Why do people scale walls? Whether you are a climber yourself, an academic, or a student, my answers to this question may surprise you.
I hope they surprise you.
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Intensity
Climbers use the term “intensity” mostly as a synonym for power or concentrated effort. But the broader concept of intensity as progressive gradation operates as an idealized quality in the sport, manifest across multiple dimensions, including difficulty, strength, tryhard, and boldness.
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Lithic landscapes, movement, animacy
How is ethnography, as the “writing of cultures,” redefined back by its encounter with geologic things and processes?
We must not only ask how humans bring nonlife into the social fold, but also explore how humans share with nonlife the capacity to affect and provoke through material, non-symbolic means .
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Holds, shapes, design
“Although physics began with ordinary objects, it developed as a science of forces and movements that are less obviously material yet from which matter is inseparable” (Coole and Frost 2010: 11). Indoor climbing began with ordinary objects. Artificial walls were furnished with holds that either were rock or mimicked rock, and climbers did moves designed to imitate action outside. The division between persons and things was clear.
Read: “How the Evolution of Holds Changed the Way We Move.” Climbing Magazine, 2024.
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Other writing...
Read: “What Constitutes a Person? Inalienability, Value, and Personhood in Anthropological Theory.” Anthropological Theory Commons (Short-Form Theory). 2025.
Drawing as ethnographic practice
“The drawing is an autobiographical record of one's discovery of an event—seen, remembered or imagined” —John Berger
Drawing is a kind of artisanal labor—a form of human-powered production that is both a practice and a record of radical attention.
Some of the drawings I’ve been making for this project are produced “onsight” — attempts to capture a fleeting moment or noticing.
My onsight drawings, like my onsight climbs— are often unpolished, imperfect, rushed.
Some record being in place
—flowers drawn with my young daughter on a hillside when she was tired of climbing,
—a tiny creature I noticed while moving on rock or sitting at a cliff…
Other drawings are “projects,” produced from photographs I took on climbing trips, and are meant to evoke the many places, creatures, and things that become noticeable through the practice of moving slowly and methodically through lithic landscapes.
