowed.

Not surprisingly, there is a voice of dissension. The ease and effortlessness describes here is not the complete experience. This is only part of it, and T.M. wants to make sure that we understand that merging with Nature is more than just a physical experience.

T.M. “There comes a level in every sport where everything just clicks, and you move as effortlessly and gracefully as though you had been designed for this movement.” That was where I pointed out that that wasn’t what I was talking about. Because that is simply a loss of consciousness, your muscles are doing things automatically. I put that in as an example of what I don’t think this experience is. No matter how wonderful that it is, it’s different.  “It’s a wonderful feeling when it happens, but it hasn’t happened to me climbing. Yet. It will. The reason I bring this in is that some people combine this feeling with the ‘close to nature’ type feeling: it is and it isn’t.”

This transition into a super-powerful, aware, and capable state of consciousness is part of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. While pleasurable and enjoyable for its own sake, this state of mind has proven to be of significant survival value.  Jim describes an experience where he entered into this ASC while in a life-threatening situation. This may have saved not only his own life but that of his companion.

Jim. It seems like I knew exactly what had to be done, each step, each axe placement, every movement, every move became very obvious.

Jim. “just as suddenly as her fall, a wave of calm and warm peacefulness swept through my body. Immediately everything was crystal clear. An almost supernatural prescience took over and I seemed to know exactly what moves had to be made.”

The last thing a climber wants to do is fall, as a bad fall may literally be the last thing a climber does, except land. So when Jim’s partner fell, he had to call upon all of his resources. Like the modern myth of the mother who lifts a car with one hand to pull her child to safety with the other,  Jim entered into an altered state of consciousness that he described as “almost supernatural.”  Effortlessness is not limited to the physical, it also extends to mental requirements. Note the similarity between the previous theme (peaceful and content) and the “wave of calm and warm peacefulness,” then add in these sensations.

Jim. “I saw the ice and gully walls with an amazing clarity. Each crampon placement, each ax placement was completely obvious. There were no wasted moves.”

Jim. As soon as that wave of panic and terror subsided, it was followed immediately by the sensation of just, well, it came with a sense of calmness and clarity, it was a real warming sensation. Even though I still couldn’t feel my feet, there was no pain associated with it, and prior to that I was getting pretty cold, but suddenly it was gone, and coldness wasn’t a factor anymore, at least for the parts of my body that I could still feel.

In his next statement, Jim refers to this heightened state of consciousness as “supernatural.”

Jim. “Immediately everything was crystal clear, an almost supernatural prescience took over, and I seemed to know exactly what moves had to be made. And I saw the ice and gully walls with an amazing clarity.”

Jim. I don’t know if I can really give it to you in any more detail than that… every move was very obvious, everything that I had to do to get down the gully, seemed very clear, the crampon placements were there, the ice-axe placements were there, it was simply a matter of doing it. Without any real sense of the exposure, and the predicament that we were in, and the potential for disaster, it was immanent. If I had slipped, I had the ice-axe, she didn’t have a chance, she was finished, there was no way she could go up, and there was no way she could go down without the belay system. In a way I had a little more responsibility, self-imposed, because if anything had happened to me she would not have survived.

When another accident occurs, Jim reacts differently. The first time Ruth fell, Jim described feeling “nauseous, drained and unfit for dying” in such a place.  Now we see how he reacted to her second fall.

Jim. “And Ruth slipped yet a second time, just missing my thighs with her crampon points, but this time there was no sense of terror, I simply chopped a stance for her and after she had regained her composure, I simply continued on with no thoughts but the task at hand.”

The experience of effortlessness is not limited to the physical body. Jim’s experience combined a physical effortlessness in his description, there was also an effortlessness in the making of difficult decisions. Although he found himself in an extremely trying situation, Jim noted that he was having no trouble either staying warm (physically) or in keeping his cool (mentally). This brings us to the next theme.

5) One notices being intensely focused with an increased sense of concentration.

(Barry, Robert, S.M., T.B.)

Determining the dividing line between this theme and the last one was difficult as they are closely related. I am reminded of the “chicken and the egg.” Which comes first? Does effortlessness in physical activity allow the climber to exert more energy than usual in mental areas such as maintaining focus and concentration? Or does that heightened sense of focus and concentration allow the climber to choose the proper ways of expending energy thus not wasting excess energy resulting in having more energy to spare? Let’s continue with Jim’s description and let the reader decide where the split should be made, if it all.

Jim. There was just the task at hand, and it was very obvious what needed to be done. Ruth, didn’t, she was … she really didn’t share the same feeling, Ha Ha. She was pretty scared, and she fell again, and the second fall was [worse].

Jim. I can’t say that I felt like we were being looked over, whereas that would be easy to do after the experience with the Lama*. I can’t say that, but by the same token, it seemed like no harm was really going to come our way.

You might say that Jim had no choice but to pay attention and stay focused on the climb. I would agree with you. However, what happens when the life-or-death challenge is absent or diminished? Here is a description that contains many of the same elements of Jim’s, without life-threatening danger.

S.M. “I decided to focus only on one section at a time.”

S.M. When I looked at the whole route, I was pretty overwhelmed. ‘Well, If I can make it to this first stopper, if I can just get here, I’ll get this cleaned out and that’s one less that we have to do.’  And if I can’t get any farther, then I can’t. But then I’ll try for the next one.

S.M. chooses or decides to “focus” and finds that this helps her make it through a difficult climb. In her situation the actual presence of life-threatening danger in negligible, yet focusing helps her climbing ability overcome the challenge of perceived danger.

Barry. “I enjoy challenging climbs. They seem to demand all of your attention and focus to that present moment.”

Barry. It  still along the same lines, you get into what’s right in front of you at a certain degree of difficulty, not where it’s too hard, but where it’s just there for you. You just have to keep moving slow, and looking for your spots and looking up and moving and it requires all your attention.  You really merge or get in tune.

On a different level than Jim’s climb, Barry finds more pleasure in a climb that presents a challenge. He states that the need to pay attention and focus on what he is doing increases his enjoyment. Does this experience only occur when the climber is in that focused state of awareness? What circumstances permit this state of awareness? S.A. believes that it occurs when he is “on lead.”

S.A. Maybe all of the time (it’s on lead). I can’t recall experiencing that when I was seconding, so much. Maybe part of that is that you’re more aware when you’re leading, you’re so much more on the edge, there’s more of a focused feeling to what you’re seeing and doing. You can climb really absent minded if you’re following, and I often do.

To be climbing “on lead” means that you are out ahead of the protection of safety anchors. The “lead climber” places protection as he or she climbs higher. This is what S.A. refers to as being on the edge. This extra danger factor seems to require a heightened sense of focus and concentration on the placement of protection. By contrast, B.H. states that this requirement of paying attention to safety factors removes his attention from the flow of climbing and thus decreases the intensity of his experience.

B.H. It’s interesting that I can’t get that experience while I am leading, even if its just sport leading,  because while you’re leading you’re aware of gear. And that removes you from the focus.

Can it be that both of these descriptions are true and do not present a conflict. Both S.A. and B.H. describe being focused, albeit on slightly different things. It seems that the experience has a similar structure with different content. Focusing and finding center through the mental effort of placing protection or safety gear require similar mental efforts as finding suitable climbing holds. Each represents a slightly different state of consciousness which merge and overlap in the sport of rock climbing. Both are required in order to achieve success and survival, often the same thing.

What does T.B. have to say about focus and concentration?

T.B. Part of the climbing that is so engaging is getting focused and being far from the ground. …. This time it was different, it was a perfect day. I was just messing around on some stuff that I haven’t been on. It wasn’t difficult, it just sort of flowed.

These related statements from T.B. highlight the difficulty of separating out closely related themes. When one is able to focus and concentrate on climbing, the difficult seems easy and actions flow. There is no separation of these elements of experience in the subjective awareness, only later in external analysis.  Here is a statement that shows this mixing of intricately related themes.

T.B. When I am able to focus on the climbing and I feel that everything flows, everything falls together. It’s just that primal … [silence] … Some people never understand it. Some people never get to the aesthetic part of climbing, they are doing it for the physical challenge or the adrenaline rush.

It’s primal when you cut it down to the physical, your strength and holds that are before you and just instinctually moving. I also think that it’s aesthetic because … The really good times, are when you can read the rock without hesitating. You are reading as you are moving. …What I’m talking about  is just moving and flowing… you don’t necessarily plan the next move, you just see the next one ahead of you.

T.B. seems to imply that there is a difference between planning ahead and being in the moment focusing on the rock. There is also the other end of the field, being behind and working to catch up with circumstances. Both planning ahead and reactionary catching up distance one from the present moment.

Robert’s description emphasizes being focused on the rock.

Robert. “All my thoughts were focused on the rock.”

Robert. “There was no buzzers or bells no hallucinations no visions no abnormal physical experiences,”

Robert. So often people are looking for some renowned experience, you know, levitation off the floor, walking through walls, walking across water, they’re looking for that. And it’s not that. It’s not like I had any major revolutions in my life, it heightened … it just brought to a point where you can really experience that relationship that you’re having, but it’s always there, it’s not out of the ordinary.

In this experience of being focused, there are no distractions from what is actually present before the climber. This focusing can be experienced through its result, the heightening of sensory perceptions.

Michael gives us another statement about the type of focus and concentration that occurs while rock climbing.

Michael. “The overall experience I gained from this trip was unmatched by any other climb I have ever done.”

Michael. Because other climbs that I’ve done before … I had the confidence, I had everything, and I also had sort of a focused sense of concentration, and I didn’t have the type of experience I had unless, it wasn’t … you know, they were intense, but I’ve been able to have a sort of lightheartedness about them. And where this was intense, and not lighthearted. I think the fear was also motivated by the fact that we were wondering if we were getting ourselves into something that we didn’t plan for.

This theme has been about a general increase in focus and concentration. The next theme specifically describes the  intensification of sensory perceptions.

6)  Many climbers experience heightened sensory perceptions.

(Barry, B.H., Jim, Lee, Michael, Robert, S.A., T.B.)

The heightening of sensory perceptions is but one way to describe the shift in awareness that occurs while merging with Nature while rock climbing. “Heightening” works as a marker for a shared experience. We think we know what is meant by it because we have had experiences ourselves that we remember in association with the marker “heightening.” But what does this actually mean? Let’s stick with the concrete description.

S.A. [I] guess I’m more aware of nature, it’s standing out more,  it’s sharper, it’s more intense, it seems so much more beyond the ordinary.  Nature’s in everything everywhere, but it seems like it’s more acute, more extreme, more complete, more uncharted, in it’s natural state.

“Nature’s in everything everywhere.” This includes “in the climber,” as well as “in the self.” During this experience sensory perception is heightened, perhaps, most especially vision.

S.A.  The one thing that sticks out in my mind was the clarity of vision, that my vision seemed really sharp and clear, the plant colors seemed really heightened, it seemed like … better colors, better vision, more awareness.

S.A. “My vision seems particularly sharp, in focus.”

He could see better. Colors were brighter, and more noticeable. Perhaps there was a change in the physical senses, but it is more likely that the change was in the paying attention, the noticing.

S.A. It’s just like a super-enlightened awareness or something. I suspect that my hearing was probably sharper, too. Just a heightened awareness in general. Everything felt sharp and clear, including my climbing decisions. Climbing felt easier, everything felt like, no resistance, it was very straight forward.

Not only was his vision sharper, so too was his hearing and all of his other senses. He calls it “super-enlightened” and tries to explain what brings this awareness into being.

S.A. I think part of what drives your experience is recognizing that your safety is on the line and you have to be so much more aware, like purposely aware, before you even have any heightened awareness, you’re already in the mode of being continuously on the ball, not slacking, kind of driving towards the goal. It sets you up for this heightened  awareness, and you know, when you’re out in the boonies, you just know that no-one’s going to rescue you. So, forget taking a bad fall, you can’t do it, you have to be on the ball.  So, that kind of sets it up, it sets up experiences like that.

There is a reminder of Jim’s need to pay attention in order to stay alive. S.A. calls it a recognition that “your safety is on the line.” This is an extremely accurate metaphor, and I wonder if S.A. realized how appropriate. When climbing, the first rule of safety is “never come untied.” Staying tied in to the rope at all times keeps you “on the line.” All the other rules of safety revolve around proper attachment of that line to the rock. So you could simplify the complete safety rules of rock climbing in this way: 1. Stay attached to the line(rope) and 2. Keep the rope attached to the rock. The required constant awareness of safety changes one’s field of perception. This shift results in a different state of consciousness.

S.A.  There’s the feeling that you’re having, not supernatural, but an extraordinary experience that’s obviously not daily awareness, like an altered state, but again really clear focused, different than being high or something, much more able to concentrate, to be aware, to be focused, think,  a very super, clear mind, kind of feeling.

B.H. gives another detailed analysis of this aspect of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. Note that awareness of his surroundings is equated to being connected to those surroundings.

B.H. “I reach an intense awareness or connection with the rock beneath my fingertips, the trees around, the pine needles on the floor, etc …”

B.H. It’s an intense awareness in that I’m aware of every detail of my physical surroundings, but at the same it’s not an intense like my mind is preoccupied with any single detail, that’s where the relaxed part of my description comes in. It’s intense in that it’s minute,  but it’s relaxed in that the minute detail seems just matter of fact. It’s like, Of course I know how many of pine needles are right beneath my foot. Of course I know how many grains are beneath my right fingertip. It’s just a really strange focus.

B.H. “I simply become very aware of nature and feel connected with it.” … “Intense as this connection is, it is at the same time casual or relaxed.”

How can I talk about these experiences in mundane psychological terms? I feel that I must retreat into poetry, but my words pale next to those of my co-researchers. Thus, I will return to their words.

B.H. “During rehearsal attempts, I become acutely aware of minute details, such as a very specific body position or a particular way of grasping a hold or the exact minimum amount of strength required in each move.”

B.H. Well, that acute awareness is very conscious. That’s more a way of getting at … it’s just a step of getting at the merging part. I don’t at all consider that acute awareness a part of the merging with Nature. Because the acute awareness is too involved with the self. So, it’s just a step towards merging.

There is an acute awareness, but of what? One answer may be that awareness is directed to the beauty of Nature, as noted in this description from T.B.

T.B. “It was a perfect autumn day, the breeze tossed my hair back and filled my nostrils with the scents of pine needles and dry earth.”

T.B. It was  up at Flagstaff, and it is gorgeous up there … total sensory overload, it was great.

T.B. They were all natural smells and sounds. The environment was revealing itself to me through every one of my senses.

T.B. (How does that feel?) It feels great! That’s the best, that’s why I climb.

When T.B. states that “the environment was revealing itself to me” she implies that Nature takes independent action. This thought is discussed more completely in the theme “Sensation that the rock/ Nature is alive.” Here we are looking at the aspect of her experience that follows in her description. That of Nature being revealed through “every one” of her “senses.” She describes a sensory overload experience as a reason for climbing. The following statement enhances this idea.

T.B. “As I moved I looked up to the splendor of the contrast of colors as the red rock met the blue sky.” (Does that bring anything up for you?) Yeah, it gives me goosebumps.

T.B. Yeah, my hands are sweating again. Just being outside and experiencing the beauty that’s nature, that’s the best. I don’t need a drug to make me feel… there’s no drug to make me feel that does. It’s kind of a euphoric feeling. It just makes me happy.

T.B. It makes me happy, sometimes it just makes me want to cry just because it’s so incredible and I think that’s what’s real. Sometimes I’ll be busy and stressed with daily life, but when you see something like that … It’s great to be alive.

Seeing these words in print cannot recreate the feeling I had when I heard the truth of these statements in T.B.’s voice. Note the somatic response to describing her experience. There’s a great clarity of emotion here. These statements are poetic in their simplicity: “It makes me happy.” “It’s great to be alive.” We can and often do have these emotions during our regular/daily lives, but there seems to be something about climbing that elicits these.

Lee continues with another expression of heightened perceptions, clarity of sensation and close connection with his surroundings.

Lee. “The air is crisp and clear. A slight breeze from the north-west fills my lungs with it’s invigorating sweet smell. All is quiet except for the rustle of Aspen leaves in the breeze. High mountains ring the valley with snow still clinging to their barren rock strewn slopes.”

Lee. It’s that awareness that I was talking about. Being more aware. Not only with climbing, but just being out in that element. You’re more aware of simpler things. That is what I mean by feeling alive. Down here, you’re worried about finding a place to park or getting through that next light.

Lee finds himself more aware while climbing and equates this with feeling alive. Robert, also, finds himself feeling more aware while climbing and equates this with merging with Nature.

Robert. “just a heightened awareness of my presence in, with and in relationship to my environment. This for me was and is when I merge with nature.”

Michael has another example to help us understand his experience of a heightened sense of perception while rock climbing. He relates it to the use of LSD.

Michael. (“profound awareness of my relationship with nature?”) Well, I can explain it in the sense that it was almost sort of like an altered state of consciousness, since it was very similar to LSD, except that there were no drugs involved whatsoever. Everything that I perceived, I experienced ten-fold. It was really intense. I started becoming aware more of what I was doing, and looking back upon past experiences of my life, in relation to what I was going through then. So, it caused me to look inside of myself and also to re-evaluate my life up until that point.

Michael. (“experienced everything ten-fold?”) That my emotions and my feelings were so intertwined with everything else, experienced from a cognitive standpoint. There was an emotional affective component that was stronger than normally what I would experience if I was doing my everyday things.

Not only was Michael’s sense of external physical reality heightened, his emotional awareness was enhanced as well. Lee has a similar experience of being more aware and more “sensitized.”

C.W. The question was “Please describe your experience of merging with nature while rock climbing?” and you titled your response “On why I climb.”

Lee. “It [climbing] is an extension of what I have done before.”

Lee. It’s not different, but it is different. It seems that when you are climbing you are a little more aware, a little more sensitized to what is going on. It is more real.  There’s more at stake. Things are going. Like getting on the Diamond, there are decisions that you have to make, so it is more real.

Like Michael, Lee compares this experience to the use of psychedelic drugs.

Lee. It’s like when you are tripping, things get more… You might become more aware of things that you might ordinarily not be aware of.

The reference to LSD seems to be a shorthand way of describing a more general experience.

Lee. That feeling of being totally psyched to be doing what you are doing.

To be doing exactly what it is that you want to be doing. No reservations, no hidden agendas, nothing keeping you from truly enjoying your experience of the present moment. In that clarity of action, the mind filters out less of your perceptions and you have an unfiltered experience. How does that come about?

Barry talks about how heightened awareness and sharpened senses allow him to “take more in.”

Barry. The whole aspect of it is working up to it and how climbing, the difficulty of the climbing heightens your awareness to what is going on around you. It sharpens all your senses up and being out there away from everything  you’re able to absorb it all a lot easier. You’re able to take more in.

I asked him to  tell me how that state was different from his ordinary experience.

C.W. How is that feeling of being a part of everything different from the ordinary state of being?

Barry.  Well, you just wouldn’t notice things.  You would just pass stuff without even noticing the sounds or anything.

So, I continued on this line by reading more from his description and giving him space to elaborate on an example.

Barry. “As we rappel down and scramble over the last of the talus, dusk falls over us. We pack up and head out. We decide to leave the head lamps off so as to enjoy the surroundings more.”

Barry. Well for one thing, you could actually see better. When you have the light you can only see what is in front of you and nothing else.  If you turned it off you could still see the path and then other things, better. We turned the light on once and that was all we could see, so we turned it off.

His vision was so sharp that he could walk in the dark without a flashlight. Barry continues with more description of this experience:

Barry. “It seems as if everything around us, the stream along the trail, the noises of the forest and the star-filled sky all seem intensified and illuminated.”

Barry. It was like surround-sound. Everything was turned up, it was, it was really neat. You could feel the stream cruising by, it seemed really loud, you could feel it in a sense. You could feel the air, the cooler air coming off it. The sound of it was so … everywhere. All the other noises, the insects and stuff. Everything was really heightened, and it was a result of being out all day and doing that. If I had just gone out for a walk, like that, I wouldn’t have noticed it. As a result of the whole day, every thing was really …  all my senses were really heightened to what was going on around me. That’s definitely when it gets into merging.

Barry. As it gets darker and darker, things get louder and louder. The sky is glowing more. It became more intense.

Barry describes shifts in vision, hearing, touch, and states that all of his senses were heightened.  I, personally,  have felt that my sense of touch had become so acute at times that I was seeing through my hands.  Jim goes even further to say that there is a “supernatural” aspect to this shift in awareness.

Jim. That sort of profound sense of … That’s where it started:

At that point, it was probably what you’re getting at, sort of the connectedness, the sense of incredible clarity, I guess, a total awareness that … supernatural awareness of everything; the rock, the ice, the light, the … For me, from that point on, after that feeling set in, and it wasn’t shaking, that’s what was really incredible, I’d never really had feelings like that before, or since,  approximations but never anything as profound as that.

Even if that were all that there were to the experience I would still be inclined to seek it out. However, the experience includes much more than that. It goes beyond  the mere heightening of sensory perception.  In the next theme we will discuss what happens to thought processes during the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

7)  Sensation that the rock/ Nature is alive.

(B.H., D.W., Michael, S.A., T.B., T.M.)

During the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing, the rock climber’s relationship to the rock changes. What had once been objectified as an inanimate object takes on an independent character and is experienced as alive. This can be experienced as a recognition of the rock’s dynamic role in the living eco-system or on the more direct levels of the awareness of the rock itself as a living part of the eco-system or as taking an active role in the relationship between the climber and the rock.

T.M. discusses this sensation as the second aspect of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

T.M. “The second aspect is a sense of life within the rock.”

T.M. It’s the same sense that you get from trees. If something is alive you have a sense of life within it. Maybe it’s not really life, maybe it’s a sense of movement, that’s possible, it’s just … that’s about as good as I can get.

T.M. “I would almost want to rephrase that (sense of life) to “power” but it’s close to “life energy” or “power energy”

T.M. Well, life energy’s a little better yet, like I said ‘movement’ there’s not much more that I can say because I don’t know, I don’t know what it is.

T.M.’s  awareness of life-energy is connected to the rock, but she does not attribute independent life to each rock, rather to an archetypal rock or more simply to the Earth.

T.M. “I don’t sense it as a discrete entity, no matter how slow moving.” Each individual rock does not have an individual self, … not concretely, at any rate.

T.M. “It’s a sense of the underlying energy/life within/below/contained  in/part of the earth itself.”

In the absence of adequate vocabulary T.M. provides word combinations that point toward the meaning she wishes to express. Energy is life and she senses this residing (within/below/contained) in but not “in” more like a “part of” the very earth. T.M. explains these word combinations more completely below.

T.M. You can’t separate them out.  To say ‘within’ means that there are boundaries, to say ‘beneath’ means that it stops at the surface, and none of those are true. Contained means that it has boundaries.

Now we move from the undefined location of the energy and return to analysis of the sensation of “life energy.”

T.M. “Clearly this is not unique to rock climbing, but sometimes, while climbing - more often after I have climbed - there is a real sense of having climbed on something living.”

T.M. Some places are more alive than others, and that’s all that really can be said. I mean, some people are more alive than others; how, well, you can give all kinds of definitions. But in essence, some people are more alive than others. Same with rocks, except that it’s even harder to define because rocks are not very bubbly.

T.M. They have … What do you say? It doesn’t move more, it doesn’t smile more, it doesn’t crack more jokes, it doesn’t go more places. You know there’s just no other way to describe it.

T.M.  If you have the feeling that some places are more alive than others, if you have the feeling that some places have more energy  or power than others. Then it stands to reason that when you are closer to these places, you will feel it even more.

According to T.M. being closer to places of power enhances the feeling of life energy. How may we understand “being closer?” There is the physical aspect of being closer which comes under theme “remote areas,” and there is the paying attention and not being distracted aspect of being closer found in theme “focus and concentration.”

S.A. talks about being close to Nature and noticing the ongoing living process of the eco-system of which he is a part.

S.A. “The first occurs/occurred while climbing a pristine crack, and I came across a mossy or grassy section, and I see beautiful flowers, and my attention is suddenly riveted to an intense appreciation of the beauty of the flowers.”

S.A. It might have been one of the first times I had been in an alpine fifth class climbing situation. I kind of learned on crags, like in Yosemite, like Nutcracker. Where it’s so climbed out, it’s so clean, you don’t even see any growth. Yosemite’s incredibly clean, an absolutely clean crack with nothing growing. But, I guess it really struck me the first time I was up high in a more alpine situation, it might not have been the first time, but the first time I saw, noticed growth, saw a flower growing, I thought ‘Wow,’ it totally changed my perception of rock climbing, I thought, ‘This isn’t just rock climbing, this is something that’s growing, there can be things growing up here, animals and plants.’ It started that whole appreciation for ‘Geez, this is like a living eco-system up here,’ it’s not just a rock, but this is part of a bigger thing that’s growing.

S.A. “the aliveness of the flower/crack/moss eco-system, and then I feel that this mini- “eco-system” is just a small part of the greater rock/flower ecosystem … it’s all alive and vibrant.”

In relationship to the idea that one is observing a living eco-system is the idea that one is a participant.

B.H. “Understanding of my position within the natural sphere?”

B.H. That goes back to what I said a minute ago … I don’t feel like I’m battling the rock. I feel like it understands me, I understand it,  we’re together as I’m moving up it. That doesn’t mean that I’m battling up it, I’m just moving up it and it’s aware of me.

B.H. talks about mutual awareness between himself and the rock. The way he describes the relationship seems to imply a sense of cooperation. T.B. describes a similar experience wherein the rock seems to work in conjunction with the climber, as a dance partner.

T.B. (It’s) more of a mental plane than a physical plane, although the physical sensory stuff is part of it, but it’s not as gymnastic … it’s more of a dance than a grunt. … So maybe the rock is my dancing partner.

T.B. gives a more detailed analysis of the sensation that the rock is alive.

T.B. “The coarse texture of the rock felt so real and alive under my hands and feet.”

T.B. Sometimes I sort of lose myself in all of my sensory perceptions, the textures, the smells and everything. And that goes in with the flow. Sometimes the rock is just this static thing, and it’s there, and I hate it. But on other days it is more dynamic, and more enjoyable.

When she loses herself in sensory flow, she opens up to the experience that the rock is alive.

T.B. “It (the rock) feels more real?”

T.B. Yeah, definitely more real. When it’s just a hunk of rock that I’m getting annoyed with, it could just be a steel girder that I can’t climb. But when it’s rock that feel’s alive it takes on a different character, it’s more like I’m moving with it instead of against it and letting it direct my movements, instead of trying to conquer the rock.

C.W. So, that experience of moving with it and letting it direct your movements, that’s when it feels more real and alive?

T.B.  Yes that’s when it feels more like I’m really merging with the environment, the whole natural setting.

There is a clear distinction between the times when the rock is perceived as inaminate and when it feels alive.

T.B. When it feels more alive, it becomes not an inanimate hunk of rock that I need to conquer. It becomes … what does it become? I guess that’s the question. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s more like an experience than a … thing.

T.B. It’s tangible but the whole climbing is … I don’t know what I’m saying…

T.B. I feel like the rock on the days that everything flows and I’m not fighting this thing, it becomes more … more alive. I don’t know how else to …  It seems to me that I’m on a different plane when that happens than I am when I’m just huffing and grunting and snorting and sweating up something.

When T.B. says “I feel like the rock,” I am reminded of the statement from B.H. when he describes being part of the rock and S.M.’s description of feeling “like the old tree.”

Michael experienced an expanding awareness of the magnitude of Nature in comparison to the human race.

Michael. “I began to see the greatness of nature and how powerful it is in relation to humans.”

Michael. Right, because typically, I could appreciate beauty in Nature, but not in the way that I could after this. It was more of a profound experience once this happened.

For Michael, as an example, the realization of the “greatness of Nature” came as a new idea. This idea may have been understood intellectually but the experience of the idea was new. For D.W., an understanding of the power of Nature was part of her upbringing. This was taught to her as a child and the experience of rock climbing is a confirming force.

D.W. I grew-up believing everything has a spirit. Everything is teacher and helper, especially the stone people or the grandfathers as we sometime call them. The stone people have been around forever, they have seen it all, they know everything.

D.W. What better way to get in touch with the spirit of the stone than to climb?

We have gone from discussing the sensation that the rock is alive to the idea the it has a spirit. In the next theme we will talk about the spiritual aspects of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

Holistic awareness of being a part of nature.

(Barry, B.H., Jim, Lee, Michael, Robert, S.A., S.M.)

There is an holistic awareness that in its simplest expression is stated as “I am here.” This is the awareness of personal place in the environment.  The type of awareness that comes about through the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing is much more complex that this. The personal awareness of location is combines with an awareness of impact on the environment. This awareness of personal impact on the local environment is combined with an awareness of humankind’s impact on the global environment. We cannot limit this to impact,  there is an additional awareness of personal/humankind’s role in the living ecology that surrounds us and makes up what we know of as Nature. This is an holistic awareness in that each aspect is present simultaneously without differentiation between parts. This lack of differentiation extends to a lack of differentiation between the self and that which is ordinarily considered non-self.

This very complex theme represents the center of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. In attempting to prepare commentary to accompany the statements that follow, I have been grateful both for the methodological dictate that description come from the words of the co-researchers and grateful to my co-researchers for giving words to this experience so that I don’t have to write about this theme from scratch.

Now my primary difficulty is in determining with which of these highly prosaic descriptions to begin. Let’s start with one climber’s realization that his own interpretation and subsequent description was inevitably influenced by ideas he had encountered prior to his experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

S.A. I’m sure my feelings and thoughts and how I interpret it [the experience of merging with Nature] now are influenced by things I’ve read prior to experiencing these things. I’ve read things like The Tao of Physics, and I’ve studied physics a lot, looking at how things, how particles transfer between objects, and the physical interconnectedness of things from a physical standpoint. So that probably set up my perception and experience. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t have happened without those experiences, but without the prior reading or whatever,  maybe it wouldn’t have happened in the same way.

