I just came across this in an old file folder. Hand-written many years ago – probably sometime when I was in my 20s or 30s.
Somewhere out and about halfway past the security bolt, amidst the swirling storm, Audrey snuffed it out. Brand new EBs and all. She lost it. She popped her pieces under a ragged roof and zippered the overhang.
As I look back now, I can remember the kaleidoscope of thoughts that rushed through me then: “Anchor’s good. It should hold. But she’s way above it and it won’t make any difference. Ever the risk-taker. My belay is useless.”
Cold snows and ancient spirits flew at me from different corners of the rock – opposite and distant. I can remember shivering uncontrollably. I couldn’t believe what had happened.
Kennedy, King and Khrushchev were still alive, when we first met years ago. We finally hooked up and spent our time in the mountains. We loved to read books and cook food and go climbing together. And coming home late at night we’d walk down the old path toward the cabin, chocks rhythmically chiming, and watch silently, like monks, our Vibrams in the dust. “Does anyone know the Truth about anything?” we’d ask ourselves. We never owned a television set.
There was a large pine tree that was over 200 years-old outside the kitchen window. “I wonder if it remembers the passenger pigeons,” she had whispered early one morning.
Note for those readers who don’t know what EBs are:
EB stands for Edouard Bourdonneau , the french master boot maker , who , together with Pierre Allain , manufactured the first climbing shoe in 1947 .
During the fifties , he created the brand EB which became the “gold standards” of climbing rock shoes in the sixties and seventies .
The brand died in 1986 after the arrival of the spanish made”Firé ” and its sticky rubber which rendered the “old” EB obsolete .
But , in 1992 , with a new owner , EB started again to manufacture climbing shoes ( although very different from its ancestors…)up to this day …
… by Xavier Legendre, Sports Climber, Marseille – quoted from the internet
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