The Patience of a Hunter

As I write to you today, I am sitting quietly in my hunting blind. It’s about 4 O’clock in the afternoon, and two large does have found my bait pile. I feel as though I am in a tree house, the blind that my dad and I built sits about 18 feet of the ground. Surrounded on all sides by large pine trees, the perfect camouflage. In the corner of the blind sits a small wood stove, which is now producing enough heat to keep the blind at a comfortable 80 degrees. The burning wood cracks and pops, but oddley enough the two deer arnt at all scared. The release on my right hand bangs against my lab top. You have no idea how hard it is to type with a release on my right hand. Every time I try to type something the release bangs off my keyboard, making a metallic sound. Amazingly the two deer just keep eating, they must have been pretty hungry. The sun now beaming into the blind makes it impossible to see. Every spec of dirt and old water marks are now lit up on the window. I guess I will just have to wait until the sun goes down.

Now I know your probably wondering, what does this have to do with climbing? Why is he telling me this? First off hunting and climbing are two of my favorite sports. Secondly I just realized they have one major thing in common, that thing being patience’s. The sports might be on different ends of the spectrum, but for someone like me who enjoys doing both of them. I have learned that hunting has actually helped me a lot in climbing. When I was little my dad used to take me hunting, we would get up early in the morning, and sit together in a blind or a tree stand. He taught me how to track deer and how to coax them in. More importantly he taught me patience. Now patience is an interesting thing, its not something you can just teach on its own. It needs a device like hunting to promote it. You might sit in a blind for hours not seeing a thing, but still determined. We will come out the next day and sit in the same place and patiently wait for results.

Similarly in rock-climbing you never want to rush into anything. You always want to survey the situation and make sure everything is safe. Safety is super important, and when you have been hanging on a rock face for half an hour, its temping to rush to the top. Sure your tired, but you have to be smart and make sure you don’t do anything stupid. In climbing experience can only get you so far. Like I said patience is huge, you can climb anything if you just take your time and think it through. For example some very difficult faces can take an hour for a lead climber, to climb just 30 feet. The lead climber has the most important job of setting anchor points in the rock, so you better hope they don’t rush. You want to give them the time they need to insure everyone will safely ascend the rock. In the grand scheme of things its not a race and patience’s pays equals safety.