You might ask what the Tao of Physics has to do with rock climbing. Apparently, the experience of merging relates to the idea in Quantum Physics that al Nature is inter-connected. I wonder if it’s any coincidence that I used this book as one of my primary references while writing my Master’s thesis On the Nature of Reality?

Let’s go back to what S.A. has to say about this book and it’s effect on his interpretation of his experience of merging with Nature.

S.A.I think it probably shaped, somewhat, my experience, or helped me interpret it in a certain way. Again, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have interpreted it in the exact same way without the books that I’ve seen or read, but certainly there was a sort of déjà-vu feeling, or a feeling like ‘Oh, I’m experiencing this, it’s really nice, oh, that kind of blends with what I’ve seen or felt before.’  It kind of makes sense. It was a validating experience, in some respects.  ‘Oh, yeah, this is what should happen, or what has happened, or it makes sense that this is happening.’

Now that we have set up the idea that S.A.’s interpretation of his experience was influenced by prior reading, especially the Tao of Physics, let’s go to that interpretation.

S.A. Yeah, it makes sense. The reality of the situation is that I am exchanging mass with the surroundings, literally. I am breathing this air, I’m absorbing this energy, I’m putting out energy. There’s a flux of energy that’s actually happening. So, if you think of it at that level, well, it makes sense that I feel this. Because physically, that’s what’s really going on. Physically, I’m connected and this particle on the mountain might have been my predecessor’s body or a piece of his bone, or who knows what.  I mean, there’s just this continual cycling of elements and  a continual creation and destruction of things in space and time. I wasn’t thinking of those things when I felt the experience, but when I reflect on the experience, it just, it was kind of a confirming feeling of how  ‘Yeah, that’s how it’s supposed to be.’ It’s just that we don’t always experience that in normal consciousness.

The patterns of creation and destruction and the interpenetrated nature of totality are supported intellectually by modern science and are prominent themes in many ancient religions. But S.A. is right when he states that we don’t normally experience these “facts” in our everyday reality.

What is it like to experience these perspectives, not only from the objective stance of agreeing with the scientific data, but also, and perhaps more importantly, from the subjective position?

S.A. And I kind of, for a minute, felt removed from climbing, as if I were just kind of, I was just hanging out  on a stance, totally comfortable, not really using effort to be there, like I normally would, not really thinking about pro, just observing and saying ‘Wow, that’s beautiful,’ and just kind of feeling like ‘God, I’ve just merged with this, I’m part of this, and it’s part of my fate to pass through this and see it.’

There is a removal from the activity at hand and a feeling that some external force such as fate has brought this moment to pass.

S.A. “I realize that I’m part of this living oneness.”

S.A. That kind of flows back into the idea that I  have that once I’ve had an experience it adds to your repertoire of experiences. And at that time it was easy for me to, probably, feel that oneness, because I’ve felt it before, in other situations, and it was like, ‘Wow, this is a clear example of how …’ at least it was reminding me, look how this … the plants are growing out of the rock, so, the rock is essentially part of a living system and I’m alive too, and this is sustaining me … and we’re interacting, and it kind of reinforced that feeling that everything is connected, including me.

There is a feeling of “oneness” that is common to other situations, perhaps meditation, S.A. doesn’t say. He does however come back to the distinction between experiencing Nature as external and separate and feeling at-one with it.

S.A. We often think of Nature as being external or outside of us, but I feel that we’re just another part of quote-unquote ‘Nature.’ So that experience brought that sharply to my attention, but it wasn’t the first time I’d ever felt that inter-connectedness.

S.A. “again a piece of it, a feeling of oneness. Sometimes I’ve felt a flow of energy coming from these elements to me.”

During the experience all faults have their place and everything is perfect, including the smaller part of reality known as the self. Not only is the totality of reality perfect, it’s all organic, that is, alive.

S.A. “I’m a perfect part of this big organic natural reality.”

S.A. It’s that same interconnectedness feeling, that ‘yeah, everything’s connected and I’m just a part of it.’  … That … I had another thought that … I’ve had thoughts when I’m not thinking more transcendentally, that things are hard rock, things that are dead, and things that area living … we tend to separate things into inorganic and organic… I do that a lot in work, I am an environmental consultant, everything’s broken down into organic and inorganic. But I guess I felt at that time and I still feel now, that things can be just looked at as organic, because even the inorganic things are directly supporting the organic things. So the reality at the time felt like, ‘wow,’  even the rocks are alive, the sky’s alive, things we normally think of as not alive, at that time, really felt alive, so it felt, everything felt very organic. Living and pulsating, even the things that we think of as inanimate felt like they had a life force …

I’m just another … whatever, piece of that, or manifestation of it.

The entire world, all of reality, is alive and the self is a relatively unimportant part of that. But a part none-the-less. There is a shift from feeling apart from Nature to feeling a  part of Nature. This feeling is reflected and repeated in comments from several other climbers.

Barry. (Different levels of the experience?) I guess that it would be opposed to just sitting back and enjoying it, looking at everything as opposed to being a part of it more or less. That would be two different levels.

C.W. What is the difference?

Barry. One is more intense than the other.

Barry. “A real feeling of being a part of everything fell over me.”

Barry mentions differing levels of “the experience” and states that the more intense level is when he feels more “a part” of Nature. He describes this feeling as falling over him. Robert describes the moment where he enters the experience of merging with Nature:

Robert. That’s the moment when you’re most apparent to the relationship that you have. And in essence that would be when I ‘merge.’ But in all reality, it’s difficult to merge, meaning coming together with something that you’re already a part of.

Robert. (It’s not so much a coming together of two things that are separate) but a realization of what you are.

From the context it is clear that the relationship that Robert is talking about is the relationship between the self and the outer world, or Nature. He brings up the important point that this merging is not something new, but rather a return to a natural state,

Robert. (“I believe that I am nature.”) I look at the planet, the universe as Nature and we’re just a part of that. Often, in Western civilization, more than most, we separate ourselves from Nature, we’re afraid of it, but I don’t see myself as being separated from Nature, but a part of Nature, and what I do to the environment, I do to myself. So, when we say merging with Nature, it’s difficult to say ‘I’m merging with Nature’ because basically I am Nature. So, what I think is really happening is that when I climb I get a heightened awareness of that relationship. Because people forget about it, it’s easy when you go off to climb,  and go off into the wilderness, and go out and get away from all of the distraction - you find that relationship once again. But that relationship, you don’t lose it when you come back. It’s always there, you just might not feel it or be aware of it.

So we have the idea that the experience of merging with Nature is the natural state. The complementary idea is that not being aware of this relationship is unnatural. B.H. talks about entering this experience as a return to “true life.”

B.H. “The experience, while it occurs, feels very natural and unassuming - it feels like a return to true life.”

B.H. I remember writing that in an attempt to clarify the paradox. True life or Return. Return is probably the better word to focus on. As a child, things around you are never … they don’t seem foreign, they don’t seem unnatural, they seem … no matter how weird they are, they seem like a part of life, normal. If I’m out on a hike, just strolling along … often the aspect of things may seem interesting. I’ll look at a particular angle or shadow or the way a tree grows and it will interest me and I’ll direct my attention to because it seems strange. But when I have this experience of merging nothing ever seems strange. Everything seems back to normal order. I guess it’s just that when I’m thinking, my mind is trying to impose structures on the world around it, like anybody has to do to survive, but when I have this experience of merging the structures are not necessary because the natural order …

The natural order supersedes the limited and limiting structures that the conscious mind places in front of the greater whole. B.H. talks about how one’s horizon of understanding opens up when merging with Nature.

B.H. “a very relaxed, contented feeling, almost a feeling of understanding, of conscious connection with nature and understanding of my position within the natural sphere.”

B.H. The bouldering seems to break past every single boundary. Gets right to the heart of the experience. Whereas this experience, this moderate one, it doesn’t break through every barrier. It may leave the last one there. Like, the awareness of … the need to consciously be aware of the experience, that’s the last barrier, bouldering breaks right through and just leaves you with the raw feeling. Whereas in this experience, you actually have to think the last step. You feel the experience that leads you up, and you think yourself into the realization of what it is, to have the full effect. I’m not sure if that describes it.

What is the realization that B.H. is talking about? Let’s look deeper into his statements.

B.H. “a very relaxed, contented feeling.”

B.H. The physical requirements are much less than in the bouldering.

B.H. “Of conscious connection with Nature.”

B.H. Right, the word ‘conscious’ comes up in this description and not the other because in the other it’s all about loss of consciousness. Whereas, in this one it’s less profound but more conscious. You don’t get to the same deep level of feeling, but the one which you do arrive at, you’re more aware of - while it’s happening. Whereas the other one maybe, is more, when it’s happening it’s very deep, then afterwards you can think about how it happened. Whereas, in this one you’re aware of it while it’s happening.

Do we yet understand what happens? Perhaps this statement from Michael will help.

Michael. “Prior to this climb, I had always maintained a rather cynical and elitist position on spiritual matters.”

Michael. Well, it put me in the position of feeling: a part of Nature, on the one hand,  on the second hand, it made me feel like I was nothing compared to the forces of Nature, all that I had experienced. I had to re-evaluate the whole primal spiritual values, what-have-you.

Michael. Well, I felt I was a part of Nature and my position prior to that was … that whole side of my life was non-existent, not even worth touching, because it was … it was kind of ridiculous. I grew up in a very religious family, I shouldn’t say religious, but very conservative family, and religion was forced upon me as a child. So, I always had a very reactionary stance on all kinds of spiritual matters. Does that explain it?

I don’t know Michael, is what you’re talking about similar to the feeling Lee describes in the following statement?

Lee. “The friendly feelings of insignificance and unimportance flood through me.” Why don’t we stop there and see if you can explain how the feeling of insignificance and unimportance is friendly?

Lee.  First of all, we’ve already talked about how you have to accept that in order to understand it. I don’t think a lot of people do that or can, based on how they live their lives. They are materialistic, and keeping up with the next door neighbors. Weighing success with how much money you make, what kind of car you drive… That’s not where I get my satisfaction. I come from a different side of things. Into feeling insignificant. I think that it is a friendly feeling.  Some people think they are really important, if you think about it we are not important at all. That isn’t a negative feeling for me. That feeling of “I didn’t matter, I could have died right there”  I felt pretty comfortable with that feeling, I think that there are a lot of people who would have been really freaked out by that. It’s really hard to explain.

Lee talks about the “friendly feelings of insignificance and unimportance.” Michael says that he felt that he was “nothing compared to the forces of Nature.” Do these quotes point toward the realization that B.H. was talking about? Let’s return to Lee for a further analysis of what he meant by the “friendly feelings of insignificance and unimportance.”

Lee. The friendly feelings of insignificance and unimportance flood through me providing me with further verification of why I climb.

Lee.  They’re friendly because I have come to terms with them. I don’t know if it was a progression or what, I have been doing these type of things for a long time.

Lee. ( “Flood through me?”) Just words. Just a warm feeling, a content feeling in your body, in your gut. You know that feeling when you’ve down something wrong, and you know it was wrong, and you know that you’re going to get caught. It’s not that feeling, it’s the opposite. It is a nice relaxed, loose feeling. Allowing all your feelings to overtake you with no negative. I think climbing helps me to be less negative.  I’ve done a good job of trying to integrate climbing into my life full time. It’s been really good, because it simplifies everything. It makes me feel good about myself, and what I am doing.

Lee. I don’t have anything like that   going on. I don’t feel that I want to right now. Maybe in a few years I will. Right now I am happy with climbing and skiing. A lot of people don’t have something, but I’ve got something. I’ve got climbing. It may sound really stupid to a lot of people. I’ve got climbing, and I’ve got skiing.

Lee. I feel like with climbing and skiing, I’m very content with them. A lot of people don’t have anything, I’ve got climbing. Also, I’ve got myself. I’ve got myself and that’s all I need, really. But I don’t know if I would have myself if I didn’t have climbing and skiing because that’s who I am. It seems so simple, but that’s good.

Lee. (“that’s who I am?”) It’s such a big part of my life. It doesn’t seem like there’s that much else going on and my energy and motivation are directed towards those two things (Skiing and Climbing), literally. When I talk about climbing, I’ve only done it for 6-7 years, so I feel like I haven’t changed to incorporate climbing into my life.

Lee. The peaceful feeling is how I merge with Nature. That’s when I feel the happiest.

I can certainly detect a note of satisfaction in Lee’s description, but I’m not sure that we have yet fully explained the realization that occurs and its relationship to this experience.

Let’s return to our analysis of the experience, perhaps S.M. will aid our process of gaining understanding.

S.M. It’s hard to describe, because it was almost like I had lost an awareness of myself in the process. That I had become a part of whatever this experience was, of going up the rock. There wasn’t a real sense of a ‘me’ sitting there looking at the rock, and examining it and worrying and thinking and trying this or that. It was a sense of being in the movement without an outside examiner, watching myself. I was so focused in the experience.

S.M. describes losing an awareness of herself, or perhaps she lost an awareness of her “self.” She states that there was no sense of “me,” and that is the usual way a person refers to their “self.” She had become “a part” of the experience itself. The self that she describes as “examining and worrying” has faded in prominence and the self which is involved in the present experience becomes the self that is primarily experienced. That self is not limited to the body-self,  nor do its boundaries end at the physical boundaries of external objects.

S.M. “When I finally reached the top ledge and looked over the valley and felt the wind on my face, I felt like the old tree that I was sharing the ledge with.”

S.M. That was just such an amazing moment. I wasn’t even aware of ‘yea, I made it, I made it.’ I was just on this ledge looking out  over these other hills and valleys and stuff. It was so beautiful. There was this old, knotted, gnarled tree that we had tied off on. It was sitting there so proudly. As gnarled and as twisted as it was from the wind, but it was there, so solid in the rock. I felt like that tree. There I was on this ledge, and normally I am really afraid of heights. It was a narrow ledge, and it had some loose rocks and it could have been dangerous, but I was standing there feeling so grounded and so rooted and so at one. I  really identified with that tree, no matter the winds were tossing it and turning it, it was there, solid.

S.M. “grounded, rooted in the earth and solid standing on a narrow ledge.”

S.M. A lot of times, I’ve felt myself walking the Earth or whatever and not feeling a part of it. Feeling like a stranger, sometimes antagonistic or … but not really solid and as a part of the Earth and Nature around. My feelings then of being solid and rooted and like I was a part of that landscape, like I was a part of Nature.

The examining, worrying, thinking, trying outside observer self had taken a break. The self that participates in the moment had come to the forefront. In the metaphor of the gnarled, twisted old tree there is a sense of peace and calm and restful repose between periodic boughts with cold, ferocious winds that buffet and hammer.  S.M. expands her identification of self so that the experience of self includes the tree, and as it represents Nature, includes Nature as a whole. Once this transformation occurs, the separate identity of S.M. is swallowed up into the whole. Through this process, S.M. is able to incorporate positive aspects of the larger self-identification and apply them to the smaller, individual self-identification once she returns to that perspective. This is made more explicit in the following statement where S.M. interprets the metaphor of the tree as it applies to her  personal self.

S.M. “the tree and I were unmoveable and able to withstand whatever the world might dish out.”

S.M. The wind had been blowing and you could tell that this tree had been tossed by the wind a great deal with as gnarled and a knotted as it was. I guess I was really identifying with feeling so solid and grounded even though the wind was blowing certainly it was a narrow ledge and it could have been treacherous. It really just felt that what ever might happen, I’m here. And this is where I am, and that’s not going to change, right now.

The temporary relativization of the sense of self had the effect of strengthening S.M.’s identity by expanding her self in an inclusive way, so that the new larger sense of self was able to incorporate the power, strength and confidence that she sensed as immanent in the image of the tree.

In  way that will be developed more explicitly elsewhere, there is a sense of life in the natural surroundings, collectively Nature. Perhaps the realization B.H. mentioned is the realization of the independent nature of the external surroundings. This  recognition of an other that is outside of personal influence results in a relativization of self. For S.M. this resulted in the incorporation of characteristics of the other that she was lacking, allowing her to feel more whole as a person.

For Lee, the relativation of self resulted in a revaluation of his centrality. It begins with the feeling that he, for once, is an other. He describes feeling like an “intruder.”

Lee. “I’ve always felt like an intruder while visiting these special areas.”

Lee. Because human beings are so not a part of the natural world. We’ve distanced ourselves with technology or whatever. We are not even a part of it. We can’t even understand it. You don’t know what is going through the cat’s mind. Everything is on a much more simple level. When you go up to the Diamond, what you are bringing with you is totally different that what that falcon is bringing with him as he is cruising down. Those ants that eat your legs on the ledges.

In order to maintain a sense of self, we have to maintain boundaries that distinguish our self from the rest of reality. This process goes along with not being a part of the rest. We are separate.

In the description of his experience, Lee starts out by describing how he feels before entering the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. Note the metaphor he uses while he describes this part of the experience.

To the Earth, we are, as the ants that eat our legs are, to us. Our consciousness is “out of synch” with the rest of the planet.

Lee. I think that they’re opportunists, they are all opportunists. I guess humans are too. In a different way, we don’t work in synch with the planet. I think that we are definitely a divisive force. I don’t think  we bring the same things in.

How do these things change when you go climbing? Let’s follow Lee’s description.

Lee. We did a route called “Turn-corner,” it was a real “grunt” for me. We had one pack, my partner led the two crux pitches. I followed them wearing the pack. It was an off-width crack. It was a full-on struggle for me, wearing the pack, the difficulty of the route, etc.

Note how the description moves from the abstract to the concrete.

Lee. It was a wall pack,  not really a climbing pack. You couldn’t snuggle it down. It was like a small, real small pig. I grunted my way up that thing. But I didn’t have to hang on the rope, I did it totally. We got to the top and there wasn’t anyone else around. We thought it was going to really cut loose on us. There were big cloud cells coming in, but they evaporated. It was about seventy degrees, sunny out, no wind. We puffed a few bowls. We just hung out for like an hour, just sitting there, just going “Wow, this is cool!”

The concrete leads to a pleasurable feeling.

Lee. O.K. That was an example of getting to the top and having the peaceful feeling. Where I overcame the struggles and felt good about it, and psyched about it. We got to the summit and de-geared and threw everything in the pack and felt the peaceful feeling. That was it, we cruised down. That’s an example. There were falcons flying around below us.

They felt the peaceful feeling after climbing. The animal metaphor, related to the experience of self, has shifted from ants biting the legs of the Earth to falcons soaring above her. The emotional shift goes from angry and unhappy to strong and free.

Let’s look as how this connects to the way Lee is affected by the relativation of the self. What happens to Lee’s sense of self and how is it related to the experience he describes and the metaphors he uses?

Lee. “My presence and existence become completely meaningless, insignificant and unnecessary.”

What does Lee mean by this? His oral response to this written statement reads as follows:

Lee. Anti-people, people not really being that important.

People? In his description, Lee shifts from talking about his specific personal presence and existence to the presence and existence of people in general.

Lee. I don’t think that it is an experience, I think that it is just a way of thinking. People are ruining the planet. We are, there’s no doubt. In the grand scheme of things you don’t matter, I don’t matter.  And you don’t. You’ll die. I’ll die. Things will just continue. Kind of a dark thought.

Lee. You have to come to terms with feeling insignificant. Because you are, if you are up on the Diamond, that’s a pretty insignificant feeling. If you are way out there, you are just an insignificant thing. You have to realize that, and maybe that helps you get the peaceful feeling. People think they are really important. They’re not.

When you put it that way, it does sound kind of morbid. However, when I read the complete statement that Lee and I were discussing, we get a completely different perspective on the value of this experience.

Lee. “I’ve always felt like an outsider or even an intruder while visiting these special areas. My presence and existence become completely meaningless, insignificant and unnecessary. But I savor these moments and feelings, they are what make me feel alive and free.”

C.W. “Alive and free?” Can you describe that?

Lee. No worries. No regrets. No time, time doesn’t matter.

Lee savors these experiences and states that they make him feel alive and free. When we return to the description of that feeling, Lee goes back to the metaphor of the “peaceful feeling.”

Lee. Coming back to the peaceful feeling. That’s what I’ve always called it, the peaceful feeling. Maybe that peaceful feeling that I get is more in tune with what’s really going on. With that world, with the trees and the birds and the clouds or whatever. I feel more a part of it. I think that peaceful feeling definitely has something to do with feeling more a part of it than anything else.

He describes feeling “a part” of his surroundings and not separate. Then he relates this experience to the question about “merging with Nature.”

Lee. We’ve talked about the peaceful feeling, I guess that is what I would call “merging with Nature.” People might think about Nature in different ways. Like animals, the natural environment, being in the mountains. I don’t know how people think about Nature. They might think about the Discovery channel. For me, I think about the sights and sounds and smells, being in it, being immersed in it, being a part of it as much as I can.

S.A., Jim and B.H. each have more detailed comments about this experience and we will analyze each one separately.

S.A. “The other experience that sometimes arises is that of being high up on a cliff face, usually at a belay, and I look around me, suddenly realizing that I am in spectacularly beautiful surroundings, and I’m ‘in the middle.’”

Here we have a picture of a centralized sense of self in the sense that the self is at the center or “middle.” This sense of self is parallel to the visual cues in the environment.

S.A. Right, I guess, I can almost picture it as beams of light or energy kind of coming towards me, or emanating from me, or vice-versa. The awareness comes as I’m sitting at a belay, and I’ve got nothing better to do, so I’m just kind of looking around, and I kind of notice, ‘Wow.’ And I seem to be like, more prominent if I’m out on an  arete and my vision is real good. For example, the Nose of El Cap,  where you can see everywhere, you can see a long ways in all directions around you, side-to-side, behind you, up and down, you’re kind of like this point in the middle of lots of beautiful things, and I guess I felt like everything’s connected around me, and I feel really central, and I feel like it’s almost a protective cozy kind of feeling being in the middle of these things, which are really beautiful, and appreciating and then there’s just the feeling of being connected, and maybe receiving or giving energy, more receiving, I guess, receiving energy from my surroundings, kind of just light, and warmth and … even if I’m cold, even if it is breezy, I’ll almost feel like I’m getting some heat energy or something, when I’m feeling that way. It’s just kind of a really nice appreciation feeling, feeling like it’s all one big merged blur of mass.

S.A. continues:

S.A. “like a central focus point on the rock, surrounded by blue, vast sky, mountains, forests, and ‘on par’ with these big pieces of nature.”

S.A. I guess I just feel like … usually, I look at the sky and mountains and feel like these  are bigger things than me, these are more powerful and so much vaster. I guess, I’ve felt that ‘on par,’ in a certain sense that I’m almost as big, or I’m … I almost have as much capacity, or mass, or something as these things. Almost as if I’m heading towards a, I almost want to say ‘god-like’ state, but a more powerful state, but less than that I almost feel on par as far as levels, as far as elevation, I don’t notice that so much when I’m down low, as when I’m a thousand feet or two thousand feet up, I feel like these things that I’m seeing, the sky, the mountain, whatever, are kind of like, right there. Like not up here, not down there, but kind of like right here. As if I am part of this community, and you could almost step over and say ‘Hi, Mr. Mountain or Sky.’ Like we’re all in the same space and it’s accessible and it’s close.  That’s the strongest thing that I feel when I say ‘on par.’ More than being equivalent as far some judgmental thing, I feel like it’s accessible and it’s close, we’re in the same local area. Same proximity, even though that sky, it’s far away, and the sun is far away, but it all kind of seems like it’s all focused here and it’s close, and I’m right there, like I could reach out and touch it.

Lee experienced his personal self as insignificant  relative to the expanded sense of self that he experienced while merging with Nature. S.M. experienced her personal self as engaged in identification with Nature and S.A. as “on par,” in his relationship to Nature. S.A. described energy flowing into his self from the outside as well as energy flowing out from his body into his surroundings. He used a picture of “beams of light or energy kind of coming towards me, or emanating from me, or vice-versa.” B.H. describes a similar flowing of energy, only rather than beams of light or energy it is his “mind that seems to flow outward to everything around.” Another relativization of the sense of a centralized self.

B.H. “This state is a result of having my body execute the moves without conscious direction. When this occurs, my mind seems to flow outward to everything around.”

B.H. It’s something that … You don’t see the transition. One moment you may be doing the move that you’ve tried so many times and you’re thinking  ‘Is this going to be the time?’ And then the next moment you’re doing them and you’re no longer thinking about doing them, your body is doing the moves and you’re out there, you’re just part of everything and your body does them and carries you through with it. It’s just amazing.

Note how the discussion turns from the abstract to the concrete in much the same way that attention is turned toward the physical act of climbing.

B.H. I’m thinking of one good time that this happened in Yosemite on a Camp 4 problem where the last move of the problem was a dynamic movement that was way beyond my reach, supposedly! And I got to it … I had wired all the moves up to that last move and I knew that I could get all those moves, so I was doing them, and as I was approaching that last move I was just thinking … I was thinking actually about how I was going to … It’s funny in that case the falling off of the second to last hold had become part of the move, because I had fallen off so many times. So, I was thinking ‘Okay, where am I going to land when I come off this.”  And then, my body found the exact right movement and carried me through the last move, and I just remember that …

The description (parallel to the experience we dare surmise) moves from the general, abstract pattern to the exact specific moment where all awareness is directed into the body. And then …

B.H. I never was consciously aware of directing my body to do the last move, it just took over and did it. During that moment, I was just …

Consciousness leaves the body and awareness is directed outward.

B.H. I remember just being aware of the trees around me. Around that particular boulder, there’s nothing but gigantic trees and I remember feeling like they were part of me, I was part of them, I was part of the rock I was holding on to, there was no separate. Everything was together, it was a real neat moment.

The body is not left completely unattended, while the mind is otherwise occupied or distracted, the body completes the move on the physical plane. In his written description B.H. chooses to examine more deeply the mental aspect of this experience which he describes as “a feeling of understanding,” in the interview he expresses dissatisfaction with this term and gives a more complete definition.

B.H. “Almost a feeling of understanding.”

B.H. Yeah, I started to get a little wishy-washy there, because I’m not sure what I meant by that. I wanted to say that because I wanted to use the word understanding because I come away from the experience feeling closer to the natural world. Hmm, understanding … I’m not sure what it is that I understand except that maybe … I guess that I am part of the whole process,  part of the whole movement of nature. I mean the common feeling of rock climbing, for me, is the feeling of me against the rock. There is the rock it’s implacable and immovable; I’ve got to climb it. It’s nature; I’m not. Whereas, in this experience I feel much more related to the rock. It’s a feeling of understanding between you and the … It’s you and the rock, but by being both a rock, it’s you and nature.

Another shift in the sense of identity via identification with the external surroundings. In Jim’s description we find repeated the idea that the experience emerges out from the self.

Jim.  “a sense of connection emanating from the body, intertwining itself with the rock, snow, ice, and clouds.”

The sense of connection flows out from the body, the “normal” location for the sense of self is relativized. It flows out and intertwines “itself.” The use of the third person pronoun “itself” points to the relativation of the sense of self as well. Intertwining or merging with the external world, Nature. Nature being represented by the “rock, snow, ice and clouds.”

Jim. That’s where it gets tough. I don’t know, I didn’t know how else to phrase that, other than: it just felt like so much a part of that place, and that time, and that space, that there was no separation between the self and the environment. I was very very conscious of being a part of it, rather than being an observer, being separate. I don’t really know else to describe it.

Here we find some repeated themes that bear emphasis. The feeling of being “a part” rather than separate. No longer experiencing the self from an observing standpoint. When Jim stopped here, I asked him to elaborate on what he meant with the use of the phrase “emanating from the body.”

C.W.  Can you explain what you mean by  “emanating from the body?”

Jim. Well, I guess, the absence of, loss of any sense of, maybe self awareness, there was a connectedness between me and the ice and rock that I was touching, the ice that my feet were on, far beyond, far beyond what I had experienced, and experience now in daily life.

He responded with a description of connection that did not refer to a directional flow, and seems more stable, perhaps reflecting an “arrived at” state versus the movement toward that state. The movement toward the expanded sense of self was experienced as a rushing out from the body, an emanating process. Jim describes the original or starting point. Notice the peculiar syntax in the second sentence.

Jim. I mean we walk around being our own unique little selves. We are really conscious of yourself as a distinct entity, as separate from everything else.

The shift in referenced subject from “we” to “yourself” reflects the shift from personal to general in the sense of self when one goes from an observing perspective (yourself) to a participating perspective (we). And then we have the “arrived at” state.

Jim. While, there was no longer any separation, so that was the emanating from me. Or I could have phrased it the other way,  where it was emanating from the rock and ice and air, but there was that sense of connection, the loss of… no longer being separate from the environment.

Jim. (‘intertwining itself?’) I can’t really elaborate more on that. Just to say that, again it was that feeling of being a part, rather than being separate, observing, being conscious of me as opposed to that. Whatever. That barrier seemed to have been broken down.

Again we have reference to a feeling of being “a part” and not being “separate.” In the next theme we will discuss the possibility that merging with Nature may have engendered moments of mystical awareness or spiritual experience.

9) Mystical awareness or spiritual experience.

(Barry, Lee, Michael, S.T., T.B., T.M.)

It would be both outside of the dictates of existential-phenomenology and beyond my capabilities to determine which aspects of any experience are spiritual and which are not, for the same reason I will not try to define “mystical awareness.” Rather I will present statements from my co-researchers which seem related and for which I have no better name. I will leave it up to the reader to determine whether another phrase would be more suitable, and expect that each reader will have different perspectives on this matter.

