As we travel through life the people we meet and the experiences we share are every bit as important as the mountains we climb. Lynn Hill has expressed this philosophy quite well in Climbing Free: My Life in the Vertical World.Lynn's story is a life adventure, not just a dangling from rocks, but an embrace of people and places, a reflection of her experiences, the rock wall challenges she has met and over come as well as the romances which have blessed and graced her life along the way.
I did not read Climbing Free to learn how to climb, to seek advice on free style climbing or even to learn about some of the best, most exotic places to climb. Nor did I read Climbing Free to glimpse what it is like to hang from a towering granite pillar, a crack and a cranny, a slip and a slide away from death. I read Climbing Free simply for the enjoyment of sharing another person's life adventure.
I think if Climbing Free is read in this light it is a joyous experience, one which will add to the reader's own life, for after all, we are the summation of all our experiences, those we have in the real world as well as those we relish from the books we read or movies we watch. Climbing Free is just that, a climbing free experience for the reader. But to enjoy it fully you have to enter without preconception or expectation, and just delight in sharing Lynn Hill's tale.
Of course in writing this review and giving Lynn Hill's book a five star rating I must admit I'm a bit prejudice. Although I haven't ever met Lynn, she just had a child, Owen Merced Lynch, fathered by Bradley Wayne Lynch, my dear nephew and a pretty good rock climber himself. I'm sure if Lynn writes a sequel to Climbing Free its adventures will include Bran and Owen. For you see, Climbing Free just isn't about dangling from rocks. It's about life and the people we meet along the way through life. It isn't perfect. It isn't without mistakes or wrong turns. It is a mix of exhilaration and tragedy, of wonder and the finding of one's self through the journeys Lynn has taken with her freinds upon granite walls and spires around the globe. It's about finding your way and moving on until low and behold you find yourself by the Merced River at the foot of Half Dome conceiving a child!
The problem, I think, with some people who have read and reviewed Climbing Free is that they were looking themselves for love and didn't find it, thus reflecting the bitterness in their own failures. Or they suffered a few falls themselves with sharp knocks to the skull; or maybe damaged their brains smoking this or that peculiar mix of substances while in an oxygen starved environment at over 14,000 feet high! In fact, I suspect this to be true as I've sat among climbers and listened to their lore. Much of it is petered out muse not worth the lead fillings in an old nag's teeth.
In contrast Climbing Free is a masterpiece in the making, the start of a canvas, the first few brush strokes of a woman's adventure through life. Quite frankly I can't wait to see what will follow, especially when Lynn and Brad get little Owen to Yosemite!
