17 December 2008
21 November 2008
10 reasons to grow a beard
This website is pretty good, put on by the Bureau for Bigger Better Beards!
18 September 2008
10 September 2008
05 September 2008
18 August 2008
11 August 2008
30 July 2008
27 July 2008
26 July 2008
23 July 2008
22 July 2008
21 July 2008
20 July 2008
Lucid Dreaming.............
Home Who am I? Curriculum Vitae Media Photos Search
Publications Conferences and Lectures Research Zen Memetics
Lucid Dreaming: Awake in Your Sleep?
Susan Blackmore
Published in Skeptical Inquirer 1991, 15, 362-370
What could it mean to be conscious in your dreams? For most of us, dreaming is something quite separate from normal life. When we wake up from being chased by a ferocious tiger, or seduced by a devastatingly good-looking Nobel Prize winner we realize with relief or disappointment that "it was only a dream."
Yet there are some dreams that are not like that. Lucid dreams are dreams in which you know at the time that you are dreaming. That they are different from ordinary dreams is obvious as soon as you have one. The experience is something like waking up in your dreams. It is as though you "come to" and find you are dreaming.
Lucid dreams used to be a topic within psychical research and parapsychology. Perhaps their incomprehensibility made them good candidates for being thought paranormal. More recently, however, they have begun to appear in psychology journals and have dropped out of parapsychology—a good example of how the field of parapsychology shrinks when any of its subject matter is actually explained.
Lucidity has also become something of a New Age fad. There are machines and gadgets you can buy and special clubs you can join to learn how to induce lucid dreams. But this commercialization should not let us lose sight of the very real fascination of lucid dreaming. It forces us to ask questions about the nature of consciousness, deliberate control over our actions, and the nature of imaginary worlds.
A Real Dream or Not?
The term lucid dreaming was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden in 1913. It is something of a misnomer since it means something quite different from just clear or vivid dreaming. Nevertheless we are certainly stuck with it. Van Eeden explained that in this sort of dream "the re-integration of the psychic functions is so complete that the sleeper reaches a state of perfect awareness and is able to direct his attention, and to attempt different acts of free volition. Yet the sleep, as I am able confidently to state, is undisturbed, deep, and refreshing."
This implied that there could be consciousness during sleep, a claim many psychologists denied for more than 50 years. Orthodox sleep researchers argued that lucid dreams could not possibly be real dreams. If the accounts were valid, then the experiences must have occurred during brief moments of wakefulness or in the transition between waking and sleeping, not in the kind of deep sleep in which rapid eye movements (REMs) and ordinary dreams usually occur. In other words, they could not really be dreams at all.
This presented a challenge to lucid dreamers who wanted to convince people that they really were awake in their dreams. But of course when you are deep asleep and dreaming you cannot shout, "Hey! Listen to me. I’m dreaming right now." All the muscles of the body are paralyzed.
It was Keith Hearne (1978), of the University of Hull, who first exploited the fact that not all the muscles are paralyzed. In REM sleep the eyes move. So perhaps a lucid dreamer could signal by moving the eyes in a predetermined pattern. Just over ten years ago, lucid dreamer Alan Worsley first managed this in Hearne’s laboratory. He decided to move his eyes left and right eight times in succession whenever he became lucid. Using a polygraph, Hearne could watch the eye movements for signs of the special signal. He found it in the midst of REM sleep. So lucid dreams are real dreams and do occur during REM sleep.
Further research showed that Worsley’s lucid dreams most often occurred in the early morning, around 6:30 A M, nearly half an hour into a REM period and toward the end of a burst of rapid eye movements. They usually lasted for two to five minutes. Later research showed that they occur at times of particularly high arousal during REM sleep (Hearne 1978).
It is sometimes said that discoveries in science happen when the time is right for them. It was one of those odd things that at just the same time, but unbeknown to Hearne, Stephen LaBerge, at Stanford University in California, was trying the same experiment. He too succeeded, but resistance to the idea was very strong. In 1980, both Science and Nature rejected his first paper on the discovery (LaBerge 1985). It was only later that it became clear what an important step this had been.