For T.B. this idea came up while trying to distinguish “regular” rock climbing from “merging with Nature while rock climbing.”

T.B. “Climbing yesterday was spiritual and natural — not mechanical and scary.”

T.B. Like I’ve said earlier in our conversation,  certain days the climbing doesn’t come together, it’s more like this physical grunt. It’s either that or I’m thinking that somebody is going to get hurt, or whatever. That’s bad. I don’t like those days. Or sometimes that’ll happen part of the day  but the rest of the day it becomes spiritual and natural. I think the spiritual part is sort of what the emotions that are conjured up when you’re climbing and sometimes at the top of the climb and you’re surveying everything around you.  That’s the spiritual part I think, it’s not the tangible grunt that I just did to get up here, and ‘Okay, I’m up, let’s get down.’ So I guess that I have two different experiences when climbing, the physical and the really cool stuff. Which is when I feel really in tune with Nature. And realizing, ‘Yeah, this is it, this is why I climb.’

T.M. also makes a distinction between the varieties of experience that may occur when rock climbing. Indicating a preference for those experiences which are more spiritual.

Here she uses the combination of “power” and “sacredness” to point to something that is sensed. Before she used “power” and “life energy” in combination. If we connect “life energy” and “sacredness” the spiritual experience can be seen as an awareness of sacred life energy.

T.M. “My sense of power/sacredness is not refined, probably not even accurate; but it makes a difference to me when I climb.” It makes a difference but, … it doesn’t make climbing more fun, it doesn’t even make it more interesting. However, it makes it more memorable.

The experiences which are perceived as more spiritual are the ones which are more “memorable.” Lee describes his reaction to an experience, seeking to prolong the experience in order to enhance its memorability.

Lee. “We top out as the sun is sliding behind the peaks across the valley below. Birds float effortlessly on the cooling air currents around us. We find ourselves unable to move from our sacred spot, putting off the inevitable down climb in order to enjoy the moment.”

The sacredness of the spot reflects the experience of the climber. Some climbers emphasized this more than others. S.T. relates his reasons for climbing with being closer to Nature, which he feels may be defined as a religious experience.

S.T.“Merging with Nature during rock climbing - A peculiar thought to me.”

S.T. Reasons for climbing are pretty varied, and I guess that’s just another reason for climbing that I haven’t thought of, it certainly brings you closer to nature,  however you define nature, the outdoors or a religious experience or that type of thing.

Barry relates his experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing with his practice of Taoism.

Barry. I study Taoism. It’s based on the natural order of things. It’s not a religion, but if I guess if I get any feeling about what everything is about I get it from the outdoors and that’s how I understand how everything works. It makes sense to me a lot more than any religion does.  Being a climber and the feeling I get from that it is more of a … I’m a little short on adjectives today.

Barry. It is why I look to Nature, to explain things. That’s partly why it feels better merging with it, I just enjoy the experience a little more.

Michael’s experience affected him on a more directly spiritual level, changing his belief structure.

Michael. “This experience alone is responsible for changing my beliefs and values about the nature of our existence, and has lead to a dramatic decrease in my cynicism.”

Michael. For the large part,  it’ll go back every once in a while. I’ll get sort of cynical, I think it’s just my nature. But as far as being cynical about matters of … things that go beyond daily humdrum, things that deal with, you know,  everything that I’m really interested in, like consciousness, my belief systems about … I hate the word ‘spiritualism,’ I think it sounds really corky, but you know what I’m speaking of, these matters. I don’t have a cynical viewpoint on those, on that.  I’m much more accepting of other people’s beliefs concerning religion, spirituality, whatever. Whereas before, I was … I’m much more open and receptive to that instead of being very critical and condescending.

In spite of Michael’s struggles with terminology, we can see a drastic change in his acceptance of spirituality. His reaction to spiritual matters has mellowed from a critical standpoint to one which is more receptive. This relates to the questions that came up during his experience regarding “basic existential matters.”

Michael. (“basic existential matters concerning life and death?” From the profoundness of the experience, it made me start thinking more about what kind of belief system or system of thought do I need to maintain in order to accept the fact that I’m going to die someday, and my close friends, relatives, and all that will die as well. And you have to have something that goes beyond material accumulations to acquire happiness. And that was one of the biggest things right there. That was another thing that I went through in my evaluation of my life. Kind of like having a picture screen where I see my life being played over.

Michael. Going through certain parts of my life and seeing certain things that happened all the way through my childhood, all the way up to that point, I saw those things, and trying to explain it in the context of what was going on. Just trying to evaluate it.

Michael. During the climb, it was, … you know how you’re running through thoughts in your head, you’re constantly thinking of other things, just like when I go jogging, I never think about my jog, in fact it’s the furthest thing from my mind. I always think about what’s going on in my life or other matters, and that’s what was going. The whole experience itself, brought about this, the peak experience, brought about a more intensity, meaning that I could experience these things in a much deeper way  because of the affective component being more intense.

Questions about the nature of life and death were not new to Michael, but during this experience they impacted him on a deeply emotional level, forcing a re-evaluation of his spiritual belief system.

Michael. “Prior to this climb, I had always maintained a rather cynical and elitist position on spiritual matters.”

Michael. Well, it put me in the position of feeling: a part of Nature, on the one hand,  on the second hand, it made me feel like I was nothing compared to the forces of Nature, all that I had experienced. I had to re-evaluate the whole primal spiritual values, what-have-you.

Michael. Well, I felt I was a part of Nature and my position prior to that was … that whole side of my life was non-existent, not even worth touching, because it was … it was kind of ridiculous. I grew up in a very religious family, I shouldn’t say religious, but very conservative family, and religion was forced upon me as a child. So, I always had a very reactionary stance on all kinds of spiritual matters. Does that explain it?

It takes a very strong experience to force re-evaluation of spiritual questions which had been formed through childhood conditioning. The reactionary stance he describes as being opposed to the value system of his conservative family was deeply embedded. The fear of death on the mountain brought these issues to the forefront because suddenly issues around life, death and the meaning of it all moved from the abstract to the very personal. The emotional shock of facing these issues on the personal level was strong enough to at least shake the foundations of Michael’s understanding of the nature of reality.

Michael. “I was quite insistent on the fact that God or some higher level above human consciousness absolutely did not exist. While I was on this climb however, this cynical view began to dissipate rather quickly.”

Michael. My belief, itself, was crumbling before me, in the sense that this would not be possible without something beyond the material world. And it just all culminated into a pretty intense peak experience, where it just hits you right in front of your face, and it sort of goes beyond my ability to explain it in words. It was really intense, and it definitely forced me to re-evaluate.

Being faced with issues of life and death, re-evaluating fundamental spiritual issues, and having religious experiences are not characteristics that we usually ascribe to participation in sports. Next, we will look at some of the shifts in consciousness that occur related to these spiritual experiences.

S.A. describes an experience which may be called “mystical.”

S.A. I came across a mossy or grassy section, and I see beautiful flowers, and my attention is suddenly riveted to an intense appreciation of the beauty of the flowers.

S.A. I look around me, suddenly realizing that I am in spectacularly beautiful surroundings, and I’m ‘in the middle.’  I can almost picture it as beams of light or energy kind of coming towards me, or emanating from me, or vice-versa.

There seems no alternative to placing this meaning unit here. At first it seemed to go with “heightened sensory perceptions” but my attention was called to the idea that S.A. was not only noticing the beauty of the flowers but also an intense appreciation of that beauty. Being in beautiful surroundings, he finds himself “in the middle,” the beams of light coming towards him and emanating from him simultaneously remind me of the classic statement “I saw the light.” The feelings that accompany this experience remind me of the theme “feeling content and peaceful” but something more is called forth in this description.

S.A. “Filling me with peace, happiness, unity with nature, satisfaction, and spirituality. As if I’m on the edge of discovering some secrets from God or Mother Nature.”

What else could you call such an experience but spiritual or mystical?

S.A. I feel like, if I could maintain this for any amount of time that it would be just a matter of time before I would see more, or learn more, figure out more about the situation, things around me. I guess we all sense that there’s a lot more to know, or a lot more going on in life than we can get access to, or learn about or feel in this lifetime. In that state I felt before, that I’m closer, now, to figuring out more universal truths, or God, or life, or Nature. I feel like I’m in that zone now, my state has been transferred into this more aware state, and now that I’m in that space where it would be easier to perceive things that I haven’t seen before, things that are always there, but you don’t normally have access to, it’s kind of like I’m on the doorstep to something larger.  It hasn’t gone any farther necessarily. But, I feel like it would be inevitable that if I could stay in that state longer, or do it consciously for an hour or two a day, that I would be well on my way to becoming much more enlightened and much more aware and knowledgeable about reality and nature and the universe. I don’t have conclusive … I haven’t been able to see it or prove it, it’s just a feeling.

During this experience S.A. feels closer to figuring out universal truths, closer to “God,” closer to “life,” and closer to “Nature.” what is the relationship to the personal self in these instances? T.M. describes the shift in self-consciousness that occurred in her experience.

T.M. Because merging with Nature is not simply a losing consciousness of self, it was a replacement of that consciousness with a greater, expanded consciousness in a field that’s going around you.

The smaller limited personal self is replaced with a greater expanded sense of self. This is a temporary state and sometimes leaves the subject without a full memory of the experience.

B.H. “In both types of experiences, I come away feeling like I have remembered something very important, only to forget it again afterwards.”

B.H. That part’s hard to write. I don’t mean that I do remember something important. What I mean is that it is similar to the experience of remembering something that you’ve wanted to remember and forgetting it immediately once you’ve remembered it. And you’re left there with that feeling of ‘there it was and now it’s gone.’  When I have the experience I often, will really merge with it, feel good about it,  understand everything about whatever it is that I was understanding. When I’m back in the world of automobiles, in the bar drinking beers, I forget it again. I don’t forget it, it’s still in me, but it’s not immediate. So, I get back out there again.

B.H. can’t point to what it is that he understood during this experience but he does remember that at the time he understood everything about whatever it is that it was. At least he can describe the feeling.

B.H. So, it’s a very connected feeling, it’s a very holistic feeling.

Self awareness expands to incorporate the external environment.

B.H. Even … it feels like it flows beyond my fingertips into the rock, I feel the whole rock, then I start to feel … I feel like beyond the rock, the trees around me, the air, in El Dorado there’s a stream, and I always hear the stream .. Everything sort of comes together at once and while my body is performing these extremely concentrated movements, I’m becoming … I’m like flowing into the whole environment around me.

This shift in location of the sense of self is experienced as a flowing out into the environment. B.H. postulates a connection between self-focus that seems related, at least in concept, to meditative techniques of introspection.

B.H. Through intense focus on the self, I kind of merge out into everything.

C.W.  You mentioned “connected,” and “holistic” but just before that you mentioned that your “mind extracts itself from the experience.”

B.H. Yeah, It’s paradoxical. Later on in my description, I talk about how it’s intense yet relaxed. The whole experience is very paradoxical. I guess what I mean by ‘extracting’ is that I’m not consciously thinking about the movement of the body, so that kind of brings me away from that. That’s what I mean by ‘extract,’ but at the same time it’s ‘holistic’ because the extraction from the movement of the body allows me to feel things beside my body.

The usual relationship between the mind, the body, and the external environment changes.

B.H. Things that are usually considered external start to feel internal. It’s like there’s no division between external and internal at some point, you’re not experiencing one. It’s still paradoxical I know, but it’s a strange experience.

Perhaps there is something in the very nature of the experience that is paradoxical. To intellectually understand a concept is a far cry from the emotion filled experience of a truth. This reminds me of Barry’s comment: “One word and you say ‘I get it.’”

The next theme presents what may be a sub-category of this holistic experience. During this experience, time ceases to have any  relevance.

10)  One’s experience of time is altered.

(Lee, S.A., S.M., T.M.)

The following statements have the common theme of reflecting a shift in the experience of time during the climber’s experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. The nature of that shift is variable and personal. I will present here statements related to noticing shifts in one’s personal awareness of the passage of time.

This first statement shows a relationship to the experience of focus and concentration in that what one focuses upon is the present moment to the exclusion of all other moments.

S.M. I guess in a lot of ways it was a very timeless experience, there was no sense of time, of future, or past, it was just all in the moment.

Whereas, S.M. remarks on noticing “no sense of time,” S.A. wrote in his description about noticing a “sense of timelessness.” There’s no doubt that these two experiences are not quite the same.  Noticing the absence of a thing is not the same as noticing the presence of another thing. They do appear to belong in the same family of experience, thus their appearance in this theme together.  Reading from S.A.’s written description, I came to his statement about timelessness. He responded with a clarification of that experience.

S.A. (“also notice a sense of timelessness.”) Oh right, that’s very much the case and I guess it seems to go with that heightened awareness. And when your awareness is particularly sharp, it just seems like there’s just a  momentary lack of time or it’s really hard to tell what time it is, or care what time it is, or be aware of time’s passage, so much. Kind of like, you’re in this moment or space where, it could be a second or a minute or two, and it’s kind of hard to tell, you’re not passing through time in the usual sense. I notice that with the other climbing experience that I described, there’s that kind of space, kind of time… whatever continuum.

Could we go so far as to say that for a “moment” time is/was/becomes/became  irrelevant.

S.A. Same thing with time, you know just a feeling that for a moment or two, or however long, time can be floating along, and a lot of time could go by and I wouldn’t notice it or it could be just a second or two that I’ve expanded into what seemed like a longer time. I suspect that’s what’s happening. These experiences are probably only lasting three or four seconds or something and in that amount of time, I experience events or things that seem to take up a much longer period of time.  It might seem like a minute’s worth of experiences condensed into a much shorter period of time.

S.A. “totally content, almost blissful. So with the other experiences, there is also a sense of timelessness or time-distortion. Generally, these pleasant feelings are somewhat short-lived, as my attention returns to quickly paying out rope for the leader to clip a piece, but it leaves me with a secure, lingering feeling of happiness.

S.A.’s experiences point to shifts in the passage of time wherein he experiences the current moment, the now, in ways that are extra-ordinary. T.M. has a different sort of shift in her awareness of time. Her awareness expands so that she holds present multiple moments. She becomes aware of the flow of time over more than just the present moment. In her description, she talks about a geological awareness of the passage of time. Her frame of reference shifts to that of the rock.

T.M. “The first [aspect of feeling close to nature] is the awareness of age of the rock.”

T.M. Awareness of age of rock. It’s just that one has a sense of how old the thing is. That’s basically it.

Although she states here that awareness of the age of the rock is “basically it,” she goes on with more detailed description.

T.M. “I am slowly aware of movement of the earth that made this angular outcrop,”

T.M. It’s like a reaching out of awareness. It’s first of all, sort of a, by moving and not necessarily thinking about where you’re moving, the moves have to be easy, which allows this to happen, when there’s a difficulty all of your attention is gone there. So your attention remains nearby. Your attention can’t wander because you still have to move but your awareness can wander because you don’t have to see all of it. So there’s a separation of attention and awareness.  Attention is hanging loose, and awareness is also allowed to wander just a touch, but not too far. And that is when you start to see a sense of what the rock feels like under your hands. The age of the rock as it comes through your hands. I had on shoes so it comes through the hands. You can see that and you can see the Earth moving as it needs to. My favorite part of the awareness is always the feeling of the rock. It’s so slow.  Eternity.

Before she can enter into this type of awareness, she has to allow her attention to “wander.” Her awareness of the rock shifts from the awareness of a static object to that of an organic process. The separate nature of the rock is superseded by the awareness of the needs of the Earth.

T.M. “The feeling of time is stronger than when I’m rushing from one appointment to another?” Right, because there’s more of a feeling of accumulation of time.

T.M. “The rock has edged outward, and now is sinking back to the earth.”

With this statement, I can imagine seeing the geological process of the birth and eventual death through erosion of the rock taking place in the mind’s eye appearing as a wave crashing on the seashore in slow motion. Standing out of the personal self and usual time focus, in ecstasy seeing/beholding eternity.

T.M. “Time and rock. Our concerns are none of theirs. And yet, we help them age.”

T.M. Everytime I put my hands on the rock, everytime I step on something. It’s just … I take a little bit away with me, or I smooth it just a touch, something happens. It is not completely the same as when I go there. And that’s the weathering effect. Of course, then there are the clearer times when I pull a stone loose. You really know what’s going on there.

T.M. “A hand moves over the face of the rock, finding a hold. Another hand moves over the face to the same hold. And another hand. In time, the face wears smoother, the hold more difficult to grasp.” You describe that as “An interaction of time with age.”  Time, age … yeah. Age meaning the aging process. Not accumulation of time.

And here in these last statements, T.M. describes how  ecstasy and eternity merge and intersect with the personal in an awareness of the role that the self, as an individual, plays in the geological process. On the microscopic level she has become aware of the effect created by the friction of her shoes and hands on the rock; on a slightly higher order, of the effect of knocking off larger pieces of rock.  Lee describes his experience of time in a similar way. However,  Lee downplays the personal/individual effect.

Lee. “I’ve always felt like an outsider or even an intruder while visiting these special areas. My presence and existence become completely meaningless, insignificant and unnecessary. But I savor these moments and feelings, they are what make me feel alive and free.”

Lee. (“Alive and Free?” Can you describe that?) No worries. No regrets. No time, time doesn’t matter.

It seems that Lee has an awareness of the larger scale of things, and in that larger scale sees himself as a mere microscopic mote without significance. This experience, rather than being frightening, liberates.

Let’s look at a description that may show a segue between our “everyday, ordinary, shared consensus” way of experiencing time, and the rock climbers experience of time. Robert describes time as something that holds his awareness through technical requirements of the sport.

Robert. “I found myself climbing slow and balanced in a very smooth and flowing way.”

Robert. Well, it was kind of the nature of the climb, in that you had to be balanced,  you had to take your time. It wasn’t something you could really rush.

On difficult climbs, balance is maintained by moving with rhythm. Jerky movements upset one’s balance and make climbing difficult. Another advantage of smooth, flowing movements is that they go along with conservation of energy. Such conservation enables one to use maximum effort, with rapid returns to complete rest.

C.W. You described having to: “keep at least three points of contact on the rock at all times.”

Robert. It was kind of like one of those things where you move one hand and then the other hand, and maybe like one foot. Because, … maybe I’m not that good of a climber, but there wasn’t that much there. Small indentations in the rock were bomber. What you’re looking for, it wasn’t like big handholds or like big ledges. Okay, that’s a good one, I’ll walk on that tomorrow. And it was an extended periods of time when you were doing that.

This type of climbing requires a great deal of concentration. During these moments of great concentration the climber is not aware of  such irrelevancies as time.

11) They regret that the experience is over, the feelings linger on, and there is a strong desire to repeat the experience as soon and as often as possible.

(Jim, Robert, Michael, S.A., S.M., T.B.)

There seem to be three related aspects to this theme, regret that the experience is over, a lingering effect upon consciousness, and the presence of a desire to repeat the experience. I have listed these as separate parts of the same theme, but am presenting them together as the statements which describe these aspects of the larger experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing tend to be mixed in such a way that separation would not be possible and would destroy the combined nature of these three aspects.

I will try to present these aspects in the order they are given in the “name” of this theme. That is, I will begin with statements that are directed toward the “regret” aspect of this theme and move through “lingering” and end up with a discussion of the “desire to repeat.” As you will see, these aspects are interwoven in such a way that there will be much overlap and this linear presentation of the aspects will not be directly so.

This segment of the transcript of S.M.’s interview begins with her recollection of the catalyst which prompted her return to an “ordinary” state of consciousness.

S.M. “My friend then started talking about how we would get down which brought me back to my humanness.”

S.M. It reminded me that I wasn’t a tree sitting on the ledge, that I couldn’t just stay, that there was a world down there, that I had to return to, and it was time to go.

S.M. I think that there was a little bit of a sadness, of a loss, of that moment of experiencing being up there. It was a real gift. It was transcendent. I was no longer the person … I was no longer S.M. with the problems and the joys of the everyday world. I was a part of right there, right then experiencing life’s noblest of true experiences.  To leave that and to come back to the world, ‘Oh yeah, I’m S.M., I’ve gotta go to work tomorrow, I’ve gotta do this …’ It was a sense of loss.

As a measure of the shift in consciousness experienced one could compare the feeling tone of the experience that was lost with the consciously acceptable motivation given for desiring to repeat the experience, “thrill and excitement.”

S.M. “I don’t get the chance to climb very often because of a very busy schedule, so I have missed the thrill and excitement of pushing myself on the rocks.”

This description from S.A. also begins with his return to “ordinary” consciousness and discusses the kind of regret he has upon this return. There is a desire to prolong the experience which seems related to the desire to repeat it. He expresses the idea that he regrets that the experience is over.

S.A. “Usually my concentration returns to climbing after a short while, and I look for pro, realizing that I’m just ‘passing through,’ not really a permanent fixture there.”

S.A.  I don’t know….  I’m trying to think… I guess that I accept it, but there’s kind of almost, now that I think about it, a tinge of wishing I could prolong that experience. Or be there longer, and kind of analyze it. I’m kind of an analytical person. It’d be nice to hang out and maybe spend an hour there, and just kind of feeling it longer. So as I kind of recognize that I have to move on, I guess there’s a tinge of regret. That I couldn’t just hang out and spend some more time. There’s also a feeling of knowing that that’s the right thing to do, and that that’s Okay.

In the next line we find a reference to the lingering nature of the experience.

S.A. The experience kind of goes away when you move on, but you can still think back and go ‘That was nice, I had a nice time seeing that flower.’  I might comment to my second. I guess I  realize, too, I guess it’s on lead that I would feel that.

S.A. gives another description of the way that the transition back to “normal” conscious is gradual, that the experience lingers.

S.A. “totally content, almost blissful. So with the other experiences, there is also a sense of timelessness or time-distortion. Generally, these pleasant feelings are somewhat short-lived, as my attention returns to quickly paying out rope for the leader to clip a piece, but it leaves me with a secure, lingering feeling of happiness.”

S.A. Yeah,  that’s like I described … the lingering effect. I felt really good vibes having that kind of experience. It feels like you’re really content.

S.A. (So there’s a lingering effect?) Yeah, definitely, a feeling that lingers, it feels nice.

In a statement that falls into the aspect of this theme called “desire to repeat the experience,” T.B. describes a long awaited fulfillment.

T.B. “Thank God, it happened again!”

In her desire to repeat this experience, she had braved many objective dangers.

T.B. It had been too long! Yeah, I had just had too many epics over the last year or so, and that had stopped me from relaxing and letting the experience happen. Too many factors of objective dangers. Rock fall, Death, whatever, Safety. I was glad to get it back again.

The danger was insignificant in the pursuit of experience.

T.B. “I was afraid that I had lost it forever, yesterday it came back.”

T.B. Just the … the part of climbing that I think I love most, which is not necessarily … it’s kind of a merging of the  physical and emotional and the environment.

Is this “merging of the physical and emotional and the environment” not what we have been calling merging with Nature?

T.B. It’s not … at times I was thinking ‘Wow, I can’t even pull on this”, or “It’s raining I might kill myself.” There are certain times when everything just comes together and the rain isn’t the issue, your strength isn’t the issue, it’s all there. That’s what I like best about climbing and that’s what ‘it’ is. I guess when everything comes together.

T.B. “I was bouldering at Flagstaff, when I once again merged with Nature.”

T.B. It used to be that way most of the time. Because I’ve spent a lot of my climbing … I’ve been climbing since about ‘86 or ‘87 and much of the climbing that I’ve done has been mellow moderate routes that aren’t scary or too difficult for  me physically… more of an outdoor experience than a gymnastic experience.

In titling the third aspect of this theme, “desire to repeat” seemed essential. But this alone wasn’t enough. As you have read, I added “as soon and as often as possible.”  As mentioned in S.A.’s description, there is a desire to prolong the experience. This is related to the desire to repeat the experience as soon as possible. The following statement from T.B. shows how even though she has attained a repeat of her previous experience, this is not enough. She still wants more.

T.B. “I’m searching again for that delicate balance in climbing of always being safety conscious, yet losing myself in the environment and dance.”

T.B. Like I said, I really need to log some good solid days of ‘no epics.’ Because there’s so much more to climbing. Because there are days when you can get to that flowing euphoric state and just take in all of your surroundings … that’s why I continue to go out and do it again. I’m already feeling better about it, about climbing again. Just by having some good days, and I want more. I’m working on it.

Michael also talks about wanting more, which relates to the “as soon and as often as possible” part of the title of the third aspect of this theme.

Michael. In the sense that after we had accomplished our goal, the complete cycle of ascending and descending the mountain, it gave me more of feeling of being comfortable. Being comfortable with it, after I went through that whole experience and started realizing that I was going to get through it all right. I started realizing that it was kind of an interesting experience and something that I wanted to take a part of more, in the future.

Jim tells us about the short term lingering of his experience and talks about how he can still “tap into it”  some twenty years later. Later he talks about wanting more - the desire to repeat the experience.

Jim. “Yet something remained, something that remained accessible through the fatigue, fear, and pain that I could still tap during the remainder of our trip.”

Jim. The experience was so unlike anything that had ever happened to me in my life, before that, that… and it was so real that I could! Especially for the next couple of weeks, because this adventure wasn’t over by any stretch at that point. And, Yeah, I could just by recalling the situation have a certain, I could tap into a certain feeling, never anywhere close to the intensity of that time, but it was still accessible. Even today, the fact that I can remember it as clearly as I can, there’s still … Although it’s not anything that I ever do consciously any more. I can’t draw it back quickly with any kind of intensity that I could for a couple of weeks after it happened. That was interesting to me, that I could tap into that. It’s still something that I still wonder about now, having experienced something like that once in life … what it takes?

Perhaps it is the memory of the experience that lingers and thus feeds the desire to repeat it. Here Jim brings up the concept of addiction and ruminates on what extremes he might be tempted to go for another fix.

Jim. I mean, it’s a very addictive sort of thing, I’d love to be able to do that all of the time. If it takes stringing yourself out for weeks on end at high altitude with little food, … I don’t know. But I haven’t been able to re-create it, since then, but I haven’t pushed myself to the physical and emotional levels that I did then.

Jim. “You can still tap into it, but never with the same intensity, yet it was there.”

A little more on the lingering nature of the experience:

Jim.  When I sat down to write that, I really, by taking as long as I did, I really tried to re-create the time and place, and the feelings in my mind, and that did a pretty good job of it. Everything came back pretty clearly. That was what I felt, not really, that’s the only thing that I could say.

We will conclude this theme with Robert who describes the desire to repeat the experience of merging with Nature, not only once but “continuously.”

Robert. “If we open our eyes we will see that we are that which we are looking for.”

Robert. I think a lot of people are out there looking for something. And I think that they are already what they’re looking for, but they don’t see it. They don’t realize it.

I hope I’m not confusing there, but a lot of it has to do with how I view what nature really is, and I don’t separate myself from it.

I hope I answered the right question.

Robert. I would strive to the point where I am continuously merged, you’re always there. And not always having to do things to remind me.

At the very least, one might say that the experience of merging with Nature has had a lasting effect on these rock climbers. To say that their outlook on life has changed would be in line with the comments and descriptions we have read.

C) Conclusion of results - Wrapping up chapter 4.

As you my have noticed there were many statements which may have been placed in other themes as easily as the themes where they were found. Due to the overlapping nature of these themes, such statements were placed in the themes that this author felt most appropriate. Other combinations of meaning units may have, perhaps formed equally compelling themes and this author does not deny this possibility. Instead, I will maintain that the results and discussion that you have just read is the product of a situated experience, the result of the particular combination of existence, circumstance, and space-time and may not be repeatable.

Chapter V: Conclusion

A) About this conclusion

This dissertation is an attempt to provide a clear description of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.  I started out with an introduction to the topic and an explanation of my interest and background. Then, in the Literature Review, I looked at the experience from the outside perspective by reviewing what has been said by others about experiences related to merging with Nature while rock climbing.  In the Methods chapter, I presented a discussion of existential-phenomenological research methods, wrote about the process through which I gathered my data, and discussed how I went about analyzing that data. In the Results chapter, I shared the product of that analysis with a detailed look at each of 11 themes.

In this final chapter, I will attempt to fulfill the phenomenological agenda of facilitating deeper understanding for the reader. I hope to put these ideas together in a form that allows the reader to grasp the essence of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

A summarized description of the essential structure of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing will fill the place  between the theme-based descriptions found in chapter 4 and the individualized protocols found in the appendix. This generalized description will allow the reader to see the experience as it stands, complete within itself.

Following this summary of the experience, I will compare the results to the literature review, showing this research in relation to a larger field of study. This will show the experience as a part of the broader range of human experience.

A final section of this chapter will discuss limitations of this research and make suggestions for future studies.

B) Generalized description.

This section begins with an essay consisting of a paragraph describing the essence of each theme, followed by a final comprehensive paragraph describing the essential structure of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

There is an experience of liberation from everyday, ordinary distractions, fears and worries.

Our lives are frequently filled with distracting thoughts, some of which take the form of fears and worries. During the experience of merging with Nature, these thoughts are diminished or absent. This feels like a liberation, in the sense that one is freed from distractions.

During their experience climbers report having felt very content and peaceful.

When one is freed from distractions, the mind is opened to a serene peaceful stillness. This aspect of the experience is often referred to as being “like meditation.”

The conscious mind relaxes and the body takes over.

In the moment of serene peaceful stillness, the mind becomes still and finds its center. Information stored in the body automatically executes proper movements.

Physically strenuous activity becomes or is perceived as effortless.

While the mind is at rest and the body’s kinesthetic information is in action, otherwise difficult physical challenges appear to pass of their own accord.

One notices being intensely focused with an increased sense of concentration.

