Wholistic Fitness

Namaste Noble Warriors!

yesterday, photographer Wayne Williams and i transferred and edited 107 yoga asanas onto two CD disks headind for my NYC publishers. 107 asanas, baby! rack �em up! they are so beautiful. it is an honor to contribute to the popularity of yoga on behalf of the fitness community. i recall my first few times leafing through Iyengar�s book, LIGHT ON YOGA. although his physique certainly did not inspire me, his utter command of his kinesthesia astounded me. i made a promise to myself to practice those same yoga postures after i got �too old� to compete in outdoor sports at an elite level. that is precisely what i am doing. and i hope some other person somewhere will pick up my book when it is released next year, and be inspired to one day, too, become a student of the most beautiful thing we have; our body.

now i got to shift fitness disciplines for the strength training photo shoot coming up in another week or so. i�ll let you know how that one goes.

the following is a reprint of a popular piece i wrote several years ago. it is included here to facilitate some of my online students working through some outer and inner challenges they are experiencing in their training…

enjoy…

and thanks for reading DL!

i bow to you,

coach ilg

�

Windsong

“Your going and returning takes place nowhere but where you stand.” – Hakuin

Caught in a New Mexican spring wind storm on my bicycle. So what else is new, I think to myself as I hunker into an aerodynamic-as-possible riding position. I reflected on how much wind I’ve dealt with in my years of outdoor athletics. That’s when Roy came to mind. The wind often evokes thoughts of Roy.

In the same year that Greg LeMond won his first professional bicycle race, Roy Poteet and I were pioneering a new free climbing route on Chasm View Wall in Rocky Mountain National Park. Having dawned gray and misty, rain pelted the magnificent, alpine wall. Though our chosen line of ascent took on dry, overhanging rock, tiny waterfalls slipped down the elegant granite, saturating our clothes and making the climbing more difficult. The sound of our climbing equipment was muffled in the great cirque as though the rock spirits did not wish to be disturbed by our antics. Roy’s vaporous image led up and over a roof, then, out of sight. I shivered and hung my head trying to preserve body heat. I longed for the sun baked walls of Yosemite or the heated rocks of Joshua Tree. A shriek of wind soon swept away my assorted reverie.

An incoherent sound from above. Roy was off belay and preparing to bring me up. I did not shout that I was ready. Roy and I did not need words, we talked through the veracity of rope and kinesthetic movement. I trusted him. But not entirely, which is funny since climbing partners hold each other�s lives in their hands. Roy puzzled me. Frizzled, red hair surrounded his wire rimmed spectacles. Tall and lanky, he crawled up rock in rather ungraceful but effective movement. Roy’s personality seemed restrained. I remember sleeping next to him under the stars wondering if he was a serial murderer. And I his next victim? He fit the stereotype. He also smoked a lot of pot. Maybe that�s why I kept a grain of distrust for him. He was often stoned on climbs. Like other seasoned climbers, Roy sought me out because I was young, stupid, and strong. My naivet� was the ideal catalyst for his own climbing . . . a rope boy. A belay slave.

I didn�t care if I was a mere rope boy, as long as I was climbing upward on steep rock, I was happy. I was already hooked into the vertical world. My young adrenal glands pumped an addictive hormone into my spirit. When I was not climbing, I would read Rebuffat, Brown, and Tillman which added literary kindling to my fire within. Those first climbs with Roy were frightening yet they left me fulfilled in a way my family, friends, or school did not. Climbing with Roy provided a chilling amazement which intoxicated me. I had fallen in love. Obsessed with the delicate artistry and ferocious mental and physical gymnastics required to climb the great rock walls.

As I pulled the roof, I popped into the midst of a tempest. Snow, hard and cold, stung my hands and face. Most of all, I recall the roar of the wind. Roy, numbed by the relative inactivity of belaying, motioned downward, toward the climbing hut perched on the moraine several hundred feet below. A surge of despair and heated disappointment shot through me. Already I was developing a stubborn summit-or-plummet philosophy. Knowing that Roy was the elder and supposedly the wiser of us, I agreed to descend. We threw the ropes down, into the blizzard, and began the first of several wet rappels. Our route would have to wait for another day.

It is said that a few failures early in one’s career is required to attain mastery. In my early years I climbed from anguish. To my emotionally turbulent outlook, failure of any form intensified this hostility. I did not like Roy’s remoteness but craved his experience and creativity on the rock. My deeper feelings for Roy marked the first of my understanding that patience and perspective is needed in society. That friendships were to be cultivated, not guaranteed.

Roy would soon die in an avalanche. The fact that he died before we finished our route on Chasm View Wall mattered more to me than his passing. The bizarre complexity and power of my emerging fitness on vertical terrain seemed to have been rooted in an insecure and dangerous mentality.

I’ve yet to befriend wind. Like Roy, wind seems to possess a remoteness that I am unable to bridge. It moves away from me while moving me away from my center. Blurring my kinesthesia and obscuring my hearing, wind makes me feel insecure in an insecure world. Two summers after Roy died, I stood on top of Devils Tower in Wyoming – one of many places he and I had climbed. Provoked by spontaneous emotion, I built a small rock cairn in memory of him on top of that famous monolith. That same night, a prairie storm shredded the high plains. When I revisited the summit, wind had demolished my memorial to Roy. Looking out over the Belle Fourche river valley pregnant now with tall, wispy grasses and soaring birds, I cried. Turning into the bright sunlight, I began uncoiling the rope to rappel. The rope smelled good to me. I enjoyed the feel of its well-worn, dirty sheath. Tossing the rope over the edge of the spire, I was pleased that it fell down straight and untangled. “No wind,” I smiled to myself and stepped backwards into the delightful void.

PostScript: Several years later, i returned to Chasm View Wall and completed the first (roped solo) ascent of the route he and Roy had begun. i named the route, “Windsong” and dedicated it to Roy Poteet.

