A Narrow Ledge

My essay A Narrow Ledge has been released as a Kindle Single on Amazon.  It’s about a climb of Rainier I took this May, how climbing has changed me as a person, how risk-taking strengthens the mind but sometimes crosses into irresponsibility, particularly for a guy with a wife and kids.  It’s about my striving for the sweet spot—the narrow ledge of the title—between danger and complacency. 

TAY.com and cascadeclimbers.com both get a mention.  I talk about the role these sites play in creating social cohesion within a scattered group of iconoclasts, fomenting friendly competition, and (for some of us) ratcheting up the pressure to go ever faster, lighter, steeper.  I talk about what it’s like to learn of a friend or partner’s death on these pages, which quite a few of us have experienced on more than one occasion.

I wrote A Narrow Ledge with the armchair adventurer in mind, not the active backcountry skier.  Still, some of you who frequent this site may find it a good read.  If you read it and want to share your opinion, send me a PM, visit barronbrown.net , or post a review on Amazon.

Thanks.

It started off good but then I got a little uncomfortable with the specifics of That Guy. Unless you know that person and his family, and they've read and sanctioned what you wrote, it feels to me like sensitive territory to tread, better fit for compassion than analysis(and in the harness of self-criticism). Especially given the authorial omniscience of projecting what "friends and family" are thinking.
How the deceased's family are thinking or feeling about it is not necessarily the same way the author is thinking or feeling about it. To claim otherwise in an authorial voice* can easily come across as presumptuous and judgemental... and could be alleviated by not singling out a specific alpine fatality.


* "Friends and family stare at his image and curse his narcissism, his boyish blindness."

Point taken.