One is intensely focused on a narrow field of perception, that is, in the present moment and the present location of the body.  There is an increased sense of concentration in the sense that one’s focus is narrow and unwavering. One is effortlessly focused on the present moment.

Many climbers experience heightened sensory perceptions.

While focusing on the present moment, and filtering out distracting thoughts, the mind is able to take in and appreciate the full range of sensory perceptions.

Sensation that the rock/ Nature is alive.

When we are distracted from our immediate sensory perceptions it is possible to perceive the world as a static object existing external to our sense of self. However, when we immerse ourselves in the present moment and feel our senses in their fullness, we begin to notice the dynamic life that surrounds us.

Holistic awareness of being a part of Nature.

As we see the life surrounding us, we gain an understanding of the essential interdependence of all things. As individual persons we have an impact on our surroundings that mirrors the effect human beings have on their environment. Recognizing this, we realize that we are Nature.

Mystical awareness or spiritual experience.

This realization of interdependence provides the rock climber with a transcendental perspective that some perceive as a spiritual experience.  Others described their experience in reference to “peak experiences” or as being similar to drug induced altered states of consciousness.

The experience of time is altered.

The experience is one where the passage of time seems to either become faster, slower or simply irrelevant. Seconds may seem like hours, conversely hours may pass in the blink of an eye.

They regret that the experience is over, the feelings linger on, there is a strong desire to repeat the experience as soon and as often as possible.

The experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing seems to end too soon. The feelings remain, gradually diminishing with a return to ordinary consciousness, leaving behind a desire to return to that altered state.

The following is the culmination of the phenomenological analysis process, a description of the essential structure of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

Through liberation from distracting thoughts the conscious mind transitions into a feeling of being content and peaceful. The body takes over and physically strenuous activity becomes effortless.  One notices being intensely focused on the here and now, with an increased sense of concentration that heightens sensory perceptions.  Nature comes to life and one perceives the essential interdependence of all things.  This spiritual experience occurs in a moment out of time. It passes leaving an indelible trace and a desire to repeat the experience.

C) Comparing findings to Literature review.

Another piece of the mosaic.

In the phenomenological return to the things themselves, one looks for descriptions of experience, seeking understanding, before making theories.  Each phenomenological study explores a different area of the full range of human experience seeking to describe that which it has found.  This research has mapped out the particular area of human experience that is being called “merging with Nature while rock climbing.” The resulting description has been made available to be used in conjunction with other maps that have been provided by other researchers. When we compare the findings of this research to the findings of other researchers we may see how various different aspects of human experience relate to each other.

I have called this section “another piece of the mosaic” because the phenomenological description of human consciousness is incomplete and each piece of the map is separate and distinct from its neighbor. Thus, I imagine a mosaic composed of studies showing glimpses of the territory. When we think about future research an image of filling in gaps with colorful pictures comes to mind.  This study fills a gap in that it describes an experience which has not been given such close scrutiny ever before.

In order to assist the reader in making connections between this and related research, I would like to focus on two of its closest neighbors, the works of Csikszentmihalyi and Deikman. A closer look at the work of these two researchers will illuminate some of the larger questions that face my research.

Csikszentmihalyi talks about an aspect of experience which he calls “flow”   and refers to rock climbers as persons who experience flow. In reviewing his work, we will ask how flow relates to the experiences described by my co-researchers? But first, what is flow?

“The main dimensions of flow [are]- intense involvement, deep concentration, clarity of goals and feedback. loss of a sense of time, lack of self-consciousness and transcendence of a sense of self, leading to an autotelic, that is, intrinsically rewarding experience.”

When we compare Csikszentmihalyi’s description of the main dimensions of flow with my description of the essential structure of merging with Nature while rock climbing, we find that the two experiences are indeed close neighbors. The following is a theme by theme comparison.

Intense involvement and deep concentration relate to the themes of being intensely focused on the here and now, increased sense of concentration and heightened sensory perceptions. Clarity of goals and feedback are themes which seem to relate to liberation from distracting thoughts and effortlessness in physical activity. Loss of a sense of time is present in both descriptions. Lack of self-consciousness and transcendence of a sense of self are clearly aspects of merging with Nature and show up in my study as relaxation of the conscious mind and the occurrence of spiritual experiences or mystic awareness. Merging with Nature while rock climbing is an autotelic or intrinsically rewarding experience,  and this can be seen in the feeling of being content and peaceful. What my work has uncovered and Csikszentmihalyi’s did not are aspects of the experience which refer to the aliveness of Nature and the staying power of the experience. Flow seems a category of experience that occurs at a different, perhaps more specific level of engagement, more than the ordinary, but less than the complete conversion that may occur while merging with Nature. Some rock climbers described differing levels of experience. Perhaps the continuum they refer to includes both flow and merging with Nature.

On another level of this continuum, we find the mystic experience as described by Deikman. While one of my themes was “mystic awareness of spiritual experience,” this does not guarantee that merging with Nature while rock climbing matches Deikman’s “five principal features of the mystic experience.”

(a) intense realness

(b) unusual sensations

(c) unity

(d) ineffability

(e) trans-sensate phenomena.

Intense realness could be seen as a combination of  intense focus, increased sense of concentration and heightened sensory perceptions. Having physically strenuous activities become effortless, seeing Nature come to life and perceiving the essential interdependence of all things are surely unusual sensations for all but the most unusual persons. Unity and merging are both words that point in the same direction. In my themes, I have included the idea that Merging with Nature while rock climbing is a mystic or spiritual experience. Many rock climbers talked about the difficulty of expressing the feelings of merging and this reflects the ineffability of the experience. “[Trans-sensate] experiences are the result of the operation of a new perceptual capacity responsive to dimensions of the stimulus array previously ignored or blocked from awareness.”  The experience of freeing one’s mind from all distracting thoughts matches Deikman’s description of the trans-sensate experience as a state which is “definitely not blank or empty but filled with intense, profound, vivid perception.”  Other statements regarding loss of sense of self while merging with Nature while rock climbing relate to Deikman’s statement: “The loss of ‘self’ characteristic of the trans-sensate experience indicates that the new perceptual mode is not associated with reflective awareness - the ‘I’ of normal consciousness is in abeyance.”

It appears that, with a brief comparison, merging with Nature while rock climbing meets or matches the five principal features of the mystic experience as described by Deikman. Deikman delineates three basic categories of mystic experience, “untrained-sensate, trained sensate, and trained-transcendent.”  Can we determine which type best describes merging with Nature while rock climbing?

At first glance, most climbers interviewed for this study seem to have reported experiences that  fall into Deikman’s first category, ‘untrained sensate.’ However,  others referred to practiced paradigmatic perspectives, such as Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and Quantum Mechanics, that may have influenced their experience.  So, I would hesitate to classify merging with Nature while rock climbing as an ‘untrained sensate’ experience. Perhaps rock climbing itself is more than just a sport, could it also be seen as a spiritual practice? Many of the rock climbers interviewed for this study talked about how the demands of the sport require a focused style of concentration which could be compared to meditation. But others described aspects of  their first experience of rock climbing.

It seems that merging with Nature while rock climbing is a term which captures too wide of a spectrum of experience to be limited to any of Deikman’s categories. Perhaps further study would show differences between the reports of novice and advanced climbers. It may be that novice climbers report untrained sensate, and advanced climbers report trained transcendent experiences.

I have shown that both flow and mystic experiences occur while rock climbing.  An obvious expansion of this research to show wider generalizability would require asking the question, “can one experience merging with Nature while not rock climbing?” In the literature review, I discussed sports such as long-distance running, football, and surfing. In the protocols, rock climbers mentioned other sports wherein they had experiences similar to merging with Nature while rock climbing, such as downhill skiing, dancing, and the martial arts. These points lead me to believe that merging with Nature is not limited to rock climbing. For further verification, I will compare the essential structure of the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing with Pearson’s  list of themes describing surfing as another physical activity which provides similar mental, physical and spiritual experiences.

Vertigo, excitement, and the pleasure of risk-taking are to be found in both surfing and rock climbing. These challenges allow both the surfer and the rock climber to tap into their respective self-actualization potentials.  Each sport involves an intense interaction with the environment, the surfer physically immerses him or herself into the water and the climber is similarly taken to a new depth of involvement with Nature.  Fun, pleasure, joy, vivification are described by Pearson as elements of the surfer’s experience, elements relating to Csikszentmihalyi’s description of flow as autotelic as well as being important aspects of the appeal of rock climbing. Other parts of that appeal are kinesthetic satisfaction as described by Pearson, cathartic release from worries and distractions, and the pure beauty of the experience.

So far, we have looked at flow, the mystic experience and surfing, what do these, in comparison to merging with Nature while rock climbing tell us about the larger picture of human experience? One thing I hope to have shown is that these experiences are not limited to practitioners of sitting meditation. These experiences can and do occur while engaged in active pursuits. The doctrine of integrating mind, body, and spirit may be growing in acceptance in the west, but our background includes many years of body-negating traditions. This research may stand as a small counter-balance against those body-negating traditions by showing that some very positive, healthy, spiritual experiences may be had through body related physical activities.

On a more personal level, this research has provided confirmation to me that I am not alone in the experiences that I have had, that others share these experiences. I am pleased to be able to report on these experiences, hoping that others who have had these experiences will be able to find similar confirmation.

The act of merging with Nature requires either a certain set of circumstances where-in one is forced into an altered state of consciousness or an openness to being one with Nature. Either way, the experience is positive and meaningful to those who have had it. The knowledge that one carries afterwards makes it impossible to treat the Earth as a static object and one is brought into an elevated state which forever alters one’s approach to ecological consciousness.

I believe that rock climbing has helped me to become a better person. I also believe that this path is not for everyone. Rather, I would hope that this work shows that by allowing yourself to become fully engaged in an activity that charges you with the responsibility of being fully present to the moment, you may reap great benefits.

Now, let us turn to some final discussions regarding this research itself and how it may be placed at the foundation for future investigations.

D)  Limitations of this research, and a view toward future research.

The limitations of this research that I can detect are perhaps different that what could be seen by others. However, I will attempt to give my thoughts on what those limitations might be.

By working with a single question/ statement, “Please describe your experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing,” I may have caused rock climbers to describe their experiences differently than if I had asked a different question.  Future research may involve co-researchers earlier on in the research process, even to the point of co-creating the research question.

Through the use group protocol analysis, a look at the individual nature of each co-researcher’s experience was not included. For a look at each individual’s experience one must resort to the un-filtered protocols. Future research may utilize alternative methods of analysis. Perhaps, each co-researcher may determine an appropriate research statement or question, and create protocols which would be analyzed separately.

Another apparent limitation of this study is that no attention was paid to the cultural background of the co-researchers, criteria for participation eligibility being limited to experience with the phenomena and ability to articulate the experience. Thus, no cross-cultural analysis or comparison was possible. Future research may look at such questions as: Do women experience merging with Nature while rock climbing differently than men? What effect does cultural background have on one’s experiences while rock climbing?

Suggestions for future research include the possibility of looking into other aspects of the rock climber’s experience. Aspects of experience such as fear or panic, camaraderie among climbers, or the sociology of rock climbers as sub-culture may be explored.

One might ask how this experience may be cultivated, as many climbers report a desire to repeat the experience. Are there any special techniques which might induce the experience of merging with Nature? Would meditation or deep breathing help one to reach this state?

It has been suggested that portable EEG monitors, among other means of measuring bodily processes, could be used to track rock climber’s states of mind through different types of climbing and different levels of difficulty. This type of research may provide insight into the climber’s ability to relax while facing difficult physical challenges. Biofeedback may be useful in assisting the climber while training for more difficult climbs?

As to which of these studies will be next, I don’t know. Suffice it to say, that for now, I am pleased that this one has reached an end.  Perhaps, now I will have more time for rock climbing.

REFERENCES

Berger, P.L., Berger, B. and Kellner, H.  The Homeless Mind. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1974.

Bernard, Joseph M., Ph.D.  Running: A Vehicle For Personal   Transformation San Francisco: CIIS Dissertation. 1983.

Bratton, R.D., Kinnean, G.K., & Koroluk, G., “Reasons for Climbing: A Study of the Calgary Section,” The Canadian Alpine Journal 62 (1979) p. 55-57.

Csikszentmihalyi, M.  “The Americanization of Rock Climbing,” University of Chicago Magazine, 61-6 (1969) p. 20-7.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Bennet, S.H.  “An Exploratory Model of Play,” American Anthropologist, 73 (1971) 45-58.

Csikszentmihalyi, M.  “The Hippie as Revolutionary.” Society and Education. Edited by R.J. Havighurst, B. Neugarted, & J. Falk.  Boston: Allyn & Bacon., 1971.

Csikszentmihalyi, M.  “Culture and the Play Experience.”  DePaul University, Chicago: Paper presented at the Institute on Play (1972, April).

Csikszentmihalyi, M.  “Play and Intrinsic Rewards,” Journal of   Humanistic Psychology,  15 (1975a)  p. 41-63.

Csikszentmihalyi, M.  Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 1975b.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. & Csikszentmihalyi, I. S. (Eds.).  Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness   Cambridge University Press. 1988.

Ferber, Peggy, ed.,  Mountaineering:  The Freedom of the Hills, 3d ed.  Seattle: The Mountaineers.  1974.

Herron, William Joseph, Ph.D.,  A questionnaire study comparing mystical experience among Zen, Yoga, Christian, and non-spiritual groups. San Francisco: CIIS Dissertation. 1992.

Hycner, R.,  Some Guidelines For the Phenomenological Analysis of Interview Data. Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. 1985.

Lester, James T., “Wrestling with the Self on Mount Everest,”   Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 23-2 (1983)  p. 31- 41.

Maslow, Abraham H., Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences. Penguin Books. 1964.

Maslow, Abraham H., The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. Penguin Books. 1971.

Mitchell, R.G., Jr.,  Mountain Experience: The Psychology and Sociology of Adventure Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1983.

Murphy, M. “Sport as Yoga,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 17-4 (1977), p. 21-33.

Pearson, K., Surfing Subcultures. St. Lucia, Aust.: Queens land Univ. Press. 1979.

Pope, K.S., & Singa, J. L.,  The Stream Of Consciousness New York: Plenum. 1978.

Ravizza, K. “Peak Experiences in Sport,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 17-4 (1977),  35-40.

Snyder, Howard, The Hall of the Mountain King. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1973.

Ullman, James Ramsey,  The Age of Mountaineering.  New York: Lippincott. 1964a.

Valle, Ron S., and Halling, Steen Eds. Existential- Phenomenological Perspectives in Psychology: Exploring the Breadth of Human Experience, New York: Plenum Press, 1989.

Winstead, Charles. A Pilot Study Exploring The Phenomenology of the Experience of Altered States of Consciousness During Rock Climbing. CIIS Unpublished Paper, 1993.

Appendix A:

Consent Form

&

Confidentiality Statement.

I, ______________, consent to participate in the study of the Inner Experiences of Contemporary Rock CLimbers being conducted by Charles Winstead of the California Institute of Integral Studies. I have read this consent form and have had my questions answered, I have received a copy of the consent form and of the Confidentiality Statement, and I understand that my confidentiality will be protected within the limits of the law.

Signature: _________________ Date: _______

Witness:    _________________

To:  Interested climbers

My purpose in contacting you is to request your participation in a study on the inner experiences of contemporary rock climbers. Time involvement is small and there is no risk involved. Additionally, you may withdraw from the study at any time. Professional standards of confidentiality will be employed during this study and your name will not be used in any part of the data nor of its reporting.

Should you choose to participate in this study, “please describe your experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.”  To begin, Find a place where you can sit down and relax. Give yourself at least one-half hour. Spend a few minutes recalling your experience. Allow yourself to recall the emotions and mental state of the time. When you feel that you have sufficiently called up your experience, you may begin writing. Thank you in advance for your participation.

If you would like to discuss this study further, feel free to call me at (303) 670-0162 (Fax available with prior notice), or write to 27224 Armadillo Way, Evergreen CO 80439.  Additionally, if you have any concerns or are dissatisfied at any time with any part of the study you may report your concerns, anonymously if you wish, to the chair of the Human Research Review Committee, California Institute Of Integral Studies, 765 Ashbury St., San Francisco, CA 94117 (or by telephone at (415) 753 - 6100).

Thank you for your participation:

Charles Winstead

Appendix B:

Co-Researcher Protocols

13 Written Replies

&

11  Transcribed Interviews.

Barry’s Reply

The climb that I will refer to is a 7 pitch 5.8 climb in the Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s called Zowie. It’s a 700 foot spire shaped to the Eiffel tower.

It’s a beautiful 5 mile hike in, along the way you encounter water falls, streams, lakes. It’s quite an introduction to a climb.

This is what I love so much about alpine climbing, no crowds, no artificial noise. Just you and the mountains.

Upon our arrival at the base of Zowie, we get set up and begin our climb without wasting any time, anticipating a long day and wanting to take advantage of the beautiful weather at hand, not a cloud in the sky and a perfectly southwestern face ahead of us.

The first few pitches were pretty easy. In fact they were a little bit too easy. I remember mentioning to my partner how it was hard to really get into it because of the ease of it.

I enjoy challenging climbs. They seem to demand all of your attention and focus to that present moment. Clearing out all other thoughts. A simple form of meditation.

But in the meantime, I am content with just soaking up the views from the belay ledges. The Andrews Glacier area seems to have an abundance of climbing in it. Sharks Tooth to the Southeast and the Petite Grepon barely visible behind it. And a nearly corkscrew shaped spire to the East known as Wham, that steals my attention throughout the day. It sees to have screwed itself right up out of the ground and up about 600 feet. There’s not a straight line on it, and a lot of the rock appears loose. But my mind keeps searching for a decent route.

As we follow our route around to the west the climbing turns more difficult. This is where it gets it’s 5.8 rating. After climbing 5 pitches with a pack this turns into an excellent challenge. Upon joining my partner on the table sized summit, he sarcastically asked me if my mind was still wandering. Ha, Ha.

As we rappel down and scramble over the last of the talus, dusk falls over us. We pack up and head out. We decide to leave the head lamps off so as to enjoy the surroundings more.

It seems as if everything around us, the stream along the trail, the noises of the forest and the star-filled sky all seem intensified and illuminated. A real feeling of being a part of everything fell over me.

Near the end of the trail we stopped to take a break next to Alberta Falls. As we lay back to enjoy the moonlit sky and the roar of the falls two other climbers from the Petite Grepon passed by. When asked how their climb went, the reply was “Awesome.”

I lay back once more to enjoy the sky understanding full well what was meant.

Barry’s Transcription

The way I have done this before is to remind you of the question, “Please describe your experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing,” and then I will read from your written description and ask you to respond to the different parts in terms of how do they relate to the research question, and how that it might have been different from a time when you didn’t have an experience of merging with Nature?  I’ll try to stop at every significant piece, it may either be by the sentence or by the phrase. (Reading) “The climb that I will refer to is a 7 pitch 5.8 climb in the Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s called Zowie. It’s a 700 foot spire shaped to the Eiffel tower.”

Nothing, that’s just a description.

“It’s a beautiful 5 mile hike in, along the way you encounter water falls, streams, lakes. It’s quite an introduction to a climb.” (Pause, no response.)

“This is what I love so much about alpine climbing, no crowds, no artificial noise.” Does that start getting us into the experience?

Yeah, as I said it’s a great introduction to a climb. It gets you in tune hiking through all that stuff. Getting in there, you get a chance to soak everything in. It makes it a lot different than climbing in the Canyon, all the people, like where were at today, the traffic going by. Yeah, there’s no distractions anywhere.

“No distractions,” yeah. You wrote, “no crowds, no artificial noise. Just you and the mountains”.

Same idea.

“Upon our arrival at the base of Zowie, we get set up and begin our climb without wasting any time.” Is that different than usual or about the same?

All that would relate to the weather and the park, and all. I guess it would be a lot more involved with what’s going on. On something that size especially. If it was something small, you would just get off. It would be more of getting in tune with your surroundings and what’s going on.

Do you mean that not wasting any time helps you get more in tune with your surroundings?

It is one of the reasons for hurrying up, who knows what is going on around you with the weather, not to get caught.

Is that what you mean by, “anticipating a long day and wanting to take advantage of the beautiful weather at hand?” Does the weather have an effect on your experience of merging with Nature?

Definitely.

Can you say more about that?

(Laughter) Well yeah, that was in the Fall, and you never know what the weather is going to be and we just got up there and it turned out to be just beautiful. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, we were anticipating that it would last. You don’t know if storms are going to blow in, although they don’t  that time of year as much but you never know. So, yeah, definitely, if it was nasty it would change the whole day, it would change everything.

You arrived at the base with “a perfectly southwestern face ahead of us.” How is that different from an experience where you didn’t…

Well you would be out and get the sun all day, so that would benefit us a lot.

“The first few pitches were pretty easy. In fact they were a little bit too easy.” What does that mean?

I need the whole idea, I guess.

“The first few pitches were pretty easy. In fact they were a little bit too easy.”

No.

Oh, do you want me to read more?  “I remember mentioning to my partner how it was hard to really get into it because of the ease of it.”

That pretty much explains it. I’ll just say the same thing it says in there more or less.

What does that mean?

It’s just that when I am climbing I like it to be at a certain level where I can really get into it. That’s something I really like about when I am done a lot of times coming down, I feel refreshed. All the little shit that was bothering me,  it has disappeared, it’s all gone. It wasn’t all that hard. Some of the stuff … I remember  just sitting out there and all this stuff was bothering me,  my mind was wandering about a lot and it wasn’t very hard getting going. I remember feeling, like, ‘this is wasn’t what I expected.’ I look forward to  really getting into it when I go out there.

So the level of difficulty has an influence on your experience of the climb?

Yeah, to really get into it or not. If it’s too easy, I don’t really get into it.

Is getting into it moving you in the direction of merging with Nature?

Yeah, that would be it. To quote John Muir, He says that he loves going out into the outdoors because “Going out is really going in.” I guess that’s what I mean by that. Because I can really get into it, and it’s really good for me.

It seems like you explain it here a little bit. “I enjoy challenging climbs. They seem to demand all of your attention and focus to that present moment.” Can you say more about that?

It  still along the same lines, you get into what’s right in front of you at a certain degree of difficulty, not where it’s too hard, but where it’s just there for you. You just have to keep moving slow, and looking for your spots and looking up and moving and it requires all your attention.  You really merge or get in tune.

The climb demands your attention and focus?

Yeah.

“To that present moment.” Is there something about being in that moment that is special?

Yeah, well nothing else seems to matter, that’s it.

I think that’s what you say here. “Clearing out all other thoughts.” What is that experience like? (No response.)

…….

Can you put an adjective on that experience? “Clearing out all other thoughts, A simple form of meditation.”

That’s the best way to describe it. That’s one of the reasons I really enjoy it. You can really get into it, you don’t notice it, it just happens while you’re out there. You just really get into it.

“It just happens?” Do you notice a transition?

Not really, not until afterwards, later on, after you’re done. You realize that was great, that was excellent, that’s just what I was looking for.

I would like to stay on this point a little more. That experience of having your mind clear of all thoughts, you connected that to a challenging climb that demands all of your attention and focus. Is that a cleansing process?

Yeah, sure. It’s hard to describe, it’s just when things are really working and you’re in there and it feels great. Like I say, you don’t notice it, but later on you notice the feeling of being refreshed.

“Refreshed.”

From doing it and really giving it  everything. I don’t know how else to describe it. Refreshed and exhilarated.  You know what I mean!

Maybe I do, I have these experiences, too. I’ve been climbing for a long time. What I’m interested in is how do you think about it when it is happening or if you don’t even think about it when it’s happening, you just thing about it after it’s over? How do you go about understanding it yourself, or is it something that you don’t think about at all?

It’s something that you don’t  really realize that you’re into it until you’re done, because if I was thinking “wow this is great I’m not thinking about anything else,” I would be thinking about something else. So it doesn’t enter, it doesn’t happen all the time.

Then you said: “But in the meantime, I am content with just soaking up the views from the belay ledges.” Is that in contrast to the experience of having your mind clear of all thoughts? Or how does that fit in with merging with Nature?

I guess that it still fits in, but on a different level.

So, would you say that the experience can be on different levels?

I guess that it would be opposed to just sitting back and enjoying it, looking at everything as opposed to being a part of it more or less. That would be two different levels.

What is the difference?

One is more intense than the other.

Right after that you say: “The Andrews Glacier area seems to have an abundance of climbing in it. Sharks Tooth to the Southeast and the Petite Grepon barely visible behind it. And a nearly corkscrew shaped spire to the East known as Wham, that steals my attention throughout the day. It seems to have screwed itself right up out of the ground and up about 600 feet.” What is the process by which it steals your attention?

It always seemed to be in view from where I was belaying, it was wild, it was different from almost anything I had ever seen. You could almost imagine as something from a cartoon, I was looking at it all day trying to find a way to climb it. But I don’t think there are any routes on  it.

“There’s not a straight line on it, and a lot of the rock appears loose. But my mind keeps searching for a decent route.”

Yeah.

“As we follow our route around to the west the climbing turns more difficult. This is where it gets it’s 5.8 rating. After climbing 5 pitches with a pack this turns into an excellent challenge. Upon joining my partner on the table sized summit, he sarcastically asked me if my mind was still wandering. Ha, Ha.” Was it?

No. It was really good, it was hard but everything was there. It was great climbing. Excellent. You could really get into it. It was perfect actually, when you get up there that the bottom was real easy, as you work your way up, and then you get to the top, and you’re not all worn out you could really get into it.  You weren’t really struggling you could power through stuff.  

“As we rappel down and scramble over the last of the talus, dusk falls over us. We pack up and head out. We decide to leave the head lamps off so as to enjoy the surroundings more.” How did that help?

Well for one thing, you could actually see better. When you have the light you can only see what is in front of you and nothing else.  If you turned it off you could still see the path and then other things, better. We turned the light on once and that was all we could see, so we turned it off.

“It seems as if everything around us, the stream along the trail, the noises of the forest and the star-filled sky all seem intensified and illuminated.”

It was like surround-sound. Everything was turned up, it was, it was really neat. You could feel the stream cruising by, it seemed really loud, you could feel it in a sense. You could feel the air, the cooler air coming off it. The sound of it was so … everywhere. All the other noises, the insects and stuff. Everything was really heightened, and it was a result of being out all day and doing that. If I had just gone out for a walk, like that, I wouldn’t have noticed it. As a result of the whole day, every thing was really …  all my senses were really heightened to what was going on around me. That’s definitely when it gets into merging.

You say: “A real feeling of being a part of everything fell over me.” What do you mean by it fell over me?

As it gets darker and darker, things get louder and louder. The sky is glowing more. It became more intense.

How is that feeling of being a part of everything different from the ordinary state of being?

Well, you just wouldn’t notice things.  You would just pass stuff without even noticing the sounds or anything.

“Near the end of the trail we stopped to take a break next to Alberta Falls. As we lay back to enjoy the moonlit sky and the roar of the falls two other climbers returning from the Petite Grepon passed by. When asked how their climb went, the reply was ‘Awesome.’

I lay back once more to enjoy the sky understanding full well what was meant.” Can you say something more about that understanding?

I was sure that I had experienced something similar to what they had experienced that day.  Something that you can’t even describe unless it is to somebody else who has been there, and then there’s no need. Only one word and you say “ I get it.” The whole aspect of it is working up to it and how climbing, the difficulty of the climbing heightens your awareness to what is going on around you. It sharpens all your senses up and being out there away from everything  you’re able to absorb it all a lot easier. You’re able to take more in. There’s a lot to it with the climbing and getting up on top of everything and seeing instead of just hiking out where it would be different.

What about people who hike up to the top of a rock that others have climbed up? They’re seeing the same view were they not?

The work that’s involved in going up the harder way, you get a lot more satisfaction out of it. It seems like so much more when you have climbed it rather than just hiking it.

I really like a lot of the things that you have said. Is there anything else that you would like to add about the experience of merging with Nature?

I study Taoism. It’s based on the natural order of things. It’s not a religion, but if I guess if I get any feeling about what everything is about I get it from the outdoors and that’s how I understand how everything works. It makes sense to me a lot more than any religion does.  Being a climber and the feeling I get from that it is more of a … I’m a little short on adjectives today.

It’s not about adjectives, it’s more about what comes from the heart in terms of the experience.

So that’s all. It is why I look to Nature, to explain things. That’s partly why it feels better merging with it, I just enjoy the experience a little more.

B. H.’s Reply

I have had two different types of experience which could be defined as instances of merging with nature while rock climbing. The one, which is more intense , I experience while doing difficult bouldering; the other, which is less intense and more cognizant, occurs during very long moderate pitches.

Difficult bouldering requires a great effort of concentration. A difficult bouldering problem is a brief series of moves which are far beyond one’s on-sight climbing ability; hence, completion of such a problem requires many rehearsal attempts. During rehearsal attempts, I become acutely aware of minute details, such as a very specific body position or a particular way of grasping a hold or the exact minimum amount of strength required in each move. However, as I perfect a particular detail, my attention shifts away from that detail and on to another. By the time I am ready to complete a problem, each physiological detail is second nature; my mind is free from focusing on details. On the final go at a problem, when I complete it, I occasionally attain to a different state of consciousness, one removed from the common state of focus and concentration, This state is a result of having my body execute the moves without conscious direction. When this occurs, my mind seems to flow outward to everything around - I reach an intense awareness or connection with the rock beneath my fingertips, the trees around, the pine needles on the floor, etc … I simply become very aware of nature and feel connected with it. Intense as this connection is, it is at the same time casual or relaxed. The experience, while it occurs, feels very natural and unassuming - it feels like a return to true life.