An Identifiable State?
It would be especially interesting if lucid dreams were associated with a unique physiological state. In fact this has not been found, although this is not very surprising since the same is true of other altered states, such as out-of-body experiences and trances of various kinds. However, lucid dreams do tend to occur in periods of higher cortical arousal. Perhaps a certain threshold of arousal has to be reached before awareness can be sustained.
The beginning of lucidity (marked by eye signals, of course) is associated with pauses in breathing, brief changes in heart rate, and skin response changes, but there is no unique combination that allows the lucidity to be identified by an observer.
In terms of the dream itself, there are several features that seem to provoke lucidity. Sometimes heightened anxiety or stress precedes it. More often there is a kind of intellectual recognition that something "dreamlike" or incongruous is going on (Fox 1962; Green 1968; LaBerge 1985).
It is common to wake from an ordinary dream and wonder, "How on earth could I have been fooled into thinking that I was really doing pushups on a blue beach?" A little more awareness is shown when we realize this in the dream. If you ask yourself, "Could this be a dream?" and answer "No" (or don’t answer at all), this is called a pre-lucid dream. Finally, if you answer "Yes," it becomes a fully lucid dream.
It could be that once there is sufficient cortical arousal it is possible to apply a bit of critical thought; to remember enough about how the world ought to be to recognize the dream world as ridiculous, or perhaps to remember enough about oneself to know that these events can’t be continuous with normal waking life. However, tempting as it is to conclude that the critical insight produces the lucidity, we have only an apparent correlation and cannot deduce cause and effect from it.
Becoming a Lucid Dreamer
Surveys have shown that about 50 percent of people (and in some cases more) have had at least one lucid dream in their lives. (See, for example, Blackmore 1982; Gackenbach and LaBerge 1988; Green 1968.) Of course surveys are unreliable in that many people may not understand the question. In particular, if you have never had a lucid dream, it is easy to misunderstand what is meant by the term. So overestimates might be expected. Beyond this, it does not seem that surveys can find out much. There are no very consistent differences between lucid dreamers and others in terms of age, sex, education, and so on (Green 1968; Gackenbach and LaBerge 1988).
For many people, having lucid dreams is fun, and they want to learn how to have more or to induce them at will. One finding from early experimental work was that high levels of physical (and emotional) activity during the day tend to precede lucidity at night. Waking during the night and carrying out some kind of activity before falling asleep again can also encourage a lucid dream during the next REM period and is the basis of some induction techniques.
Many methods have been developed (Gackenbach and Bosveld 1989; Tart 1988; Price and Cohen 1988). They roughly fall into three categories.
One of the best known is LaBerge’s MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming). This is done on waking in the early morning from a dream. You should wake up fully, engage in some activity like reading or walking about, and then lie down to go to sleep again. Then you must imagine yourself asleep and dreaming, rehearse the dream from which you woke, and remind yourself, "Next time I dream this I want to remember I’m dreaming."
A second approach involves constantly reminding yourself to become lucid throughout the day rather than the night. This is based on the idea that we spend most of our time in a kind of waking daze. If we could be more lucid in waking life, perhaps we could be more lucid while dreaming. German psychologist Paul Tholey suggests asking yourself many times every day, "Am I dreaming or not?" This sounds easy but is not. It takes a lot of determination and persistence not to forget all about it. For those who do forget, French researcher Clerc suggests writing a large "C" on your hand (for "conscious") to remind you (Tholey 1983; Gackenbach and Bosveld 1989).
This kind of method is similar to the age-old technique for increasing awareness by meditation and mindfulness. Advanced practitioners of meditation claim to maintain awareness through a large proportion of their sleep. TM is often claimed to lead to sleep awareness. So perhaps it is not surprising that some recent research finds associations between meditation and increased lucidity (Gackenbach and Bosveld 1989).