In contrast to this experience is the less intense one encounters very rarely on long  moderate pitches. Again, though, the experience of merging comes from removing attention from the actual movement of the body. If I establish a steady rhythm of movement and of breathing, and if the climb is well within my ability level, occasionally (but more rarely than with bouldering) my body will move upward unconsciously, thus freeing the mind. The awareness thus achieved is the same as described above, but of a less profound, less intense nature. It is a very relaxed, contented feeling, almost a feeling of understanding, of conscious connection with nature and understanding of my position within the natural sphere. In both types of experiences, I come away feeling like I have remembered something very important, only to forget it again afterwards. During the experience, nature loses any aspect of foreigness or separateness which it had prior to the experience; this familiarity with nature is the end achievement of the experience.

B. H.’s Transcription

You’ve heard a little bit about this research project and have written a description. Basically what I do with the interview is: I’ll remind you of the question and then I’ll read from your description and as I read you can respond to your own …

Clarifying?

Yeah, clarifying. You’re responding in terms of how what you wrote relates to the question and then just whatever comes up, whatever you hear and whatever it reminds you of.

That sounds good.

So the question is: Please describe your experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. You mention here that, you “have had two different types of experience which could be defined as instances of merging with nature while rock climbing.” So there’s two different kinds of experience?

Yeah, I tried to think about your question a lot and I wasn’t sure exactly … I was pretty sure that you had a fairly loose definition of the experience. I could pinpoint two different ways of getting at the same feeling, and one way leads into a less intense feeling than the other. But I still documented both.

Great, it’s good to get that range. “The one, which is more intense, I experience while doing difficult bouldering; the other, which is less intense and more cognizant, occurs during very long moderate pitches.” Can you explain the difference?

The result is the same in that each of them, each experience involves being removed from conscious thinking about the type of movement that I am doing. That’s where they are similar, they are different in that the one removes the attention from movement by super intense focus, whereas the other removes my attention by the lack of need for focus.

That’s kind of what you say here: “Difficult bouldering requires a great effort of concentration. A difficult bouldering problem is a brief series of moves which are far beyond one’s on-sight climbing ability; hence, completion of such a problem requires many rehearsal attempts.” How does that affect your experience?

With difficult bouldering, it’s key. The rehearsal is key, for me, because when I approach a problem that’s way above my ability level it may take me a hundred tries to get through the first two moves out of five. Or whatever it is for the problem to be completed. I have to think about how to move to get the moves to work. If I’m on the very first move … I’m thinking of the problem, the Rincon problem, on the road of El Dorado, that neither you nor I have completed.

I’ve attempted it many times.

Right, it’s very thin. There’s like a very, very particular way that each part of your body has to be arranged for you to hold on to even the first movement. So, you can go through a hundred attempts to get the right positioning of hands, body, feet, everything to hold onto the move. And  once you can do that, you go through another attempts until you can move off the move and then another hundred to latch on, etceteras. The thing is that by the time you’ve perfected the one movement through multiple rehearsals and you’ve moved on to the next movement, That first movement that you have perfected through multiple rehearsals  no longer takes any conscious thinking to do, your body automatically arranges itself in that position. So, by the time I have the whole move wired, the whole problem wired; what leads to success is the lack of conscious thinking about the move. Everything is second nature. So, doing the moves, having done them so many times, it frees … you don’t have to use your mind to do them. Your body takes over and it does them and it knows what to do because it’s wired. So then, your mind is free to do other things.

You say that: “During rehearsal attempts, (you) become acutely aware of minute details, such as a very specific body position or a particular way of grasping a hold or the exact minimum amount of strength required in each move.” Can you describe that acute awareness?

Well, that acute awareness is very conscious. That’s more a way of getting at … it’s just a step of getting at the merging part. I don’t at all consider that acute awareness a part of the merging with Nature. Because the acute awareness is too involved with the self. So, it’s just a step towards merging.

Okay, so it’s a precursor?

Exactly, so you have to first understand how you relate to the move before you can do it without thought.

Can you say more about that: “without thought?”

I’ll try to say more without repeating myself. To get the move right takes a lot of thinking, I don’t know … when you’re moving … it’s a different type of thinking when you’re moving and thinking about how to move. It’s not like thinking intellectually. You’re tracking your body’s motions with the mind and you’re trying to understand how each particular position affects your performance on the move. All of that’s very conscious. If it’s a really hard problem that consciousness has to be very acute because the slightest deviation from the correct type of movement will cause you to fail. It takes acute awareness to get the movement right, but once you’ve got it right it’s in your movement enneagrams, in your head. And it’s wired into your body and no longer requires that conscious level of awareness. So the body will still perform the moves, but without the mind’s concentration on the move.

You say that: “However, as I perfect a particular detail, my attention shifts away from that detail and on to another.” So, is that what you mean by …

That’s what I mean by  saying that you take a great amount of acute awareness one move and when you’ve perfected it, you move your awareness onto the next part of the problem,  and you no longer think about the first part.

You say that: “By the time I am ready to complete a problem, each physiological detail is second nature; my mind is free from focusing on details.” What is that experience of having your mind “free from focusing on details?”

It’s real interesting because you don’t know ahead of time when you’re ready to complete a problem. You’ve been paying a lot of attention all of the way through the problem, each time you’ve been perfecting moves. And then, at some point you start thinking that you’ll probably complete it, and you start making dry runs at it, and each time you do it, you think that you’re going to get it. But, I think that what’s happening to me, I think, during those dry runs, when I’m not getting it and I’m thinking that I will, is that my body has not yet perfected those little tiny details. So, I’ll get to that detail  and my mind which should be free, will have to focus in, to readjust something, and that will also, … that focus in on a specific detail will make me lose the ability to complete the problem at that time. So, I’ll come off and not finish it. So then another time, I’ll get through farther and I’ll think I’m going to get it and there will be another little detail that I don’t have right. And then I’ll have to focus in on that and I’ll lose it again.

But the final time that I get a problem, I’ll go through the whole thing without any concentration on a specific detail, and that moment of entrapment, when you’ll lose the focus, those never occur and you make it through the whole problem. That’s the lack of focus.

Can you relate that back to the question?

Right, that’s the next part. While you’re completing this problem the time that you don’t need to focus in, your mind is free from that focus. So, I don’t know … You’re mind does some interesting things while the body is that,  while your body is that intense on things that it has rehearsed without the need of the mind to direct the body … In some way the mind seems to extract itself from the experience, because it’s not needed. Yet what the body’s doing is so intense … I’m not sure how exactly the attention of the mind focuses, but I seem to sometimes, when I complete that problem, while I’m doing it I’ll feel like … like my body, my mind will be tracking those movements of the body, but it will be expecting the body to do each thing it does, it’s already done them. So, it’s a very connected feeling, it’s a very holistic feeling. Even … it feels like it flows beyond my fingertips into the rock, I feel the whole rock, then I start to feel … I feel like beyond the rock, the trees around me, the air, in El Dorado there’s a stream, and I always hear the stream .. Everything sort of comes together at once and while my body is performing these extremely concentrated movements, I’m becoming … I’m like flowing into the whole environment around me.

Through intense focus on the self, I kind of merge out into everything.

Some words that you used in that … I’m just wondering about the connection between those words. You mentioned “connected,” and “holistic,” but just before that you mentioned that your “mind extracts itself from the experience.”

Yeah, It’s paradoxical. Later on in my description, I talk about how it’s intense yet relaxed. The whole experience is very paradoxical. I guess what I mean by ‘extracting’ is that I’m not consciously thinking about the movement of the body, so that kind of brings me away from that. That’s what I mean by ‘extract,’ but at the same time it’s ‘holistic’ because the extraction from the movement of the body allows me to feel things beside my body. Things that are usually considered external start to feel internal. It’s like there’s no division between external and internal at some point, you’re not experiencing one. It’s still paradoxical I know, but, it’s a strange experience.

Yeah, it is. Let’s see what comes next, we can work with that and then come back. It’s kind of hard to get it all at one time. That’s why it helps to go with the description. Well here it is: “On the final go at a problem, when I complete it, I occasionally attain to a different state of consciousness, one removed from the common state of focus and concentration.” Removed from the common state, how is that?

I guess what I mean there… If I walk up to a problem and try it, I have to think about it.  Left foot’s on this tiny crystal, and my right hand’s on this tiny hold, now where’s my left hand going to go … and I have to think about where it’s going to go. But when I’ve got that move wired and I know where my hand’s supposed to go, or my body knows where it’s supposed to go. I’m no longer cognizant, it just happens.

Here we are again, kind of coming back into what you were just describing: “This state is a result of having my body execute the moves without conscious direction. When this occurs, my mind seems to flow outward to everything around.” Can you describe that process?

It’s something that … You don’t see the transition. One moment you may be doing the move that you’ve tried so many times and you’re thinking  ‘Is this going to be the time?’ And then the next moment you’re doing them and you’re no longer thinking about doing them, your body is doing the moves and you’re out there, you’re just part of everything and your body does them and carries you through with it. It’s just amazing. I’m thinking of one good time that this happened in Yosemite on a Camp 4 problem where the last move of the problem was a dynamic movement that was way beyond my reach, supposedly! And I got to it … I had wired all the moves up to that last move and I knew that I could get all those moves, so I was doing them, and as I was approaching that last move I was just thinking … I was thinking actually about how I was going to … It’s funny in that case the falling off of the second to last hold had become part of the move, because I had fallen off so many times. So, I was thinking ‘Okay, where am I going to land when I come off this.”  And then, my body found the exact right movement and carried me through the last move, and I just remember that …  I never was consciously aware of directing my body to do the last move, it just took over and did it. During that moment, I was just … I remember just being aware of the trees around me. Around that particular boulder, there’s nothing but gigantic trees and I remember feeling like they were part of me, I was part of them, I was part of the rock I was holding on to, there was no separate. Everything was together, it was a real neat moment.

It gives me the chills thinking back about other times and experiences, it is really nice to be able to talk in this way.

Yeah, you remember that time I’m sure. You did it right after. Once you saw that I could do it, you could do it.

Yeah, that was beautiful. Well, here we are again. “I reach an intense awareness or connection with the rock beneath my fingertips, the trees around, the pine needles on the floor, etc …” That intense awareness …?

It’s an intense awareness in that I’m aware of every detail of my physical surroundings, but at the same it’s not an intense like my mind is preoccupied with any single detail, that’s where the relaxed part of my description comes in. It’s intense in that it’s minute,  but it’s relaxed in that the minute detail seems just matter of fact. It’s like, Of course I know how many of pine needles are right beneath my foot. Of course I know how many grains are beneath my right fingertip. It’s just a really strange focus.

“I simply become very aware of nature and feel connected with it.” … “Intense as this connection is, it is at the same time casual or relaxed.” Again the paradoxical nature? It’s hard to describe that?

The words are a kind of prison house, because I want to use the word ‘intense,’ but at the same time intense seems to connote focus, but it’s not at all about focus, it’s about oneness not the focus. I don’t know how to get through that barrier.

Maybe the last sentence, in this first section, will draw it back together: “The experience, while it occurs, feels very natural and unassuming - it feels like a return to true life.” Can you say what you mean by ‘true life’ or ‘return to …?’

I remember writing that in an attempt to clarify the paradox. True life or Return. Return is probably the better word to focus on. As a child, things around you are never … they don’t seem foreign, they don’t seem unnatural, they seem … no matter how weird they are, they seem like a part of life, normal. If I’m out on a hike, just strolling along … often the aspect of things may seem interesting. I’ll look at a particular angle or shadow or the way a tree grows and it will interest me and I’ll direct my attention to because it seems strange. But when I have this experience of merging nothing ever seems strange. Everything seems back to normal order. I guess it’s just that when I’m thinking, my mind is trying to impose structures on the world around it, like anybody has to do to survive, but when I have this experience of merging the structures are not necessary because the natural order …

That’s the first experience you described, the experience that you get while bouldering.

It’s interesting that I can’t get that experience while I am leading, even if its just sport leading,  because while you’re leading you’re aware of gear. And that removes you from the focus.

Then the other experience that mentioned: It’s hard with this structured format of the interview. The way we have to stay with the description can be hard.

It’s okay.

“In contrast to this experience is the less intense one encountered very rarely on long moderate pitches.” What can you say about that?

Well, it’s more rare because the experience seems to depend on the aesthetic value of the route. Whereas, on the bouldering experience … the moves themselves can be on junky rock and not be that beautiful, but because of the difficulty of it, it overrides that. Whereas with the long moderate routes, for some reason it’s gotta be a perfect route, either the sequence of moves themselves has to be really aesthetic or like I say, the surroundings, the area. The last pitch of the Yellow Spur, where the moves themselves are kind of awkward, but the valley below, the trees below … usually up there with the birds.  The exposure … I guess when you’re high up there like that, it drops away and you can see … yes, there’s an aesthetic value to the route.

“Again, though, the experience of merging comes from removing attention from the actual movement of the body.”

That’s because the rock is quite easy. So, as I move up it, I don’t really put thought into the correct sequence because my ability can overcome misreading the sequence or whatever. I’ll constantly move up the rock whether I’m moving in the best sequence or not. It’s the farthest away from bouldering that you can get, you can always make up for mistakes in sequence.

You mention that: “If I establish a steady rhythm of movement and of breathing, and if the climb is well within my ability level, occasionally (but more rarely than with bouldering) my body will move upward unconsciously”

I just mean there that since the moves are easy… Well, there’s two requirements: One, the moves have to be well within my ability level so that I can make up for missed sequences. The other is that I need to establish a rhythm, where, maybe I’ll be moving one limb per however long. Where I just fall into a pattern, overcoming and becoming with the sequence. So that no matter what I keep my rhythm without thinking about it.

I just turned the page and I noticed that there was more to that sentence. I’ll go back a little bit, so that I can read that sentence together. “Occasionally but more rarely than with bouldering, my body will move upwards unconsciously thus freeing the mind.” Is there a connection …?

Just that if I’m freed from thinking about how to move upward, like the rhythm is taking over, I don’t need to think about it. Is my right hand here,  my left, what’s going to go next … I don’t need to think about those things. Well, sometimes … This is why it’s more rare … sometimes when I’m freed like that … let’s say I’m with my partner Dana, my wife, I’ll think ‘will she be able to do this move, will she be able to get out this piece of pro,  how will she feel,’ I think those things and that distracts from the experience of oneness. They’re all moderate pitches, but rarely the aesthetic value of the rock will come in and impose itself on me, although the climbing is so easy that you are moving without thinking you aren’t thinking about distracting things. You come back out of yourself, out of focus, and everything else comes into view.

You mentioned that: “The awareness thus achieved is the same as described above, but of a less profound, less intense nature.”

Yeah, it’s more rare. The experience from the bouldering is so quick, it’s so … hmm. Here in the moderate pitches, it’ll last for an hour if it’s that long of a climb to finish, or half an hour. You’ll lapse out of it occasionally to put in a piece of pro. Or you’ll  occasionally lapse out of it and realize that you’re thinking this way and start evaluating the experience while you’re climbing. But there will still be full minutes of the experience.

You described it as: “a very relaxed, contented feeling, almost a feeling of understanding, of conscious connection with nature and understanding of my position within the natural sphere.”

The bouldering seems to break past every single boundary. Gets right to the heart of the experience. Whereas this experience, this moderate one, it doesn’t break through every barrier. It may leave the last one there. Like, the awareness of … the need to consciously be aware of the experience, that’s the last barrier, bouldering breaks right through and just leaves you with the raw feeling. Whereas in this experience, you actually have to think the last step. You feel the experience that leads you up, and you think yourself into the realization of what it is, to have the full effect. I’m not sure if that describes it.

Let’s stop at every comma and you can comment on every one. You stated that is a very relaxed, contented feeling.”

The physical requirements are much less than in the bouldering, that alone … (End of Tape)

“Almost a feeling of understanding.”

Yeah, I started to get a little wishy-washy there, because I’m not sure what I meant by that. I wanted to say that because I wanted to use the word understanding because I come away from the experience feeling closer to the natural world. Hmm, understanding … I’m not sure what it is that I understand except that maybe … I guess that I am part of the whole process,  part of the whole movement of nature. I mean the common feeling of rock climbing, for me, is the feeling of me against the rock. There is the rock it’s implacable and immovable; I’ve got to climb it. It’s nature; I’m not. Whereas, in this experience I feel much more related to the rock. It’s a feeling of understanding between you and the … It’s you and the rock, but by being both a rock, it’s you and nature.

“Of conscious connection with Nature.”

Right, the word ‘conscious’ comes up in this description and not the other because in the other it’s all about loss of consciousness. Whereas, in this one it’s less profound but more conscious. You don’t get to the same deep level of feeling, but the one which you do arrive at, you’re more aware of - while it’s happening. Whereas the other one maybe, is more, when it’s happening it’s very deep, then afterwards you can think about how it happened. Whereas, in this one you’re aware of it while it’s happening.

How about: “Understanding of my position within the natural sphere?”

That goes back to what I said a minute ago … I don’t feel like I’m battling the rock. I feel like it understands me, I understand it,  we’re together as I’m moving up it. That doesn’t mean that I’m battling up it, I’m just moving up it and it’s aware of me.

“In both types of experiences, I come away feeling like I have remembered something very important, only to forget it again afterwards.”

That part’s hard to write. I don’t mean that I do remember something important. What I mean is that it is similar to the experience of remembering something that you’ve wanted to remember and forgetting it immediately once you’ve remembered it. And you’re left there with that feeling of ‘there it was and now it’s gone.’  When I have the experience I often, will really merge with it, feel good about it,  understand everything about whatever it is that I was understanding. When I’m back in the world of automobiles, in the bar drinking beers, I forget it again. I don’t forget it, it’s still in me, but it’s not immediate. So, I get back out there again.

And do it again. “During the experience, nature loses any aspect of foreigness or separateness which it had prior to the experience.”

We approach Nature,  we approach our outer nature like, with a real Boy Scout philosophy. Then we go out and have a different experience.

“This familiarity with nature is the end achievement of the experience.”

Yes, I really do think … Well, for me, it’s the end achievement that why I continue to  … end meaning purpose. I climb for many reasons, but when I achieve a particular route, sometimes I choose a particular route which is going to give me, which I hope is going to give me more of these experiences.  It’s a real purpose of climbing to reach back in, to feel that connected with Nature. Sometimes I climb just to be with friends or push my levels, whatever. Often, it’s to seek that rare experience.  It’s hard to find … that’s when I hit the big one.

That’s the end of your description, but rather than end here I’ll ask you one more question. Is there anything more, what else could you say about the experience of merging with Nature, that you’d like to add?

Yeah, actually there’s something that occurs to me right now. I’ve had both types of experiences in different spheres besides rock climbing. Whereas, where those experiences were similar they were not quite as much about merging with Nature they were not in natural surroundings.

I guess I’ll focus on the bouldering one. I’ve had that exact same experience of, the same type of physiological feeling while sparring in karate. Where your concentration is very intense,  you …  to be really good at it … when you’re sparring with somebody you can’t watch a single fist or foot, or else you’ll get hit with the other one. So what you do is you look at the sternum, that’s where your gaze is focused but at the same time you don’t actually look at the sternum, you kind of let your gaze see other things. I’ve had this experience while in tournaments, where I’m sparring and I’ll be looking at the sternum and we’ll be circling each other fast, and I’ll will not see anything, but see everything. And for some reason, I relate that experience to rock climbing. But since it is not in the aesthetic surroundings, I don’t get this feeling of being connected with Nature. It has a similar physiological effect.

Anything else?

No.

Thank you.

D.W.’s Reply

In the beginning was Inyan (stone) who had no beginning, for he was there when there was no other. Inyan was soft and shapeless, but he was everywhere and he had all the powers. Inyan desired that there be others, but there could be no others unless he created them, so he took part of himself and spread it over and around himself in the shape of a great disk that he called Maka (Earth). In creating her, he used so much of himself that he became small and very hard just as we see him today.

I grew-up believing everything has a spirit. Everything is teacher and helper, especially the stone people or the grandfathers as we sometime call them. The stone people have been around forever, they have seen it all, they know everything. What better way to get in touch with the spirit of the stone than to climb? They have taught me many things: self confidence, strength, grace and beauty in movement, when to use strength and when to use finesse, what my limits are and how to trust.

To me climbing is a sacred dance between my spirit and that of the stone people. Everytime I go out they tell me something new.

We have a word “Wakan.” It means mysterious or incomprehensible and sacred. So this experience of merging with the stone is Wakan.  It is sacred and hard to explain. I think sometimes we study things too much, take the magic out of them and make things ordinary, we need the magic things and the sacred things in our lives. It’s hard for people to believe in things anymore because we’ve turned everything into everyday stuff. You are welcome to come to lodge for your own experiences, but please don’t come to study it to death. This is all I have to say on this subject. Thanks

Wakinyan

Jim’s Reply

We had been trekking the Khumbu region of Nepal for about four weeks and we were now squatting in a Namche teahouse warming our hands with cups of hot, milky tea, blackening our lungs with the rancid smoke of the yak dung fire, and contemplating our departure from this paradise. The four weeks of trekking had honed our bodies, our Nepali language skills, and our spirits. A ten-day slog out our approach route seemed inappropriate. We needed to exit this place that had given us so much via a fitting route. One that would take us through the very bowels of these mountains one last time, forever etching their grandeur in our souls. The choice was obvious - over the Trashi Tapcha (at 19,000’) and out through the Rowaling valley. The descriptions were poor and the maps worse. It would be a fitting denouement to our pilgrimage.

I hired two Sherpa porters to guide us to the pass, as at that time the trail was obscure, without the numerous teahouses marking the way. We had already received a fair amount of snow (December) and I wasn’t sure we would even be able to reach the pass - the point at which our trek out would truly begin.

The first night we stayed in the last village we would see for four days. We entered in a white-out and my hopes of reaching the pass sinking as quickly as the snow deepened. However, our Sherpas were as merry and animated as ever, reassuring us that we would have no problem.

The farm house was typical Tibetan style, with the yaks quietly chewing their cud on the ground floor, and the family ensconced above on the second floor. An itinerant Tibetan Lama-doctor was currently in residence - a great blessing for the household, and an awe-inspiring event for our porters. Without going into detail, by the end of the evening Ruth and I had achieved a remarkable rapport with the Lama, much to the delight of the Sherpas.

The next morning as we were about to depart this final refuge and head out into a foot of fresh snow and fog, the Lama came over to us and began speaking in Tibetan. Apparently he was conferring a blessing upon us and the success of our journey. The Sherpas were beaming, and once outside explained to us that our trip would be safe and successful - absolutely. I could not share in the enthusiasm. Visibility was measured in feet, the snow was still falling, and the trail was non-existent, and we still had over 6,000’ of elevation to gain.

But early on the third morning out we reached the saddle under dazzling blue skies. We had seen avalanches of a scale only possible in the Himalayas, dodged rockfall that seemed to be born of the sky itself, and managed to stay warm enough with our at-best marginal equipment. At the pass we bid farewell to our Sherpas with whom we seemed to have established a deep connection. They assured us that we would reach a village that same afternoon. Gesturing towards the massive glacier that lay 1,000’ below, they told us “follow it, no problems, four hours Beding!”

Their enthusiasm was contagious. We waved a final farewell and they were off, back to families and friends in Namche. We stared at the glacier below, at the rugged peaks surrounding us, shrugged and headed down. Quickly we both realized that the storm that had plagued us on the ascent had spent most of its fury on the side of the pass that we were now descending. The fresh snow steadily became deeper as we descended, and as we reached the glacier I found myself slogging through mid-thigh deep fluff. The pace was agonizingly slow. We were still above 18,000’, wasted from almost 5 weeks of eating potatoes and flour, and beginning to feel the ravages of some new intestinal ailment.

But on we went. We would obviously be lucky to reach the end of the glacier that afternoon. Habitation was out of the question. As we continued our crawl over the glacier I began feeling an overwhelming fatigue. It was impossible for Ruth to break trail - the snow was simply too deep. I had been probing for crevasses each step of the way with our one ice-ax. Finally, I decided that I was expending too much precious energy with that effort and that since the glacier was relatively level we probably wouldn’t encounter any crevasses till we got closer to the terminus. My last plunge of the ax encountered emptiness. We were literally on the edge of a crevasse, although there was not so much as a depression in the snow.

After a brief wave of terror subsided we managed to cross the gulf. We encountered many more crevasses along the way, some concealed, others wide enough that they remained exposed, revealing their black, seemingly bottomless depths. At one point we were forced to cross a sagging snow bridge. If it collapsed, I was dead and Ruth would be left to find her way back the way we had come over the previous four days. Clouds were beginning to build in the west, presaging a new storm. With one day’s worth of food her chances would be little better than mine.

The bridge held and we continued towards the glacier terminus. We knew that we needed to descend an ice gully and negotiate a cliff band before reaching yet a second glacier running at right angles to the one we were now on. We reached the gully as the sun dropped behind a western ridge of black peaks. Blue ice at a dreadfully steep angle dropped off at our feet disappearing into the dark shadows below. The crossing to this point had seemed to draw on physical reserves that neither of us thought we had. Combined with the terror of the buried crevasses, we were drained beyond any measure of previous experience. And yet here was a new and even more formidable obstacle. The temperature had plummeted with the setting sun, and already my pants, gaiters, and boots were frozen solid and I had no sensation at all left in my feet. We had to descend at least to a point where we could bivouac for the night, then hopefully find our way off and down to a village the next day.

We both had cheap crampons that fit our boots poorly, and one ice ax. I decided that I would work my way down, ten feet at a time, chop a ledge with the ax, anchoring myself as well as possible, hopefully being able to stop Ruth’s fall if she should slip. We began the descent and things were going reasonably well when suddenly it happened. Ruth’s crampons skated off the ice and she was falling head first towards my precarious stance. The gully was narrow enough that she could not miss me, but would I be able to stop her fall? She slammed into my legs, and the stance held.

Once I realized that we were safe, for the moment, I began to shake uncontrollably. A wave of panic swept over both of us as we both accepted the fact that we would most likely never get out of the gully alive. I felt nauseous, drained, and somehow unfit for dying in that place, but even worse was the overwhelming sense of guilt for having placed Ruth in this situation. We held each other, she sobbing and my legs trembling.

Then, just as suddenly as her fall, a wave of calm and warm peacefulness swept through my body. Immediately everything was crystal clear. An almost supernatural prescience took over and I seemed to know exactly what moves had to be made. I saw the ice and gully walls with an amazing clarity. Each crampon placement, each ax placement was completely obvious. There were no wasted moves. Warmth radiated through my body. An unknown calmness settled in permitting a lucidity I had never known. We continued down and Ruth slipped yet a second time, just missing my thighs with her crampon points, yet this time there was no sense of terror. I simply chopped a stance for her and after she had regained her composure, I continued on, with no thoughts but the task at hand.

We exited the gully after nightfall. I managed to find a bivvy site on the cliff band, just wide enough for one sleeping bag after some modification with the ax. Two hundred feet below us was the second glacier and our route out. As I lay in the bag with Ruth, feeling the agony of returning circulation to my legs and feet, I could also sense the diamond-like clarity of the past hour or two leaving my body. Yet something remained, something that remained accessible through the fatigue, fear, and pain that I could still tap during the remainder of our trip. Never with the same intensity, yet it was there, a sense of connection emanating from the body, intertwining itself with the rock, snow, ice, and clouds.

Jim’s Transcription

We were talking about your experience and (now I’ll) describe to you what I was planning to do, and (I’ll start by) reading the description and have you respond in terms of explaining what was going on and how you chose to use the words that you used and maybe going into a little more elaboration, we also talked about: where in your description to start. We decided to start where the Sherpas left you at the pass. You were going to say a few things about what you were experiencing, what you were feeling and what had been going on up to that point.

We had a really good relationship with the Sherpas established in the three or four days getting up to the pass. We had established a good rapport with those guys, and they spoke good English, too, at least one of them did.  We communicated pretty well.

By the time we got to the pass, the weather had cleared, the storm that we had been hiking through to get there seemed to have passed, we had blue skies. The snow wasn’t that deep, maybe 10-12 inches, on the side that we had come up. It wasn’t really that bad, although we had seen a couple of big avalanches come off on the way up. So, when we got to the top, the Sherpas are really excited, they had a good time with us, and we had sort of become friends … It’s kind of interesting, among those people, they don’t want to give you bad news, in any way whatsoever, and especially if you are friendly with them, they want to put as good a face on the news as possible. So, I asked them how long it was going to be before we got to the next village, or to the next inhabited village, we were operating pretty much on a blue-print, a hand drawing that we bought in Katmandu, and it started out… I think they told us that we would make it by that night, by the time they left, they told us we’d be there in four hours. It just kept getting shorter and shorter. They just kept getting more and more ecstatic. So we started out, ‘Ah, maybe we’ll make it that evening.’ Not having any idea what we were about to walk into. So we started down the other side of the pass, we found the snow to be much, much deeper than the other side. By the time we reached the glacier, still well above 18,000 ft.,  the snow was maybe, thigh deep.  So, dealing with that altitude, and having to deal with incredibly deep and heavy snow … So, that’s where things really got started. That turned out to be quite an ordeal. I think I mentioned in there,  once we were on the glacier, it was the first time I had been on a glacier, I was pretty naive about the whole thing, we had one ice-axe, and I was using that to probe ahead, each step, and make sure that there was something solid underneath. There was so much snow, it might have covered up the crevasses. We went, I don’t know how far we went, checking each step before I took it, finally I was just getting too damn tired, and we were … it just seemed like it was going to take us hours to get to the end of the first glacier, and there was a second one after this. So, this was the first thing that really raised my hackles, I decided in my mind that this was the last step that I was going to check, because the glacier was pretty level and we didn’t think there were going to be any crevasses until we got lower down on the glacier, I wanted to conserve my strength, until we got lower down, where it started to … the grade started to increase a little bit, where you might expect crevasses. So, the last time I put the ice-axe in, it was bottomless, it was the last time I was going to do it. I practically froze in my steps, I couldn’t believe it. So, that got interesting because there was no way of telling how wide it was.  We were in such deep snow, I kicked away and shoveled away snow to sort of create a launching pad, and determined where the edge of the crevasse was, and then took a leap across this thing, with the ice-axe in the arrest position, then worked back to where Ruth was, and found the edge on the side I was on and worked her across. We didn’t even have a rope.

You didn’t have a rope at all?

Yeah, it was a pretty naive undertaking.

How wide was the crevasse?

It was probably three feet. What was interesting was that I continued to check for the rest of the way, that afternoon, to check every step. And we did come to a few crevasses that were open, so you could see the bottoms, well actually you couldn’t see the bottoms, that was the whole point, you could look down into them, but there was no bottom for all practical purposes. They might have been a hundred feet deep or more than that. Just a massive ice-field. We ran into a couple of others that were covered with snow and managed to get over those, and more that were open and too wide to cross. We managed to go on end runs around those. Keep working down the glacier. We felt like we were committed at that point, we could have turned around. We were four days from Namche, but we only had a days worth of food. Maybe two small meals apiece, nothing to cook. We were operating under the impression that we were going to be in a village that evening.

We continued on out this thing, and the sun dropped behind the mountains, and we were still on the glacier, we had been on it for hours already. We crossed a snow bridge, that was just unbelievably terrifying.  These things were really horrifying in comparison to what was going to happen later. The crossing of the snow bridge was, I was the heaviest, so I went first, and if it broke, then Ruth would just have to go back, hopefully be able to make it back. It didn’t break. The crevasse that this thing spanned was just massive, we would have had a hell of a time trying to do an end run around it. It turned out, I found out later that there had been a party that had crossed that same glacier, the week before the storm had come in, they were the last people to cross, supposedly. When we got back to Katmandu, I told some people that we had crossed, and they said ‘well, that was impossible.’ I said, ‘Well, we’re here.’ Well, they had lost a Sherponi in one of those crevasses. She was still alive when they left her. They could hear her, they couldn’t see her, and had no way of getting her out.

So we crossed over that, and we got to this ice gully, and that was where things got really spurky. I don’t know how steep it was, it was a long time ago. It was steep, it was blue-ice and it was really narrow, I could just about touch the sides by putting my hands out. And it lead down, probably two hundred feet to a cliff face that dropped off another two hundred feet to the next glacier down. There was a traverse that you could make after you get through this gully, that’s not too bad, it’s exposed, but there’s … the footing is fairly reasonable, and there’s some handholds and stuff, and people do cross it from time to time. But we had no way of knowing this, we were descending this gully and it was just about dark.

I had really crappy gaiters, that I had gotten in Katmandu, that I couldn’t tighten them at the top. While we were crossing the glacier, snow had melted inside of these things, it was so hot on the glacier. But as soon as the sun went down behind the mountains, it froze. I don’t even have any idea how cold it was, I froze solid from the knees down, I’m sure it was below zero. I couldn’t feel anything, it was not good. So there was some concern about that. But we had some crampons that we had gotten in Katmandu for a couple of bucks each, and one ice axe.

And no rope!

No rope, so the only way to even attempt some sort of a belay, Ruth’s crampons didn’t even have front points, was for me to kind of work down with the axe, I’d get down about ten feet or so, chop out a stance, and brace myself, as best I could, and she’d start down.

Can I interrupt at this point? One of the things that you mentioned here (in your description): “The crossing to this point had seemed to draw on physical reserves that neither of us thought we had. Combined with the terror of the buried crevasses, we were drained beyond any measure of previous experience.” How do you think that affected what was to come next?

I’m sure it had some sort of impact on it. It’s just pushing your physical and mental limits. It was the first time I had pushed myself that far. The physical limits had, in a sense, already been reached and transcended going down that glacier. And the mental and emotional side of things happened when we were starting to go down that gully, and then she fell the first time. And I was certain, I saw her sliding, the whole event happened in slow motion, she didn’t fall that far, ten or twelve feet, maybe, but I was certain that when she slid into me, that we were both going to continue down, and that there wasn’t any way I was going to stop her fall. But, I did, and experienced a moment of probably, just about utter panic, but it was really short, almost instantaneous, and that was immediately followed by that profound calmness that I was trying to write about in there. It’s difficult to put into words, that’s why it’s easier to actually write, because you can stop and think and sort of re-create the feeling, and the situation.

Maybe this would be a good place to go to the description and take it one piece at a time and you can work from that. Let’s try that, and see how it goes. This was just right after she fell:

(Not Read: And yet here was a new and even more formidable obstacle. The temperature had plummeted with the setting sun, and already my pants, gaiters, and boots were frozen solid and I had no sensation at all left in my feet. We had to descend at least to a point where we could bivouac for the night, then hopefully find our way off and down to a village the next day.

We both had cheap crampons that fit our boots poorly, and one ice ax. I decided that I would work my way down, ten feet at a time, chop a ledge with the ax, anchoring myself as well as possible, hopefully being able to stop Ruth’s fall if she should slip. We began the descent and things were going reasonably well when suddenly it happened. Ruth’s crampons skated off the ice and she was falling head first towards my precarious stance. The gully was narrow enough that she could not miss me, but would I be able to stop her fall? She slammed into my legs, and the stance held.)

“Once I realized that we were safe, for the moment, I began to shake uncontrollably. A wave of panic swept over both of us as we both accepted the fact that we would most likely never get out of the gully alive.” Can you explain what that feeling, or that experience was of “accepting that fact that you would most likely never get out of the gully alive?

That sort of follows the sense of terror. Well, ‘Yeah, there’s a very good chance that we’re not going to survive this thing.’ Because obviously, everything that we had thought had been in error, previously. The duration of the thing, the demands, the physical demands, the technical difficulty of the descent, it was in the middle of December… We finally knew, I think probably me more than Ruth did, I can’t speak for her, that ‘we’re going to be damn lucky  to get out of here.’ But following that…

That sort of profound sense of … That’s where it started:

At that point, it was probably what you’re getting at, sort of the connectedness, the sense of incredible clarity, I guess, a total awareness that … supernatural awareness of everything; the rock, the ice, the light, the … For me, from that point on, after that feeling set in, and it wasn’t shaking, that’s what was really incredible, I’d never really had feelings like that before, or since,  approximations but never anything as profound as that. It seems like I knew exactly what had to be done, each step, each axe placement, every movement, every move became very obvious. There was no sense of fear whatsoever, there was the reality that we would probably weren’t going to survive it, but somehow that didn’t really have much of an impact, there was just the task at hand, and it was very obvious what needed to be done. Ruth, didn’t, she was … she really didn’t share the same feeling, Ha Ha. She was pretty scared, and she fell again, and the second fall was, I can’t say that, you know, I felt like we were being looked over, whereas that would be easy to do after the experience with the lama. I can’t say that, but by the same token, it seemed like no harm was really going to come our way. She fell towards me with her crampons down, and slid into my leg with one path on each side of my leg… her crampons were like needles … if she had hit my leg with the crampons that would have been it, I would have been done. The puncture wounds, even if she hadn’t hit a nerve or major blood vessel, would have sort of finished me. Like I say, my legs were wooden from the knees down, I couldn’t feel them. I knew that we had to get out of that gully, and set up a bivouac on the cliff, because there was no way we were going to descend to the next glacier, we couldn’t see a thing. I had to get those boots  off and get into a bag, my feet were frozen …  So, that was … I guess, from that point down, the remainder of the descent, until we got to the cliff band, where we could work a traverse, and actually found a small ledge where I could chop out enough rock and dirt to lay down one sleeping bag, and that’s where we spent the night, we didn’t even have an anchor. It was a 150’ fall off that ledge.

(Not read: I felt nauseous, drained, and somehow unfit for dying in that place, but even worse was the overwhelming sense of guilt for having placed Ruth in this situation. We held each other, she sobbing and my legs trembling. Then, just as suddenly as her fall, a wave of calm and warm peacefulness swept through my body. Immediately everything was crystal clear. An almost supernatural prescience took over and I seemed to know exactly what moves had to be made. I saw the ice and gully walls with an amazing clarity. Each crampon placement, each ax placement was completely obvious. There were no wasted moves.)

At one point you mentioned that: “Warmth radiated through my body.” and that was just before you mentioned: “An unknown calmness settled in permitting a lucidity I had never known.” What was that like when the warmth radiated through your body?

As soon as that wave of panic and terror subsided, it was followed immediately by the sensation of just, well, it came with a sense of calmness and clarity, it was a real warming sensation. Even though I still couldn’t feel my feet, there was no pain associated with it, and prior to that I was getting pretty cold, but suddenly it was gone, and coldness wasn’t a factor anymore, at least for the parts of my body that I could still feel.

There’s a little section in here that I would like to get a little more about, there are three sentences in a row here that seem to go together: You say: Immediately everything was crystal clear, an almost supernatural prescience took over, and I seemed to know exactly what moves had to be made. And I saw the ice and gully walls with an amazing clarity.” Can you describe that clarity?

I don’t know if I can really give it to you in any more detail than that… every move was very obvious, everything that I had to do to get down the gully, seemed very clear, the crampon placements were there, the ice-axe placements were there, it was simply a matter of doing it. Without any real sense of the exposure, and the predicament that we were in, and the potential for disaster, it was immanent. If I had slipped, I had the ice-axe, she didn’t have a chance, she was finished, there was no way she could go up, and there was no way she could go down without the belay system. In a way I had a little more responsibility, self-imposed, because if anything had happened to me she would not have survived.

Here’s another one: You say that: And Ruth slipped yet a second time, just missing my thighs with her crampon points, but this time there was no sense of terror, I simply chopped a stance for her and after she had regained her composure, I simply continued on with no thoughts but the task at hand.” Can you explain what you mean, or what was happening for you:  “with no thoughts but the task at hand?”

I don’t want to sound too trippy. It was almost like meditation, I don’t know if you meditate at all, or know anybody that does, but basically you will do a sort of mental exercise that helps focus your mind on a very specific object, whether it’s counting your breath, visualizing a candle flame, whatever it happens to be, on rare occasions you will attain a certain clarity when you do that. Well, this was like that times 10 or 100, just the … there were no distractions, you talk about a clear mind, it’s just a complete ability to focus and concentrate, without the interference of emotion, that was the big thing, there wasn’t fear, there wasn’t terror, there wasn’t concern about ‘what’s going to happen next?’ It was just, this is what has to be done:  This step has to be taken, the toe has to be placed, this ledge has to be chopped, it was, it just had to be done, and there was no other thought than that, and it was going to be done, to there was a real sense of calm and confidence that things were going to work out the way they had to.

(Not read: We continued down and Ruth slipped yet a second time, just missing my thighs with her crampon points, yet this time there was no sense of terror. I simply chopped a stance for her and after she had regained her composure, I continued on, with no thoughts but the task at hand.

We exited the gully after nightfall. I managed to find a bivvy site on the cliff band, just wide enough for one sleeping bag after some modification with the ax. Two hundred feet below us was the second glacier and our route out.)

We’re almost at the end of your description. Some stuff here you already mentioned, finding a bivvy site on the cliff, the one sleeping bag, 200’ below, and the route out. Can you describe what was going on for you there?

“As I lay in the bag with Ruth, feeling the agony of returning circulation to my legs and feet, I could also sense the diamond-like clarity of the past hour or two leaving my body.” Can you describe that sensation?

Yeah, it was almost as if as the physical sensation returned, it was almost associated with the warming process in my legs and feet, it was like coming back to the everyday world again, you know, everyday consciousness again. Suddenly, there was time for other thoughts to start seeping in like, questions and doubts, speculation. Where before there hadn’t, I don’t know if there wasn’t time for it, it was irrelevant, and so they didn’t happen.

What do you mean?

Those sorts of thoughts, I don’t know why, but I wasn’t bothered by them during that period. And they weren’t there, And all of a sudden, as I started warming, sort of normal consciousness started to return.

The way you describe it in your description is that: “The diamond-like clarity was leaving your body,” and then what you just described now is that normal consciousness was returning to your body. Was there an exchange going on, or how did you experience that?

The one was being replaced by the other, very very slowly, and I could feel it, I could feel the exchange happen.

Then you say that: “Yet something remained, something that remained accessible through the fatigue, fear, and pain that I could still tap during the remainder of our trip.”

The experience was so unlike anything that had ever happened to me in my life, before that, that… and it was so real that I could! Especially for the next couple of weeks, because this adventure wasn’t over by any stretch at that point. And, Yeah, I could just by recalling the situation have a certain, I could tap into a certain feeling, never anywhere close to the intensity of that time, but it was still accessible. Even today, the fact that I can remember it as clearly as I can, there’s still … Although it’s not anything that I ever do consciously any more. I can’t draw it back quickly with any kind of intensity that I could for a couple of weeks after it happened. That was interesting to me, that I could tap into that. It’s still something that I still wonder about now, having experienced something like that once in life … what it takes? I mean, it’s a very addictive sort of thing, I’d love to be able to do that all of the time. If it takes stringing yourself out for weeks on end at high altitude with little food, … I don’t know. But I haven’t been able to re-create it, since then, but I haven’t pushed myself to the physical and emotional levels that I did then.

You mention here that: “You can still tap into it, but never with the same intensity, yet it was there.” You describe it in a couple of ways: “a sense of connection emanating from the body, intertwining itself with the rock, snow, ice, and clouds.” It’s not really something that you mentioned before in your description, can you describe that a little bit more?

That’s where it gets tough. I don’t know, I didn’t know how else to phrase that, other than: it just felt like so much a part of that place, and that time, and that space, that there was no separation between the self and the environment. I was very very conscious of being a part of it, rather than being an observer, being separate. I don’t really know else to describe it.

Can you explain what you mean by emanating from the body?

Well, I guess, the absence of, loss of any sense of, maybe self awareness, there was a connectedness between me and the ice and rock that I was touching, the ice that my feet were on, far beyond far beyond what I had experienced, and experience now in daily life. I mean we walk around being our own unique little selves. We are really conscious of yourself as a distinct entity, as separate from everything else. While, there was no longer any separation, so that was the emanating from me. Or I could have phrased it the other way,  where it was emanating from the rock and ice and air, but there was that sense of connection, the loss of… no longer being separate from the environment.

The active verb in that sentence seems to be ‘intertwining itself,’ and I was wondering if you could go a little more into what that process was like?

I can’t really elaborate more on that. Just to say that, again it was that feeling of being a part, rather than being separate, observing, being conscious of me as opposed to that. Whatever. That barrier seemed to have been broken down.

That’s the end of your description and I was wondering if there’s anything else that you’d like to add, about the experience of merging with Nature, that wasn’t in your description, that we haven’t talked about?

Really not too much. When I sat down to write that, I really, by taking as long as I did, I really tried to re-create the time and place, and the feelings in my mind, and that did a pretty good job of it. Everything came back pretty clearly. That was what I felt, not really, that’s the only thing that I could say. We didn’t make it to the village until the next night.

One more question and we’ll wrap it up: What was it like for you to try to sit down and try to recall, and then to write about this experience?

It’s something that I have thought about from time to time, so it wasn’t difficult at all. I’ve never thought about it in quite this much detail before. I’ve never tried to analyze my feelings and experiences. I’ve never tried to verbalize them, they were there and that’s always the interesting thing about it. The feelings are still there, and can be reached pretty easily, they come back pretty readily. But, trying to translate that into language, is a little bit of a challenge.

It was fun, it was quite enjoyable, I actually, got to re-experience a lot of those emotions really clearly.

Well, thanks again. I really appreciate it.

I hope it helps you out.

Oh, yeah, definitely. No doubt about it.

Lee’s Reply

On Why I Climb:

On my feet are logged hundreds of miles skiing up silent snow covered peaks in winter, and hiking through grassy meadows, dense forests, and high alpine tundra in summer.

I have always felt like an outsider or even an intruder while visiting these special areas. My presence and existence become completely meaningless, insignificant and unnecessary. But I savor these moments and feelings; they are what make me feel alive and free.

The air is crisp and clean. A slight breeze from the Northwest fills my lungs with its invigorating sweet smell. All is quiet except for the rustle of Aspen leaves in the breeze. High mountains ring the valley with snow still clinging to their barren, rock-strewn slopes. Up the trail we go to the base of our climb. Amazingly or perhaps miraculously, there are no other people around, and right away we feel blessed. It will be a great day, the ridge is ours.

I climb well, leading past the crux moves of my pitches with amazing ease. My partner is climbing well, too. We don’t say much to each other. Our system of signals allows us to climb quietly, and the smiles on our faces express everything better than words ever could.

We top out as the sun is sliding behind the peaks to the west. Long, ghostly, late afternoon shadows cast themselves across the valley below. Birds float effortlessly on the cooling air currents around us. We find ourselves unable to move from our sacred spot, putting off the inevitable down climb in order to enjoy the moment.

The friendly feelings of insignificance and unimportance flood through me providing me with further verification of why I climb.

Lee’s Transcription

10/13/94

I wanted to go over your description and remind you of the question, to ask why you responded in this particular way, and how does what you wrote relate to the experience of merging with nature? The first thing I noticed: The question was “Please describe your experience of merging with nature while rock climbing?” and you titled your response “On why I climb.” How do those two fit together?

It’s a big thing. I definitely started out  not climbing but rather hiking, getting away from people and always trying to take the path less traveled. Trying to get in the woods and hear the silence or hear the sounds of the woods. I have always enjoyed that since I was a little kid. My grandfather used to take us on walks in the woods up in New Hampshire and Maine. That’s always been a big part of the whole picture.

Climbing is an extension of that, a little more specialized form of that.  Not climbing because it’s cool, because it’s 1994 and that’s what everyone else does. Even though I’ve  only climbed, rock climbed for seven … I think this is my seventh summer. I feel like I’ve done it all my life because it is an extension of what I have done before in the mountains. Which wasn’t necessarily rock climbing, it was hiking and backpacking.

“It is an extension of what you have done before.” How is it different?

It’s not different, but it is different. It seems that when you are climbing you are a little more aware, a little more sensitized to what is going on. It is more real.  There’s more at stake. Things are going. Like getting on the Diamond, there are decisions that you have to make, so it is more real. It’s like when you are tripping, things get more… You might become more aware of things that you might ordinarily not be aware of.

Does this experience of being “more aware,” or more sensitized relate to the experience that climbing “is more real” than another kind of experience?

Yes, versus hiking or sitting on a rock on a river. These are cool. Not the same things are going on in your mind. But they are at the same time. That feeling of being totally psyched to be doing what you are doing. It is hard to explain. I’ve never really… I’ve thought about, it but not in this way. Do you know what I mean?

What is it like for you to be thinking about it in this way?

It feels normal because I do a lot of it. I’m thinking about it a lot.

Thinking about what?

Maybe you should start the question over again.

Okay, we can back up a little. Some of the things that I have in my notes about what you were just saying. Climbing is an extension of other activities that you do in Nature. Your experience while climbing is that you are more aware and you are more sensitized to your surroundings. Then you said that it is more real.

Okay, I’ll summarize. One of the things that my original climbing partner and I, when we first got into climbing, he was my hiking partner and my ski buddy… we never had to do a lot of pitches in a day.  We could do four pitches, five pitches, or one or two pitches. We both at the end had this really peaceful feeling. We’d get really stoned and we’d talk about it. We would be really mellow and we might just sit on top of the crag. It would still be two o’clock  and we could still climb if we wanted to but we didn’t feel the need to because we had this peaceful feeling. Have you experienced that before?

Sure.

So, that doesn’t happen on every pitch or even every climb necessarily. But it may happen after five pitches one day, and then another day you might  not really get it because you might have floundered on a route. You might have other things on your mind. So you don’t necessarily get the peaceful feeling. I get it most of the time, I get the peaceful feeling. I’ve climbed with other guys who are really driven and motivated. They want to get up in the morning and eat a real quick breakfast and I might just want to hang out and drink a couple of cups of coffee. Say if you are camping out or on a climbing trip or something. They’ll want to get right to the crags and climb straight through the day till dark. There are times for that but when you are crag climbing … I’m not in that mode. I’ve been with people on  week or two long climbing trips where I’ve just gotten burned on climbing because they’re climbing for different reasons than I am. They don’t want to take an half an hour to eat lunch between routes. Climbing is just a part of it, it’s not the whole thing.  I might go to Lumpy Ridge and do one route and get to the top and have that peaceful feeling and not have to climb at all for two or three days. I might be peaceful for a few days or just a few hours. I get back  down to the bottom and might be psyched for another climb or not. I don’t know. It’s different. Different times are different. I don’t know how to say that.

Maybe we can come back to that, and you can describe the peaceful feeling in a little more detail later, we will see if it comes out again.

It’s simple, the feeling is simple. It is a feeling of wholeness, happiness of contentment, of content. Where nothing else is on your mind. Your bills or family problems if you have any,  or girlfriend problems or whatever. Things that might otherwise be on your mind. Everything is …  you’re just part of the whole picture. There’s no bullshit on your mind, you’re just happy.  Do you know what I mean? It’s simple, it’s a simple feeling.

I think climbing is good for your psyche. It’s like taking a psychology class but it’s real. It’s not like a class or book stuff, where you might be able to learn how to say it better. I think it would be interesting to get into some classes like that. I might be able to be a little more concise with my thoughts.

I think you are doing a great job. Is there anything more you could say about that peaceful feeling?

That’s probably my connection with what you are saying, with merging with Nature. Your brain is flat-lining. You are  not worried about things that you might worry about during a normal day. You are at peace with yourself completely.  That’s what I get from climbing, a lot of the time, not all of the time, maybe 3/4 of the time. I get like that  from skiing, too. back-country skiing and not ski area skiing because you are dealing  with them.. Whoever else it is that’s there. With climbing, you get to the top and it’s just you and your partner. I don’t like going down to El Dorado and just pick up a partner so that I can climb. I like to be with people who are my friends, and people who are into it for the same reasons that I am. I’ve had a lot of days when I haven’t climbed because I didn’t have a partner. I could  have gone to El Dorado and just picked someone up. I am just not into that. I think that so many people, especially around here just climb because it’s cool or whatever. There’s enough people that I am sure that  there’s a lot of people  who feel the same way that I do. It’s kind of hard to hook up with them.  You have a little core of people.

The next part of your description reads as follows: “I’ve always felt like an intruder while visiting these special areas.” What does that mean?

Because human beings are so not a part of the natural world. We’ve distanced ourselves with technology or whatever. We are not even a part of it. We can’t even understand it. You don’t know what is going through the cat’s mind. Everything is on a much more simple level. When you go up to the Diamond, what you are bringing with you is totally different that what that falcon is bringing with him as he is cruising down. Those ants that eat your legs on the ledges.

Those gopher things that take your lunch out of your bag.

Right, Exactly. Except I think that they’re opportunists, they are all opportunists. I guess humans are too. In a different way, we don’t work in synch with the planet. I think that we are definitely a divisive force. I don’t think  we bring the same things in.

How would that feeling relate to the question of describing your experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing?

Coming back to the peaceful feeling. That’s what I’ve always called it, the peaceful feeling. Maybe that peaceful feeling that I get is more in tune with what’s really going on. With that world, with the trees and the birds and the clouds or whatever. I feel more a part of it. I think that peaceful feeling definitely has something to do with feeling more a part of it than anything else.

We did a route called “Turn-corner,” it was a real “grunt” for me. We had one pack, my partner led the two crux pitches. I followed them wearing the pack. It was an off-width crack. It was a full-on struggle for me, wearing the pack, the difficulty of the route, etc.

It was a wall pack,  not really a climbing pack. You couldn’t snuggle it down. It was like a small, real small pig. I grunted my way up that thing. But I didn’t have to hang on the rope, I did it totally. We got to the top and there wasn’t anyone else around. We thought it was going to really cut loose on us. There were big cloud cells coming in, but they evaporated. It was about seventy degrees, sunny out, no wind. We puffed a few bowls. We just hung out for like an hour, just sitting there, just going “Wow, this is cool!”  I don’t know how to come full circle with this, what was the point of that?

The last statement we discussed was the one where you described feeling like an intruder.

O.K. That was an example of getting to the top and having the peaceful feeling. Where I overcame the struggles and felt good about it, and psyched about it. We got to the summit and de-geared and threw everything in the pack and felt the peaceful feeling. That was it, we cruised down. That’s an example. There were falcons flying around below us.

You wrote that “My presence and existence become completely meaningless, insignificant and unnecessary.”

Kind of a misanthropic attitude.

What do you mean by “misanthropic?”

Anti-people, people not really being that important.

Is that a personal experience?

I don’t think that it is an experience, I think that it is just a way of thinking. People are ruining the planet. We are, there’s no doubt. In the grand scheme of things you don’t matter, I don’t matter.  And you don’t. You’ll die. I’ll die. Things will just continue. Kind of a dark thought.

How does that relate to merging with Nature, or the “peaceful feeling.”

Because, you have to come to terms with feeling insignificant. Because you are, if you are up on the Diamond, that’s a pretty insignificant feeling. If you are way out there, you are just an insignificant thing. You have to realize that, and maybe that helps you get the peaceful feeling. People think they are really important. They’re not.

(Part of the interview was missed because I didn’t notice that the tape had ended.)

Probably nothing important.

Well, its all important.

I gotta remember to tape Seinfeld at 8:00

The last paragraph. “I’ve always felt like an outsider or even an intruder while visiting these special areas. My presence and existence become completely meaningless, insignificant and unnecessary. But I savor these moments and feelings, they are what make me feel alive and free.”

Yeah, because it gives me the feeling of being detached from “all this.” When I say “all this,” I mean all this Front Range activity. All the hordes of people, the traffic, the noise, cars, whatever. The only reason I live down here is because Gwen is finishing school. I set it up so that I could come down and climb. And the climbing is good. On a day to day basis, I fucking hate it down here. Because there’s so many people, I’m not from the city. This isn’t me. I’m not from here. I’m from a small town,  Crested Butte. Small and quiet.

Down here, I just feel like I’m existing. Driving and growing old at stop lights.  Every block, growing older just sitting there. When I get up there, I just feel alive. Every minute counts, every moment counts. Whereas here it’s different.  For example, going to work I go through milestones. Eight to ten. Ten is my break, that’s my first milestone. Second milestone is lunch. I get to lunch and the day is more that half over with. And you want  the day to go. It’s your life that’s disappearing as you are hoping that time will go faster so that you can get off work. That’s just existing, not living. That’s how  a lot of people have lived their lives, just existing.

And that other experience of feeling “Alive and Free?” Can you describe that?

No worries. No regrets. No time, time doesn’t matter. It’s probably idealistic to think that you can be like that all the time. Not having to work, and not having to pay your bills. Just live in a cabin up in the woods and be able to climb all the time and do whatever you want. To be completely at ease with what you are doing and who you are. Down here, I feel like I am being crushed. I hate it down here. Just being negative.  Doing the other thing, not feeling negative. Not feeling like I hate everyone. Of course, you want to make a right turn but you can’t because they’re crossing the street. I get all wound up. Up there, I don’t have that, I feel more normal. More normal. This is all foreign being in a city, and Boulder is a city as far as I am concerned. With the massive amounts of traffic. It bogs me down, it bogs my brain down.

You are contrasting life down here in the city with the experience of climbing. The last thing you said was that “it bogs down your mind.” What do you mean by that?

For instance, you’re down in Denver. You’re there for whatever reason, maybe someone else wanted to go. Let’s say that you’re walking along and you have to take a leak. Now, it’s easy for a guy to take a leak, right? You just stop what you’re doing for a moment and do it, right? But not when you’re down in Denver, you can’t. You can’t just do that. It becomes a real pain in the ass.  You’ve got to find a place to piss. That’s just one example. I’m used to be able to piss whenever. But not in Denver. Or finding a place to park. I come home from work, and I can’t find a place to park. Just dealing with little things like that are just a pain in the ass, and they shouldn’t be. To people that are used to it, it’s just normal everyday stuff.  You’ve gotta go find a place to park, if you can find a place it’s fifteen bucks a day in Denver. Then you think, Is it safe?

I notice that you described life “down here” in Denver and Boulder in response to “what is it like to feel alive and free?” In your description, what follows “feeling alive and free” is a description of your sensory input when you’re on the mountain. “The air is crisp and clear. A slight breeze from the north-west fills my lungs with it’s invigorating sweet smell. All is quiet except for the rustle of Aspen leaves in the breeze. High mountains ring the valley with snow still clinging to their barren rock strewn slopes.”

It’s that awareness that I was talking about. Being more aware. Not only with climbing, but just being out in that element. You’re more aware of simpler things. That is what I mean by feeling alive. Down here, you’re worried about finding a place to park or getting through that next light.

Then you described going to the base of the climb. “Amazingly or perhaps miraculously, there are no other people around and right away we feel blessed.” What can you say about that sentence?

Because entering the people into the equation takes away from the basic experience. I want to get to the route and just get on it. Without having to deal with people. At El Dorado, your mindset is such that “I can’t choose a route to do, because someone will be on it.” You set your mind up for that. I’m sick of that.  I don’t like to have to do that. I want to say “let’s go and do this,” and go do it. When you enter the people into the equation, it takes away from the experience. Miraculously, yeah, because it seems like I’m being cynical, but there are always people on every pitch of every climb. Skiing anymore is kind of the same thing. There are lines and the snow is all skied out.

Can you explain “We feel blessed.”

“We feel blessed.”  Just feeling lucky that … I don’t know just feeling lucky. Like things are clicking, like things are going the way they should be going. That’s how it should be, it shouldn’t be another way, it just should be like that.

Does that relate to the feeling that “It will be a great day?” Is that something that you know “right away?”

Definitely, because everything is going the way it should be going…  no, … because if everything went the way it should be,  there would have been people.

Can you tell me about that knowledge, from when you first arrive … That you know “right away” that the day is going to be great?

I  do think that you start off with a good feeling. You start off really positive,  really psyched. Setting yourself up for success, not failure. I think that if you get there  and there are more negative things going on you are just setting yourself up for failure too. Your day is going to be screwed, and you won’t get your peaceful feeling.

How is the knowledge that you have when you arrive at the site different when you don’t get your peaceful feeling?

For instance, last Saturday we went to El Dorado, being a weekend and being beautiful, we knew that there would be a lot of people. I guess that we didn’t believe it. We had four or five climbs that we wanted to do. I really didn’t want to have people on them. But, there were people all up and down the West Ridge. It was just like Auuhhhh! It ended up being a good day, we went up some other stuff and it was good.  Just overcoming that.

Just overcoming?

Just overcoming potential negative things. Like if your car breaks down.

And you overcome that?

Like these guys that live upstairs. They did the Yellow Wall in the morning. Their car broke down on the way back to Lyons. They coasted and pushed all the way back down. They called a friend in Boulder and got a ride to Boulder, and then hitchhiked to El Dorado and did the Naked Edge.

On the same day?

Yes, On the same day. So that’s overcoming a breakdown and not worrying about it. Those guys are way hard-core.

I’ve had my eye on the Naked Edge for a while.

Have you? I’m thinking next summer for me. Unless I went with this other guy that I’ve been climbing with. I’d try following him on that. But he’s been on El Capitan a hundred times, I’d try following him on that.  For me to go with someone of my ability, I wouldn’t feel to comfortable with that.

Let’s take a little break.

So we were talking about the experience that I’m calling “Merging with Nature” and you’re calling “The Peaceful Feeling.” One of the things that you described here “I climb well, leading past the crux pitches with amazing ease.” How does that relate to the question?

Everything was positive, no people, nice day. A good frame of mind has been established right then and there. That’s going to lead you into, I think, climbing well. I think that’s when I climb well. When those circumstances are set up like that. Nice day, good climbing partner, you’re not all hung over …  I think that’s when I climb my best. That’s when I’m apt to get that, maybe even after one pitch, feeling and not feel the need to have to climb anymore that day. Just be ready to, I don’t know, I’ll climb more. Basically a positive frame of mind is going to lead me into climbing well. Which is going to be part of the ingredients from which I get that peaceful feeling.

You say that your “partner is climbing well, too. We don’t say much to each other, our system of signals allows us to climb quietly.”

Most of the time if it’s happening, there’s not a lot of talking going on. You’re connected with the rope, and then whatever that guy is thinking, and whatever you’re thinking, it doesn’t matter. You might say a few things, but … I go to the crags a lot and one of my big things is the loud and obnoxious calls of “Off Belay,” and “On Belay.”  Stop being loud and obnoxious and just climb. Does that bother you at all, loud and obnoxious people?

Yeah, do you use rope signals and tugs.

Yeah, if it’s ninety feet I might yell “Off.”

The next couple of sentences: “We top out as the sun is sliding behind the peaks to the west. Long ghostly late afternoon shadows cast themselves across the valley below. Birds float effortlessly on the cooling air currents around us. We find ourselves unable to move from our sacred spot, putting off the inevitable down climb in order to enjoy the moment.” Can you say more about that?

What I was talking about on top of the Turncorner, on Sundance that was a pretty good example of getting up there and full-on having that feeling where you just don’t need to leave. There’s  no sense of urgency. You can revel and bask in your accomplishment. Allow yourself to be immersed in the feeling of that moment and take everything in. What is going on around you, and remember it.

Are “immersing yourself in the moment” and “taking it all in” the same?

I think they’re different but they’re the same. You can take it in but not become totally immersed in it. Maybe getting up there and puffing a few bowls, and just really letting yourself hang out for a while.  Have you ever been with people that always seem as though they have a plane to catch somewhere? I don’t have that feeling, I want to enjoy it, to prolong it. There’s not a lot of those moments, you don’t get that a lot. So maybe that is the immersification, just allowing yourself to hang out and not having to catch the plane. Just be there and enjoy it. That’s what it is all about. It wasn’t the actual moves on the rock, but it was because it was the moves on the rock that allowed you to get that point where you could feel that way. So, I don’t know if it is a means to an ends or what’s going on there? Do you do that to get there, or is it just a result from doing that? Am I doing it because of the moves? Moving on the rocks feels fun. It doesn’t feel like a laugh-y, giggly  kid-type feeling, though. I’ve never laughed my way up a rock. I’ve felt real content, and really confident and really psyched. But never that really giggly laugh-y kid-type feeling. It seems more serious. So, I’m not sure if I’m doing it for the moves or for the feeling I get afterwards.

You mentioned that there was a connection between the moves that got you to the top and the feeling that you have when you’re on the top.

I think that there is. I don’t  think I’m necessarily climbing just to get to the point where I get the peaceful feeling. It’s a direct result of climbing. I’m trying to explain how they connect. If I were to go climbing this weekend, I would be psyched because I was going to go climbing. Everything is involved, thinking about it … the build-up is half the fun, just thinking about it. It’s like when you were a little kid and Christmas was coming. “Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming.” “I’m going climbing, I’m going climbing.”

Transcript interrupted due to end of tape.

The last thing on the description: “The friendly feelings of insignificance and unimportance.” Why don’t we stop there and see if you can explain how the feeling of insignificance and unimportance is friendly?

First of all, we’ve already talked about how you have to accept that in order to understand it. I don’t think a lot of people do that or can, based on how they live their lives. They are materialistic, and keeping up with the next door neighbors. Weighing success with how much money you make, what kind of car you drive… That’s not where I get my satisfaction. I come from a different side of things. Into feeling insignificant. I think that it is a friendly feeling.  Some people think they are really important, if you think about it we are not important at all. That isn’t a negative feeling for me. That feeling of “I didn’t matter, I could have died right there”  I felt pretty comfortable with that feeling, I think that there are a lot of people who would have been really freaked out by that. It’s really hard to explain.

Go ahead and read the rest and see what comes up.

The friendly feelings of insignificance and unimportance flood through me providing me with further verification of why I climb.  They’re friendly because I have come to terms with them. I don’t know if it was a progression or what, I have been doing these type of things for a long time.

What about “Flood through me?”

Just words. Just a warm feeling, a content feeling in your body, in your gut. You know that feeling when you’ve down something wrong, and you know it was wrong, and you know that you’re going to get caught. It’s not that feeling, it’s the opposite. It is a nice relaxed, loose feeling. Allowing all your feelings to overtake you with no negative. I think climbing helps me to be less negative.  I’ve done a good job of trying to integrate climbing into my life full time. It’s been really good, because it simplifies everything. It makes me feel good about myself, and what I am doing.  You’ve got much more going on in your life than I do. For example, this.

It’s all about climbing.

I don’t have anything like that going on. I don’t feel that I want to right now. Maybe in a few years I will. Right now I am happy with climbing and skiing. A lot of people don’t have something, but I’ve got something. I’ve got climbing. It may sound really stupid to a lot of people. I’ve got climbing, and I’ve got skiing. You’ve got school, but school ends.

Yes, that’s a problem, I’m worried about that.

I see what you mean. I feel like with climbing and skiing, I’m very content with them. A lot of people don’t have anything, I’ve got climbing. Also, I’ve got myself. I’ve got myself and that’s all I need, really. But I don’t know if I would have myself if I didn’t have climbing and skiing because that’s who I am. It seems so simple, but that’s good.

Can you explain what you mean by “that’s who I am?”

It’s such a big part of my life. It doesn’t seem like there’s that much else going on and my energy and motivation are directed towards those two things, literally. In the winter, I ski every day. I’ve done that all my life. When I talk about climbing, I’ve only done it for 6-7 years, so I feel like I haven’t changed to incorporate climbing into my life.

To wrap it up, I want to go back to the original question and take a minute and think if there is anything that you would like to add to what we’ve already talked about that would fill out your answer to the question. I asked you to describe your experience of merging with Nature, and we have been talking about that for a while now. Is there anything else that you may want to add to what we have already talked about?

We’ve talked about the peaceful feeling, I guess that is what I would call “merging with Nature.” People might think about Nature in different ways. Like animals, the natural environment, being in the mountains. I don’t know how people think about Nature. They might think about the Discovery channel. For me, I think about the sights and sounds and smells, being in it, being immersed in it, being a part of it as much as I can. The peaceful feeling is how I merge with Nature. That’s when I feel the happiest.

Lou’s Reply

Dear Charles,

You have asked me to “describe my experience of merging with nature while rock climbing.” I shall attempt to do so with as much clarity as possible, although the exact reasons why I climb are nebulous and difficult to pinpoint at best. I would have to start by defining the aspect of nature involved. My climbing experiences have been heightened by the beauty of my surroundings, the smell of the trees and flowers, the majesty of a solid rock face, and a number of other aesthetic qualities, but the aspect of nature climbing has attuned me to are not visual in nature.

While nature is varied and complex, it is at the same time simple and uncomplicated. To be one with nature is essentially to be free from the unnatural surroundings in which we live our daily lives. Urban living, work, traffic, interaction with other people, (women in particular) all serve to distract us as human beings from harmony with nature, and consequently with ourselves as a part of nature. I suppose we all have different ways of renewing that bond, but rock climbing is mine.

For whatever reason, climbing has been both the best barometer of what state my mind is in within the world as a whole, and also has provided one of the best therapies possible for correcting my internal balance. It has been a colloquialism for years that sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. I find this especially true living in the 90’s. I can be mentally or emotionally out of synch and not realize it all until I can remove myself and go climbing. I can go out any number of times to climb a specific climb with different results. I may go out one day and be unable to decipher the moves and fail. I may go out another day and climb with focus and confidence and flash the route. I may go out the next time and have difficulty keeping my balance. I may fail to focus the next time, and fall out of carelessness. I may flash the route again, and then become intimidated the next day and fail for lack of confidence.

It has been my experience that whatever difficulties exist in my climbing also tend to exist in other aspects of life as well, and that an excellent performance on the rock usually indicates general harmony. I suppose this should be obvious, since climbing is at least 50% mental, but a day of strong, confident climbing, moving with grace and balance, reading the rock, and being conscious of the effects of weight transfers, gravity, endurance, etc., is

(Fax Unclear)

concerns unrelated to the task at hand.

Climbing in essence provides a vehicle to merge with human nature. It provides an opportunity to face a challenge entirely alone and to be attuned to all of the strengths and weaknesses inherent in being a human. Although your partner is a key element in ensuring your safety, success or failure on the rock is entirely individual. There is no opportunity to blame failure on other people, or to ride on anyone’s coattails to success. No one else can do it for you. It’s just you and the rock and you either conquer it or it conquers you.

Climbing serves to remind one of one’s mortality, and to provide a way to experience all of the emotions, with the exception of romantic emotions, which are inherent in human beings. There is fear, indecision, confidence, euphoria, anger, frustration - the list goes on. It is difficult to describe in words the connection with nature which climbing produces, as it is more of an understanding that I feel than anything which can be quantified. I suppose the closest I can come in a few words is that being on the rock serves to redefine my place within nature and attune myself to it.

I hope I have been of some help. If I have confused you, please call and I will try to be a little clearer.

Yours truly,

Lou W.

Michael’s Reply

Dear Charles,

I want to apologize for not writing this for you sooner. I hope that I have not held you behind due to my procrastination. I hope that this is what you want, however if you want me to be more specific, I can send you a more detailed description or we can just cover it in the interview. I look forward to meeting with you. Regards.

Michael W.

Here we go:

In the summer of 1987 I moved to Eugene Oregon to live with a close friend of mine. During my initial two weeks in Oregon, my friend Hank and myself went on two mountaineering trips, one to Mount St. Helen’s, and another to Mt. Ranier. During my climbing trip of Mount St. Helen’s, I had some very unusual experiences that were a result of my unfamiliarity with this type of environment. Since I had previously only experienced mountains in the 2.000 to 6,000 ft. Range, I was not accustomed to climbing in areas that were above tree level.

Prior to our climb, we noticed that the majority of the mountain was covered in clouds but nonetheless we started our climb since the weather forecast was calling for clear skies later on in the day. While we were approaching tree level on Mount St. Helen’s, snow began to fall and further obscure our view of what was ahead of us. One hour later we were completely snow-blind due to the combination of thin cloud coverage and heavy snow. For at least two hours we could only determine whether we were traveling upwards or downwards. We continued to ascend the mountain even though we could not see. It was if we were blind and had to rely totally upon kinesthetic responses to find our way. At this point we both questioned whether or not we should have continued to go any further due to the weather conditions. However, we both believed that since we had been climbing for at least four hours, it would be pointless to turn around and miss the summit. Painstakingly, we continued on our ascent.

Prior to this climb, I had always maintained a rather cynical and elitist position on spiritual matters, additionally I was quite insistent on the fact that God or some higher level above human consciousness absolutely did not exist. While I was on this climb however, this cynical view began to dissipate rather quickly. I began to see the greatness of nature and how powerful it is in relation to humans. My fear and anxiety lead me into a peak experience which brought about a profound awareness of my relationship with nature and basic existential matters concerning life and death. After about six hours of climbing, we finally reached to summit of Mount St. Helen’s. The wind at the top was at least 50 to 60 miles per hour, and the visibility was poor but not snow blinding conditions. While I was at the top I had a sense of accomplishment but at the same time I had the feeling that this experience was going to change the way I viewed the world in a profound way.

Although this mountain is a rather small one (approx. 7,000 ft.) in comparison to others that I have climbed, the overall experience I gained from this trip was unmatched by any other climb I have ever done. This experience alone is responsible for changing my beliefs and values about the nature of our existence, and has lead to a dramatic decrease in my cynicism.

Michael’s Transcription

Basically the way I conduct these interviews is to remind you of the question, and then to read from your description and you can respond in terms of whatever comes up for you, and in terms of how what you wrote relates to the question. And the question, just to remind you is: Please describe your experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.

You started out by describing: “In the summer of 1987 I moved to Eugene, Oregon to live with a close friend of mine. During my initial two weeks in Oregon, my friend Hank and myself went on two mountaineering trips, one to Mount St. Helen’s, and another to Mt. Ranier. During (your) climbing trip of Mount St. Helen’s, I had some very unusual experiences that were a result of my unfamiliarity with this type of environment.” What do you mean by ‘unusual’ and how did they result from your ‘unfamiliarity?’

Well, I mean that they were unusual in the sense that I had never really spent a whole of time on terrain that was quite like what I experienced there.  A lot of vertical areas and also the snow. Additionally, it was more the extremeness of the weather. Being snow blinded and the intensity of the wind, all these factors combining together, it was almost like being on a different planet.

You say: “Since I had previously only experienced mountains in the 2.000 to 6,000 ft. range, I was not accustomed to climbing in areas that were above tree level.” Do you think that had an influence on your experience?

Right, it did. There were no trees around whatsoever, so it gave more of a feeling of being alone. It was more of an experience, not only externally, but internally. Sort of a reflection of that.

How did you experience that internally?

Fear, Yeah.

Of being above tree-line?

Not only that, if it hadn’t of been for the weather, it would have been a lot different, I think. But combining all of these factors, it was pretty intense. During the time we started climbing above tree-level, you got this feeling that you were walking into nothingness. Because of not having sight beyond the range of maybe four or five ahead of you.

You say that: “Prior to our climb, we noticed that the majority of the mountain was covered in clouds but nonetheless we started our climb.”

Yeah.

“Since the weather forecast was calling for clear skies later on in the day.” (Not read: While we were approaching tree level on Mount St. Helen’s, snow began to fall and further obscure our view of what was ahead of us. One hour later.)  “We were completely snow-blind.” How does that relate to the experience of merging with Nature?

In the sense that after we had accomplished our goal, the complete cycle of ascending and descending the mountain, it gave me more of feeling of being comfortable. Being comfortable with it, after I went through that whole experience and started realizing that I was going to get through it all right. I started realizing that it was kind of an interesting experience and something that I wanted to take a part of more, in the future.

(Not read: due to the combination of thin cloud coverage and heavy snow. For at least two hours we could only determine whether we were traveling upwards or downwards. We continued to ascend the mountain even though we could not see. It was if we were blind and had to rely totally upon kinesthetic responses to find our way. At this point we both questioned whether or not we should have continued to go any further due to the weather conditions. However, we both believed that since we had been climbing for at least four hours, it would be pointless to turn around and miss the summit. Painstakingly, we continued on our ascent.)

You say that: “Prior to this climb, I had always maintained a rather cynical and elitist position on spiritual matters.” How did this climb change that?

Well, it put me in the position of feeling: a part of Nature, on the one hand,  on the second hand, it made me feel like I was nothing compared to the forces of Nature, all that I had experienced. I had to re-evaluate the whole primal spiritual values, what-have-you.

So, you felt like you were a part of Nature and nothing?

Well, I felt I was a part of Nature and my position prior to that was … that whole side of my life was non-existent, not even worth touching, because it was … it was kind of ridiculous. I grew up in a very religious family, I shouldn’t say religious, but very conservative family, and religion was forced upon me as a child. So, I always had a very reactionary stance on all kinds of spiritual matters. Does that explain it?

I think so. You say that: “I was quite insistent on the fact that God or some higher level above human consciousness absolutely did not exist. While I was on this climb however, this cynical view began to dissipate rather quickly.” What was that experience of that view dissipating?

Feeling that, my belief, itself was crumbling before me, in the sense that this would not be possible without something beyond the material world. And it just all culminated into a pretty intense peak experience, where it just hits you right in front of your face, and it sort of goes beyond my ability to explain it in words. It was really intense, and it definitely forced me to re-evaluate.

You say: “I began to see the greatness of nature and how powerful it is in relation to humans.” Was that part of that transition experience for you, that crumbling?

Right, because typically, I could appreciate beauty in Nature, but not in the way that I could after this. It was more of a profound experience once this happened.

You say that: “My fear and anxiety lead me into a peak experience.” Before I ask you to describe that peak experience, I wanted to see if you could say something about how your ‘fear and anxiety led you into it.’

Feeling like we were not going to be able to get back down from there, that was the biggest thing. We didn’t know if the storm was getting worse or what.  And it appeared to be, and from that fear, and once the storm started calming down we started gaining a little more assurance that we were going to make it through. So the fear sort of promoted my peak experience in the sense that I started discovering how intense Nature was, in light of what was going on. And then, I started feeling like I was going to be able to get through this experience and it sort of made me feel more comfortable with Nature.

Can you describe that “profound awareness of (your) relationship with nature?

Well, I can explain it in the sense that it was almost sort of like an Altered State of Consciousness, since it was very similar to LSD, except that there were no drugs involved whatsoever. Everything that I perceived, I experienced ten-fold. It was really intense. I started becoming aware more of what I was doing, and looking back upon past experiences of my life, in relation to what I was going through then. So, it caused me to look inside of myself and also to re-evaluate my life up until that point.

Can you say what you mean by you “experienced everything ten-fold?”

That my emotions and my feelings were so intertwined with everything else, experienced from a cognitive standpoint. There was an emotional affective component that was stronger than normally what I would experience if I was doing my everyday things.

And the awareness of “basic existential matters concerning life and death?”

Yeah.

Can you say anything about that?

From the profoundness of the experience, it made me start thinking more about what kind of belief system or system of thought do I need to maintain in order to accept the fact that I’m going to die someday, and my close friends, relatives, and all that will die as well. And you have to have something that goes beyond material accumulations to acquire happiness. And that was one of the biggest things right there. That was another thing that I went through in my evaluation of my life. Kind of like having a picture screen where I see my life being played over.

Is that something that you feel like happened, or something like that?

It was like that.

You did see that then?

Going through certain parts of my life and seeing certain things that happened all the way through my childhood, all the way up to that point, I saw those things, and trying to explain it in the context of what was going on. Just trying to evaluate it.

Did you see those things during the peak experience or was that part of the awareness that was brought about by the peak experience?

It happened throughout. During the climb, it was, … you know how you’re running through thoughts in your head, you’re constantly thinking of other things, just like when I go jogging, I never think about my jog, in fact it’s the furthest thing from my mind. I always think about what’s going on in my life or other matters, and that’s what was going. The whole experience itself, brought about this, the peak experience, brought about a more intensity, meaning that I could experience these things in a much deeper way  because of the affective component being more intense.

You described reaching the summit with poor visibility. (Not read: After about six hours of climbing, we finally reached to summit of Mount St. Helen’s. The wind at the top was at least 50 to 60 miles per hour, and the visibility was poor but not snow blinding conditions.) “While I was at the top I had a sense of accomplishment but at the same time I had the feeling that this experience was going to change the way I viewed the world in a profound way.”

Like I said before, Once we realized that were going to get through it,  once we made it to the top … the weather even though it was still really bad, was not as bad as it was during most of the ascent. And then we knew at that point, we were going to be able to get back down and everything was going to be fine. But at the same time, in light of everything that happened up to that point, you know, I started thinking even more that I had to re-evaluate my life. I never had an experience like that before, with any of the drugs that I had previously played around with when I was younger, LSD or psilocybin… And, umm,  I hope I’m being clear and going into depth and all that.

Maybe you can try to go a little more into what experience felt like at the time, and what kinds of thoughts were going through your head at that time, what was your experience at that moment. And it’s kind of hard to pinpoint a moment, it seems like, I’m wondering if there’s a particular moment, that stands out for you, or is it the summation of the experience?

I would say that it is the summation of experience, even though that peak experience,  I think, probably, wasn’t something that happened abruptly, it was something that happened during the initial part of the climb, the ascent. And then afterwards, I still had a lot of the same kinds of thoughts, but it wasn’t the same. I think, on my way down, I was trying to re-evaluate, not only what I experienced going up there, but what I told you about reaching the summit.  As far as trying to deal with, you know, coming about with some kind of different belief system that would incorporate some kind of existential substance, or whatever. And the whole experience itself was filled with a lot of emotion and a lot of fear,  a lot of anxiety,  a lot of overall distress.

When you say the ‘experience itself,’ what are you talking about?

The climb, the physical parts of it, the emotional part of it, and the cognitive part of it, the fact that I had thoughts racing in my head the whole time, trying to put everything together. And the fear that came from that.

(Not read: Although this mountain is a rather small one (approx. 7,000 ft.) in comparison to others that I have climbed,) You say that: “The overall experience I gained from this trip was unmatched by any other climb I have ever done.” How was it different?

Because other climbs that I’ve done before … I had the confidence, I had everything, and I also had sort of a focused sense of concentration, and I didn’t have the type of experience I had unless, it wasn’t … you know, they were intense, but I’ve been able to have a sort of lightheartedness about them. And where this was intense, and not lighthearted. I think the fear was also motivated by the fact that we were wondering if we were getting ourselves into something that we didn’t plan for.

Meaning?

In the sense that the weather was really bad, and the snow was still fairly deep in some places, and we were scared of crevasses, and all that. Even though it’s a relatively small mountain, you know it’s not very large at all. But by the looks of the weather that day, It was like being on Mt. McKinley or something, it was crazy. I started questioning whether my friend had enough insight to know when there was danger, or was I going to have to rely upon myself. And it was sort of, having to put faith in the fact that, sometimes you can’t always, fully, be rest assured about things. There’s always going to be a certain sense of unpredictability about anything that you do in life. And you have to sort of be comfortable with obscurity, well, not obscurity … ambiguity.

The last thing you said was that: “This experience alone is responsible for changing my beliefs and values about the nature of our existence, and has lead to a dramatic decrease in my cynicism.”

For the large part,  it’ll go back every once in a while. I’ll get sort of cynical, I think it’s just my nature. But as far as being cynical about matters of … things that go beyond daily humdrum, things that deal with, you know,  everything that I’m really interested in, like consciousness, my belief systems about … I hate the word ‘spiritualism,’ I think it sounds really corky, but you know what I’m speaking of, these matters. I don’t have a cynical viewpoint on those, on that.  I’m much more accepting of other people’s beliefs concerning religion, spirituality, whatever. Whereas before, I was … I’m much more open and receptive to that instead of being very critical and condescending.

So, that opened you up to a new way of looking at things?

Right.

It’s amazing what climbing can do.

It really is. Most of the stuff I’ve done is ice climbing and mountaineering, but as far as rock climbing, I don’t really have a lot of experience, it’s something I’d like to get into. It seems to be, in some sense… more physically demanding, but all the other aspects that we just described about this.

Such as?

Well, I think in many ways, even though fear was a motivating factor in this, and it was primarily instigated by the weather and all that.  It also comes from here, it comes from something inside of me, you know, in certain situations that I get myself into I still have a certain amount of fear, and heights is one of them. There’s always something behind them. I really like to get into it. There are certain things that I like to do, physically, that will explain why I have these certain types of fears. Not that I want to be fearless, or anything like that. It’s just that you learn more about yourself when you go through these types of experiences, and that’s I like to push.

Is there anything else about the experience of merging with Nature that we haven’t talked about, that you’d like to add at this point?

Well, I think it opened me up to more of an appreciation, on a daily basis, of Nature. Now that I live in the city, I really, really look forward to getting out in the woods.  It’s something that is an escape for me. If everything’s going bad in my life, or whatever, if I go out in the woods or whatever, it tends to clear things up because it’s sort of a place of escape. But not escape in the sense of drinking alcohol or whatever.  It’s not that type of escape.  It’s the type of escape that allows you to deal with your problems in a way that are manageable.  That’s one of the things that it has done for me. I’ve always been a real outdoorsy person, my parents always took me camping and things like that. But I never had an appreciation for it, like I do now.

Thanks.

Robert’s Reply

We all carry with us an understanding of life as wee see it, or should I say I believe that we carry this understanding. I see it as the sum total of what we were born with, and what we have experienced in our lives..

To me nature is the basic, fundamentally accruing path that will happen if things are left to themselves. Water running down is nature. The cycle of life from birth through life to death is a natural path.

I believe that I am nature, the process of life is nature. But I am not always aware of this aspect. It is not always the way that I feel.

There are a lot of moments that bring this awareness back to my conscious mind. For me athletics is one of those activities that does this. An experience of being reminded of my relationship with nature (merging with nature) occurred while rock climbing in the South Platte area of Colorado. I was climbing with one other friend. The hike into the climb was about two miles. The day was warm with occasional rain showers. When I go out climbing the fact that you get into surroundings that are moving with a more natural way helps me remember what nature is. We were climbing on a rock called “The Dome” the climb was called “Topographical Oceans.” What I remember is that after the first pitch the climb becomes an all friction route with only bolts for protection. The climb was long and took a lot of time. As you climbed you had to keep at least three points of contact on the rock at all time. I found myself climbing slow and balanced in a very smooth and flowing way. All my thoughts were focused on the rock. There was no buzzers or bells no hallucinations no visions no abnormal physical experiences, just a heightened awareness of my presence in, with and in relationship to my environment. This for me was and is when I merge with nature.

If we open our eyes we will see that we are that which we are looking for.

Robert

Robert’s Transcription

Well, just get right into it. What I usually do is I’ll remind you of the question and I’ll read from your description and if you could just respond in terms of whatever comes up and how what you wrote relates to the specific question.

Okay. Yeah, cause if I mis-understood the question.

The question again is to please describe your experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. And you start out by saying: “We all carry with us an understanding of life as we see it, or should I say I believe that we  carry this understanding.” How do you see that as relating to the question?

What I was trying to do was come up with some understanding of what I felt Nature was. Because when you say ‘when I merged with Nature,’ well that depends on how I define Nature, so I was trying to say what I thought Nature was.

Is that what you mean when you say: “I see it as the sum total of what we were born with, and what we have experienced in our lives.” or is that a different point?

I believe that what I was referring to was the understanding of life and that it’s the sum total of our experience. It’s how you perceive the world and that’s directly related to a part of what you were born with and then all your experiences and how you perceive those experiences.

So we’re still trying to define Nature here?

Yeah.

You say that: “To me nature is the basic, fundamentally accruing path that will happen if things are left to themselves. Water running down is nature. The cycle of life from birth through life to death is a natural path.”

…

Can you say what you mean when you say that you: “believe that I am nature?”

I don’t find that I am … I think… I look at the planet, the universe as Nature and we’re just a part of that. Often, in Western civilization, more than most, we separate ourselves from Nature, we’re afraid of it, but I don’t see myself as being separated from Nature, but a part of Nature, and what I do to the environment, I do to myself. So, when we say merging with Nature, it’s difficult to say ‘I’m merging with Nature because basically I am Nature.’ So, what I think is really happening is that when I climb I get a heightened awareness of that relationship. Because people forget about it, it’s easy when you go off climb,  and go off into the wilderness, and go out and get away from all of the distraction - you find that relationship once again. But that relationship, you don’t lose it when you come back. It’s always there, you just might not feel it or be aware of it.

You say that: “the process of life is nature. But I am not always aware of this aspect. It is not always the way that I feel.”

Today, I’m distracted by some of the everyday things in life that I am doing. And you actually lose that connection and I think that a good example is how people are treating the environment.  They don’t realize that they are actually doing it to themselves. If they were to take a knife and cut off their finger, they would see it as ridiculous. People would see that as something that’s wrong. Yet, when you’re polluting, you’re doing almost the same thing, you’re cutting off your own air. But, we’ve distanced ourselves so much from everything that we don’t see it as wrong.

You say in contrast that: “There are a lot of moments that bring this awareness back to my conscious mind.”

Yeah. And that I find … climbing is one of those times, I may have forgotten my connection. But, when I’m climbing that connection is made apparent.

You say that: “For me athletics is one of those activities that does this.” Is it just athletics in general?

Yeah, most … not just athletics, but athletics is one of the things. When I’m snow-shoeing, when I’m cross-country skiing, when I’m  climbing, doing gymnastics, all of those are very distinct ways for me to remind myself of that connection.

I think that this is where you get into a specific experience. You say that: “An experience of being reminded of my relationship with nature (merging with nature) occurred while rock climbing in the South Platte area of Colorado.”

We were down there, I was down there with a friend of mine, Brian, and we were doing Topographical Oceans. Which is a climb on The Dome, I think it’s about a mile hike in, it’s kind of a half-dome, it’s not anything as big as the Half-Dome. It’s a relatively face-less,  I don’t want to say face-less, it’s kind of like short of cracks, it’s more of a face climb, it’s bolt to bolt because there isn’t any other protection there. So as you do the climb you’re really dependent on friction to climb it.

You say: “I was climbing with one other friend.” Do you believe that had an effect on the experience that you had? On what kind of experience that you had?

It has an effect on your experience, but to what extent I don’t know.

(Not read: The hike into the climb was about two miles.) You described: “The day was warm with occasional rain showers.” Did the weather affect your experience in some way?

Yeah, it did. At one point, we were half-way up and it started to rain. It became … you couldn’t do the climb. We had to hang out until it dried out. To finish it. Because all you had was friction, and once it got just slightly wet, it was gone.

You say: “When I go out climbing the fact that you get into surroundings that are moving with a more natural way helps me remember what nature is.” How is that?

You get away from your computer, you get away from your car, you get away from all of the other things that you were thinking about. It’s kind of all that background noise. You are able to eliminate that. You don’t have to go out climbing, you can just go out for a walk, a hike. But it’s easier to remember Nature, when you’re standing in the middle of a more apparent nature. Because Nature is everywhere you go, but some of it’s more easy to recognize. Both Denver and Rocky Mountain National Park are nature, but RMNP is a lot more to recognize as nature than, let’s say downtown Denver.

You already described the rock that you were climbing on, in that it was all friction and bolts. (Not read: We were climbing on a rock called “The Dome” the climb was called “Topographical Oceans.” What I remember is that after the first pitch the climb becomes an all friction route with only bolts for protection.)  “The climb was long and took a lot of time.” Did that have an influence on the kind of experience that you had?

Yeah, I think that the longer you’re out there, you’re energy’s being focused, it’s just the more you’re reminded of what it’s all about. The pitches were long because you had to move slow, very balanced. So it helped you focus.

You described having to: “keep at least three points of contact on the rock at all time.”

It was kind of like one of those things where you move one hand and then the other hand, and maybe like one foot. Because, … maybe I’m not that good of a climber, but there wasn’t that much there. Small indentations in the rock were bomber. What you’re looking for, it wasn’t like big handholds or like big ledges. Okay, that’s a good one, I’ll walk on that tomorrow. And it was an extended periods of time when you were doing that.

You say that you: “found (yourself) climbing slow and balanced in a very smooth and flowing way.” How was that?

Well, it was kind of the nature of the climb, in that you had to be balanced,  you had to take your time. It wasn’t something you could really rush.

What about the connection between that and what you said next? When you said: “All my thoughts were focused on the rock.”

There’s just one thing that you’re trying to do. There wasn’t anything else that you were thinking about.  You were there in the moment, you didn’t necessarily worry about the last bolt that you had clipped into,  you were not necessarily thinking about the next bolt you were going to … It was more of a ‘I had to take care of this move at a time,’ living in just that immediate moment.

Just being in that immediate moment. You say: “There was no buzzers or bells no hallucinations no visions no abnormal physical experiences,” What do you mean by all that?

So often people are looking for some renowned experience, you know, levitation off the floor, walking through walls, walking across water, they’re looking for that. And it’s not that. It’s not like I had any major revolutions in my life, it heightened … it just brought to a point where you can really experience that relationship that you’re having, but it’s always there, it’s not out of the ordinary.

You described it as “just a heightened awareness of my presence in, with and in relationship to my environment.” Can you describe that heightened awareness?

I guess, when it’s right there in front of you and all else has been set aside. I guess it’s just that much easier to see, it’s much clearer. And a lot of it has to do with your focus, on what you’re doing. Climbing, in a way, demands your focus on one thing; if you’re thinking about how your car’s running, your house payments, your school bills, you’re not going to be there. You’re going to be think about that other thing. But climbing, demands that you’re there in the moment thinking about what you’re doing. I think that the risk involved, help you devote your attention to that one thing.

Is that similar to the practice you described as: ‘Setting all else aside?’

Yeah, that’s it exactly. Because you can’t be thinking about other things and still accomplish the climb.

You say: “just a heightened awareness of my presence in, with and in relationship to my environment. This for me was and is when I merge with nature.”

That’s the moment when you’re most apparent to the relationship that you have. And in essence that would be when I ‘merge.’ But in all reality, it’s difficult to merge, meaning coming together with something that you’re already a part of.

So, it’s not so much a coming together of two things that are separate …

but a realization of what you are.

Is that what you mean with your final quote? “If we open our eyes we will see that we are that which we are looking for.”

I think a lot of people are out there looking for something. And I think that they are already what they’re looking for, but they don’t see it. They don’t realize it.

I hope I’m not confusing there, but a lot of it has to do with how I view what nature really is, and I don’t separate myself from it.

I hope I answered the right question.

Everybody responds in a different way, and what I am looking at is how different people, both understand the question, and how they experience what happens for them while they are rock climbing. It’s like what you say, you relate it to athletics as an activity that does this. It’s not necessarily something that is limited to rock climbing, and it happens in many different ways and that’s something that comes out very clearly in your description. I think that the last question that I would like to ask would want to ask if there is anything else about the experience of merging with Nature that we haven’t talked about, that you would like to add in at this point?

Other than … I would strive to the point where I am continuously merged, you’re always there. And not always having to do things to remind me.

You would strive for that? How would you go about doing that?

Well, the more I remind myself of it, the more I understand the relationship and the more I have… The more I remind myself of it, the less I have to remind myself of it. When you start living a life where, I want to say, more interactive with Nature, it wouldn’t be something you’d have to remind yourself of. And I’m far from living that life, but it is something that’s in the direction that I’m heading. You know, ideally, I would like to live in a society that lived in harmony with nature rather than fighting against it all of the time.

Thanks.

S. A.’s Reply

“… experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing.”

In responding to this statement above, two prior experiences or series of experiences come to mind. Both “experiences” seem to occur or have occurred more than once, to varying degrees, and I can’t really remember when or where they first happened or happened most strongly, though images of high alpine walls come to mind … like the Diamond, Keeler’s Needle, or high on El Capitan … generally when I’m feeling “out there,” away from people, remote.

The first occurs/occurred while climbing a pristine crack, and I came across a mossy or grassy section, and I see beautiful flowers, and my attention is suddenly riveted to an intense appreciation of the beauty of the flowers, and the aliveness of the flower/crack/moss eco-system, and then I feel that this mini- “eco-system” is just a small part of the greater rock/flower ecosystem … it’s all alive and vibrant … and I realize that I’m part of this living oneness. Usually my concentration returns to climbing after a short while, and I look for pro, realizing that I’m just “passing through,” not really a permanent fixture there. Still, I’m filled with satisfaction, appreciation, happiness, and my vision seems particularly sharp, in focus. Also notice a sense of timelessness. Seems to occur most strongly while in remote, beautiful areas, away from crowds, in areas where self-reliance is critical.

The other experience that sometimes arises is that of being high up on a cliff face, usually at a belay, and I look around me, suddenly realizing that I am in spectacularly beautiful surroundings, and I’m “in the middle.” like a central focus point on the rock, surrounded by blue, vast sky, mountains, forests, and “on par” with these big pieces of nature, again a piece of it, a feeling of oneness. Sometimes I’ve felt a flow of energy coming from these elements to me, filling me with peace, happiness, unity with nature, satisfaction, and spirituality. As if I’m on the edge of discovering some secrets from “God” or “Mother Nature,” totally content, almost blissful. So with the other experiences, there is also a sense of timelessness or time-distortion. Generally, these pleasant feelings are somewhat short-lived, as my attention returns to quickly paying out rope for the leader to clip a piece, but it leaves me with a secure, lingering feeling of happiness and feeling like this is where I really belong at that moment, and nowhere else, I’m a perfect part of this big organic natural reality.

Though less profound than these experiences above, I routinely feel alive and vibrant while just going out to the crags to climb, taking in the beauty and the scenery in general, feeling good to be out with nature, happy to realize how fortunate I am to be with nature. I consider climbing areas in general to be among the more beautiful parts of wilderness/nature, and it breeds in me a feeling of guardianship of the natural resources, a feeling of helping to ensure that natural processes are allowed to continue, to minimize my impact and that of others, to pick up trash & carry my waste, all waste, off big walls and crag climbs. Please feel free to call for clarification/questions.

S. A.

P.S. I’d be interested in seeing your dissertation, when complete, and would be glad to pay for postage and copying costs, if you don’t mind sending it, assuming I’m still at this address/# … Thanks!

S.A.’s Transcription

I want to thank you for sending in your description, it really helps me out a lot. I’ve got, oh 29 days left to gather all this research, and I’ve been working on it for six months. I really appreciate it. The way I usually do this is, what I try to do; I start out by reminding you of the question and then I’ll read from your description and you can respond in ways … whatever comes up for you, and how it relates to the question and/or the experience of merging with nature, and you can respond in those ways. You start out by quoting the question: “… the experience of merging with Nature while rock climbing. In responding to this statement above, two prior experiences or series of experiences come to mind.”

Yeah.

So, “Both ‘experiences’ seem to occur or have occurred more than once, to varying degrees.” So, this experience of merging with nature has varying degrees and it happens more than once?

It almost seems, as if, (while) reviewing this feeling I’ve had, I know I’ve had it numerous times. And it feels like, when I got to the essence of thinking about the re-occurrence,  I realized that once you have a certain experience it’s within your repertoire and it’s easy to come back again, it’s almost as if you smell the smell or had a taste and you can think about it and it can almost happen spontaneously. So in that respect, it seems like, it’s hard for me to pinpoint when they first happened, or where I was when it happened,  I can just envision the scenario or the feeling, but I can’t say ‘it happened in such and such year’ or ‘on such and such climb.’ But I know it’s been … both of these experiences have happened in numerous times and to different degrees, and still happen to different degrees, you know, spontaneously. If I’m thinking about it, maybe now, as a result of thinking about it, because I’ve never really thought about it thoroughly, I can probably just be hanging out in a certain situation and recall what I’ve written and feel some degree of that same thing, just by thinking about it. You know, I suspect. When it happens more strongly, it feels like ‘wow, this is a kind of a transcendental experience.’  And other times it’s like a vague background nice nature feeling that I feel almost everytime I go climbing. Virtually every time I go outside, I feel just generally good vibes, kind of like, I’m connecting. But that’s … the higher that degree gets, usually the more pleasurable it is, the more memorable it might be.

You said here: “I can’t really remember when or where they first happened or happened most strongly,” and that’s kind of what you just said again. And then you said, “though images of high alpine walls come to mind … like the Diamond, Keeler’s Needle, or high on El Capitan …” (Not read: Generally when I’m feeling “out there,” away from people, remote.)

Invariably, it seems like the most intense experiences are when I’m most out there, not around people, including even my partner.  Usually, my partner is at the other end of the rope a ways away and I’m kind of in my own little space. It just seems, like, especially alpine areas, your senses are so much more sharpened. I just feel like, if I’m just cragging out in El Dorado and there’s people on routes on either side of me. I’m less likely to have this experience, whereas if I’m the only person on Keeler’s Needle and there’s no one around for miles … you’re just forced into this sense of awareness that seems conducive to this type of experience, or any kind of sharpened awareness type experience, because you’re already … in the back of the mind you know that it’s somewhat life or death if you mess up. You’re acutely aware of maintaining control and you’re kind of aware of the seriousness of it. And also, to me, I get these … I find that high areas, or alpine areas are just more natural, more outstanding, magnificent, pristine … nature is fuller, to me in these higher places, more remote places than in a more traveled, more accessible areas.

What do you mean by fuller?

Just … I guess I’m more aware of nature, it’s standing out more,  it’s sharper, it’s more intense, it seems so much more beyond the ordinary.  Nature’s in everything everywhere, but it seems like it’s more acute, more extreme, more complete, more uncharted, in it’s natural state.

There’s a flutter in my chest as you’re talking. I know what you’re talking about.

So I’m really attracted to those types of situations, the further away, the alpine situations. I even get that on the Diamond, even though as of late, it’s become very crowded. I did three climbs there this summer, and there’s people all over the place. There’s still this underlying feeling ‘Wow, this is one alpine awesome mountain, awesome place.’ I’m not that aware of people, you don’t hear and receive them that easily, there’s still enough space, and it’s still out there enough that I get that feeling even though there are people. That’s kind of one exception, though.

So, then the first experience that you described: “The first occurs/occurred while climbing a pristine crack, and I came across a mossy or grassy section, and I see beautiful flowers, and my attention is suddenly riveted to an intense appreciation of the beauty of the flowers.

I think that was … I think that struck me probably, because it might have been one of the first times I had been in an alpine fifth class climbing situation. I kind of learned on crags, like in Yosemite, like Nutcracker. Where it’s so climbed out, it’s so clean, you don’t even see any growth. Yosemite’s incredibly clean, an absolutely clean crack with nothing growing. But, I guess it really struck me the first time I was up high in a more alpine situation, it might not have been the first time, but the first time I saw, noticed growth, saw a flower growing, I thought ‘Wow,’ it totally changed my perception of rock climbing, I thought, ‘This isn’t just rock climbing, this is something that’s growing, there can be things growing up here, animals and plants.’ It started that whole appreciation for ‘Geez, this is like a living eco-system up here,’ it’s not just a rock, but this is part of a bigger thing that’s growing.

I stuck my hand in a crack on the Nutcracker, and a frog jumped out. That was a bizarre experience. You mentioned: “the aliveness of the flower/crack/moss eco-system, and then I feel that this mini- “eco-system” is just a small part of the greater rock/flower ecosystem … it’s all alive and vibrant.” And that was an experience that you had.

It seems to have occurred since then, too.  The one thing that sticks out in my mind was the clarity of vision, that my vision seemed really sharp and clear, the plant colors seemed really heightened, it seemed like … better colors, better vision, more awareness. And I kind of, for a minute, felt removed from climbing, as if I were just kind of, I was just hanging out  on a stance, totally comfortable, not really using effort to be there, like I normally would, not really thinking about pro, just observing and saying ‘Wow, that’s beautiful,’ and just kind of feeling like ‘God, I’ve just merged with this, I’m part of this, and it’s part of my fate to pass through this and see it.’ And it’s fleeting, when I felt it, it just … within a few seconds or moments or whatever, I go ‘Oh, yeah, it’s time to climb again, or it’s time to think about pro,’ and then it kind of goes away. But I still have this feeling of ‘Oh, that was a nice experience.’  I just kind of climb through. It feels ephemeral, it feels like it’s not going to last long, because you know, you’re always driven to get to the top, to get off, so that you don’t get benighted, so, but  you stay safe, and so… It kind of felt like ‘I’m just passing through, it’s nice to see it.’ Without any regret, necessarily, accepting it and feeling good that I felt it.

You mention here that you realized: “and I realize that I’m part of this living oneness.”

It’s easy for me to say that because I’ve had other experiences, in non-climbing situations, where I felt the interconnectedness of all things. That kind of flows back into the idea that I  have that once I’ve had an experience it adds to your repertoire of experiences. And at that time it was easy for me to, probably, feel that oneness, because I’ve felt it before, in other situations, and it was like, ‘Wow, this is a clear example of how …’ at least it was reminding me, look how this … the plants are growing out of the rock, so, the rock is essentially part of a living system and I’m alive too, and this is sustaining me … and we’re interacting, and it kind of reinforced that feeling that everything is connected, including me. We often think of Nature as being external or outside of us, but I feel that we’re just another part of quote-unquote ‘Nature.’ So that experience brought that sharply to my attention, but it wasn’t the first time I’d ever felt that inter-connectedness.

It’s just something that you were experiencing as you were rock climbing?

Right.

Yet, this is something that you’ve already said, I guess. “Usually my concentration returns to climbing after a short while, and I look for pro, realizing that I’m just “passing through,” not really a permanent fixture there.” What is that realization?

I don’t know….  I’m trying to think… I guess that I accept it, but there’s kind of almost, now that I think about it, a tinge of wishing I could prolong that experience. Or be there longer, and kind of analyze it. I’m kind of an analytical person. It’d be nice to hang out and maybe spend an hour there, and just kind of feeling it longer. So as I kind of recognize that I have to move on, I guess there’s a tinge of regret. That I couldn’t just hang out and spend some more time. There’s also a feeling of knowing that that’s the right thing to do, and that that’s Okay. The experience kind of goes away when you move on, but you can still think back and go ‘That was nice, I had a nice time seeing that flower.’  I might comment to my second. I guess I  realize, too, I guess it’s on lead that I would feel that.

Most of the time it’s on lead?

Maybe all of the time. I can’t recall experiencing that when I was seconding, so much. Maybe part of that is that you’re more aware when you’re leading, you’re so much more on the edge, there’s more of a focused feeling to what you’re seeing and doing. You can climb really absent minded if you’re following, and I often do.

You say that: “Even though I realize that I’m just passing through. Still, I’m filled with satisfaction, appreciation, (and) happiness.”

Yeah,  that’s like I described … the lingering effect. I felt really good vibes having that kind of experience. It feels like you’re really content.

So there’s a lingering effect?

Yeah, definitely, a feeling that lingers, it feels nice.

I think you’ve already talked about this too. “and my vision seems particularly sharp, in focus.”

It’s just like a super-enlightened awareness or something. I suspect that my hearing was probably sharper, too. Just a heightened awareness in general. Everything felt sharp and clear, including my climbing decisions. Climbing felt easier, everything felt like, no resistance, it was very straight forward.

You mentioned something else, you mentioned a lingering effect, and a desire to stay in it. And here you mention that you: “also notice a sense of timelessness.”

Oh right, that’s very much the case and I guess it seems to go with that heightened awareness. And when your awareness is particularly sharp, it just seems like there’s just a  momentary lack of time or it’s really hard to tell what time it is, or care what time it is, or be aware of time’s passage, so much. Kind of like, you’re in this moment or space where, it could be a second or a minute or two, and it’s kind of hard to tell, you’re not passing through time in the usual sense. I notice that with the other climbing experience that I described, there’s that kind of space, kind of time… whatever continuum.

You say that it: “seems to occur most strongly while in remote, beautiful areas, away from crowds.”

I’ve kind of elaborated on that earlier.

“in areas where self-reliance is critical.”

I went back to that one earlier. I think part of what drives your experience is recognizing that your safety is on the line and you have to be so much more aware, like purposely aware, before you even have any heightened awareness, you’re already in the mode of being continuously on the ball, not slacking, kind of driving towards the goal. It sets you up for this heightened  awareness, and you know, when you’re out in the boonies, you just know that no-one’s going to rescue you. So, forget taking a bad fall, you can’t do it, you have to be on the ball.  So, that kind of sets it up, it sets up experiences like that.  It’s also related to, just the feeling I described earlier, that personally, I find remote areas to be a lot more beautiful. Maybe my frame of mind is already really pro-nature. Just feeling good vibes on the approach, before I even leave the car, I’m thinking ‘Wow, I’m going into this really beautiful area.’  So I’m already getting excited, what I’m going to see, and it gets better and better the further up I get into it. I always prefer higher, further areas in general, I feel more of a nature connection in that type of situation.

And then you start to describe a different experience: “The other experience that sometimes arises is that of being high up on a cliff face, usually at a belay, and I look around me, suddenly realizing that I am in spectacularly beautiful surroundings, and I’m ‘in the middle.’”  Can you describe that?

Right, I guess, I can almost picture it as beams of light or energy kind of coming towards me, or emanating from me, or vice-versa. The awareness comes as I’m sitting at a belay, and I’ve got nothing better to do, so I’m just kind of looking around, and I kind of notice, ‘Wow.’ And I seem to be like, more prominent if I’m out on an  arete and my vision is real good. For example, the Nose of El Cap,  where you can see everywhere, you can see a long ways in all directions around you, side-to-side, behind you, up and down, you’re kind of like this point in the middle of lots of beautiful things, and I guess I felt like everything’s connected around me, and I feel really central, and I feel like it’s almost a protective cozy kind of feeling being in the middle of these things, which are really beautiful, and appreciating and then there’s just the feeling of being connected, and maybe receiving or giving energy, more receiving, I guess, receiving energy from my surroundings, kind of just light, and warmth and … even if I’m cold, even if it is breezy, I’ll almost feel like I’m getting some heat energy or something, when I’m feeling that way. It’s just kind of a really nice appreciation feeling, feeling like it’s all one big merged blur of mass.   I’m sure my feelings and thoughts and how I interpret it now are influenced by things I’ve read prior to experiencing these things. I’ve read things like The Tao of Physics, and I’ve studied physics a lot, looking at how things, how particles transfer between objects, and the physical interconnectedness of things from a physical standpoint. So that probably set up my perception and experience. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t have happened without those experiences, but without the prior reading or whatever,  maybe it wouldn’t have happened in the same way.

So, do you think that it pre-disposed you to a certain type of experience or into interpreting that experience in a certain way?

I think it probably shaped, somewhat, my experience, or helped me interpret it in a certain way. Again, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have interpreted it in the exact same way without the books that I’ve seen or read, but certainly there was a sort of deja-vu feeling, or a feeling like ‘Oh, I’m experiencing this, it’s really nice, oh, that kind of blends with what I’ve seen or felt before.’  It kind of makes sense. It was a validating experience, in some respects.  ‘Oh, yeah, this is what should happen, or what has happened, or it makes sense that this is happening.’

It makes sense?

Yeah, it makes sense. The reality of the situation is that I am exchanging mass with the surroundings, literally. I am breathing this air, I’m absorbing this energy, I’m putting out energy. There’s a flux of energy that’s actually happening. So, if you think of at that level, well, it makes sense that I feel this. Because physically, that’s what’s really going on. Physically, I’m connected and this particle on the mountain might have been my predecessor’s body or a piece of his bone, or who knows what.  I mean, there’s just this continual cycling of elements and  a continual creation and destruction of things in space and time. I wasn’t thinking of those things when I felt the experience, but when I reflect on the experience, it just, it was kind of a confirming feeling of how  ‘Yeah, that’s how it’s supposed to be.’ It’s just that we don’t always experience that in normal consciousness. And there’s the feeling that you’re having, not supernatural, but an extraordinary experience that’s obviously not daily awareness, like an altered state, but again really clear focused, different than being high or something, much more able to concentrate, to be aware, to be focused, think,  a very super clear mind, kind of feeling. Same thing with time, you know just a feeling that for a moment or two, or however long, time can be floating along, and a lot of time could go by and I wouldn’t notice it or it could be just a second or two that I’ve expanded into what seemed like a longer time. I suspect that’s what’s happening. These experiences are probably only lasting three or four seconds or something and in that amount of time, I experience events or things that seem to take up a much longer period of time.  It might seem like a minute’s worth of experiences condensed into a much shorter period of time.

“like a central focus point on the rock, surrounded by blue, vast sky, mountains, forests, and ‘on par’ with these big pieces of nature.” What do you mean by ‘on par?’

I guess I just feel like … usually, I look at the sky and mountains and feel like these  are bigger things than me, these are more powerful and so much vaster. I guess, I’ve felt that ‘on par,’ in a certain sense that I’m almost as big, or I’m I almost have as much capacity, or mass, or something as these things. Almost as if I’m heading towards a, I almost want to say ‘god-like’ state, but a more powerful state, but less than that I almost feel on par as far as levels, as far as elevation, I don’t notice that so much when I’m down low, as when I’m a thousand feet or two thousand feet up, I feel like these things that I’m seeing, the sky, the mountain, whatever, are kind of like, right there. Like not up here, not down there, but kind of like right here. As if I am part of this community, and you could almost step over and say ‘Hi, Mr. Mountain or Sky.’ Like we’re all in the same space and it’s accessible and it’s close.  That’s the strongest thing that I feel when I say ‘on par.’ More than being equivalent as far some judgmental thing, I feel like it’s accessible and it’s close, we’re in the same local area. Same proximity, even though that sky, it’s far away, and the sun is far away, but it all kind of seems like it’s all focused here and it’s close, and I’m right there, like I could reach out and touch it.

You say: “again a piece of it, a feeling of oneness. Sometimes I’ve felt a flow of energy coming from these elements to me.” We’ve already kind of discussed that. “Filling me with peace, happiness, unity with nature, satisfaction, and spirituality. As if I’m on the edge of discovering some secrets from ‘God’ or ‘Mother Nature,’.” Can you elaborate on that feeling?

Yeah, I guess I felt … Let me think about this … One thing that comes to mind, is I feel like, if I could maintain this for any amount of time that it would be just a matter of time before I would see more, or learn more, figure out more about the situation, things around me. I guess we all sense that there’s a lot more to know, or a lot more going on in life than we can get access to, or learn about or feel in this lifetime. In that state I felt before, that I’m closer, now, to figuring out more universal truths, or God, or life, or Nature. I feel like I’m in that zone now, my state has been transferred into this more aware state, and now that I’m in that space where it would be easier to perceive things that I haven’t seen before, things that are always there, but you don’t normally have access to, it’s kind of like I’m on the doorstep to something larger.  It hasn’t gone any farther necessarily. But, I feel like it would be inevitable that if I could stay in that state longer, or do it consciously for an hour or two a day, that I would be well on my way to becoming much more enlightened and much more aware and knowledgeable about reality and nature and the universe. I don’t have conclusive … I haven’t been able to see it or prove it, it’s just a feeling.

I guess that would explain the ‘wall-rat’ phenomena.

I’d be curious to find out how many other people have these types of experiences. Certainly, I haven’t talked about it a lot with other people.

(End of side 1, some of interview missed: “totally content, almost blissful. So with the other experiences, there is also a sense of timelessness or time-distortion. Generally, these pleasant feelings are somewhat short-lived, as my attention returns to quickly paying out rope for the leader to clip a piece, but it leaves me with a secure, lingering feeling of happiness and.)

Then here’s something that’s tied to your description:  “feeling like this is where I really belong at that moment, and nowhere else.”

Right. Yeah, and maybe I felt that, too, in the other experience. There’s just this overwhelming, satisfied feeling of contentedness. I guess that’s what being content is; feeling that that’s exactly where you should be and where you are, and that’s perfect. You get so elated when you feel those really good vibes. ‘What could be better, this is perfect?’  It’s kind of self-sustaining. I want to keep going out and getting into those situations, it feels so good, and it feels so natural. Especially when I feel good vibes or energy, or whatever you want to call it, in nature.  You feel like ‘It supposed to be this way, this is supposed to happen, and this is right.’ It kind of validates my feeling that it’s right. A lot of people think ‘Oh, it’s crazy to climb.’ I’ve had thoughts that I’m wasting my time, I could be spending more time with my wife, or people, or forming better relationships with people, or whatever. It’s a confirming feeling that ‘this is worth it,’  this is the right thing for me, because I’m responding to it really favorably.  I don’t get these feelings in other normal situations, so it’s more positive than the other good parts of whatever I may be doing.

You say, kind of a continuation of the same thought: “I’m a perfect part of this big organic natural reality.”

Right. Yeah, so, it’s that same interconnectedness feeling, that ‘yeah, everything’s connected and I’m just a part of it.’  … That … I had another thought that … I’ve had thoughts when I’m not thinking more transcendentally, that things are hard rock, things that are dead, and things that area living … we tend to separate things into inorganic and organic… I do that a lot in work, I am an environmental consultant, everything’s broken down into organic and inorganic. But I guess I felt at that time and I still feel now, that things can be just looked at as organic, because even the inorganic things are directly supporting the organic things. So the reality at the time felt like, ‘wow,’  even the rocks are alive, the sky’s alive, things we normally think of as not alive, at that time, really felt alive, so it felt, everything felt very organic. Living and pulsating, even the things that we think of as inanimate felt like they had a life force.

And you were a perfect part of that?

I’m just another … whatever, piece of that, or manifestation of it.

Shall, we move on?

Sure.

“Though less profound than these experiences above, I routinely feel alive and vibrant while just going out to the crags to climb, taking in the beauty and the scenery in general, feeling good to be out with nature, happy to realize how fortunate I am to be with nature.”

That, I can feel all of the time. Even when I’m not even paying attention to what I am doing.  I feel good vibes anytime I go outside. I can feel that in the garden or whatever.

You mentioned this before: “I consider climbing areas in general to be among the more beautiful parts of wilderness/nature.”

Right, it seems to me like the most striking parts of nature, are the more unusual, steep, robust peaks or crags. I think that, even before I started climbing, those caught my eye more. When you’re traveling through … Land masses in general are kind of big and blobby, and unchanging or subtly changing, and you get to a crag and ‘boom,’ and people notice that, even people that don’t climb… All these touristy stops, like Veedauvoo, it’s just a pile of rocks, but people come from all over to see it, because it’s so dramatic, and it’s just a climbing area. Most climbing areas are dramatic. If you think of what draws people, a lot of them are climbing areas. Like Yosemite, Yosemite’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. And I think a lot of other people think so, too. It’s that steepness, it’s that verticality. Like Devil’s Tower, it’s another example, it’s mind boggling, People come from all over to see Devil’s Tower, whether they’re climbers or not. I think people in general, I’m guessing, feel that these areas are really incredible examples of nature. And so, it’s fortunate that I like to climb, because it draws me to these areas, that I consider most outstanding of what Nature has to offer. I am much more intrigued by that than by like, the Grand … I won’t say the Grand Canyon, but some other type of nature that is less … that’s typical.