The third and final approach requires a variety of gadgets. The idea is to use some sort of external signal to remind people, while they are actually in REM sleep, that they are dreaming. Hearne first tried spraying water onto sleepers’ faces or hands but found it too unreliable. This sometimes caused them to incorporate water imagery into their dreams, but they rarely became lucid. He eventually decided to use a mild electric shock to the wrist. His "dream machine" detects changes in breathing rate (which accompany the onset of REM) and then automatically delivers a shock to the wrist (Hearne 1990).
Meanwhile, in California, LaBerge was rejecting taped voices and vibrations and working instead with flashing lights. The original version was laboratory based and used a personal computer to detect the eye movements of REM sleep and to turn on flashing lights whenever the REMs reached a certain level. Eventually, however, all the circuitry was incorporated into a pair of goggles. The idea is to put the goggles on at night, and the lights will flash only when you are asleep and dreaming. The user can even control the level of eye movements at which the lights begin to flash.
The newest version has a chip incorporated into the goggles. This will not only control the lights but will store data on eye-movement density during the night and when and for how long the lights were flashing, making fine tuning possible. At the moment, the first users have to join in workshops at LaBerge’s Lucidity Institute and learn how to adjust the settings, but within a few months he hopes the whole process will be fully automated. (See LaBerge’s magazine, DreamLight. )
LaBerge tested the effectiveness of the Dream Light on 44 subjects who came into the laboratory, most for just one night. Fifty-five percent had at least one lucid dream and two had their first-ever lucid dream this way. The results suggested that this method is about as successful as MILD, but using the two together is the most effective (LaBerge 1985).
Lucid Dreams as an Experimental Tool
There are a few people who can have lucid dreams at will. And the increase in induction techniques has provided many more subjects who have them frequently. This has opened the way to using lucid dreams to answer some of the most interesting questions about sleep and dreaming.
How long do dreams take? In the last century, Alfred Maury had a long and complicated dream that led to his being beheaded by a guillotine. He woke up terrified, and found that the headboard of his bed had fallen on his neck. From this, the story goes, he concluded that the whole dream had been created in the moment of awakening.
This idea seems to have got into popular folklore but was very hard to test. Researchers woke dreamers at various stages of their REM period and found that those who had been longer in REM claimed longer dreams. However, accurate timing became possible only when lucid dreamers could send "markers" from the dream state.
LaBerge asked his subjects to signal when they became lucid and then count a ten-second period and signal again. Their average interval was 13 seconds, the same as they gave when awake. Lucid dreamers, like Alan Worsley, have also been able to give accurate estimates of the length of whole dreams or dream segments (Schatzman, Worsley, and Fenwick 1988).
Dream Actions
As we watch sleeping animals it is often tempting to conclude that they are moving their eyes in response to watching a dream, or twitching their legs as they dream of chasing prey. But do physical movements actually relate to the dream events?
Early sleep researchers occasionally reported examples like a long series of left-right eye movements when a dreamer had been dreaming of watching a ping-pong game, but they could do no more than wait until the right sort of dream came along.
Lucid dreaming made proper experimentation possible, for the subjects could be asked to perform a whole range of tasks in their dreams. In one experiment with researchers Morton Schatzman and Peter Fenwick, in London, Worsley planned to draw large triangles and to signal with flicks of his eyes every time he did so. While he dreamed, the electromyogram, recording small muscle movements, showed not only the eye signals but spikes of electrical activity in the right forearm just afterward. This showed that the preplanned actions in the dream produced corresponding muscle movements (Schatzman, Worsley, and Fenwick 1988).
Further experiments, with Worsley kicking dream objects, writing with umbrellas, and snapping his fingers, all confirmed that the muscles of the body show small movements corresponding to the body’s actions in the dream. The question about eye movements was also answered. The eyes do track dream objects. Worsley could even produce slow scanning movements, which are very difficult to produce in the absence of a "real" stimulus (Schatzman, Worsley, and Fenwick 1g88).
LaBerge was especially interested in breathing during dreams. This stemmed from his experiences at age five when he had dreamed of being an undersea pirate who could stay under water for very long periods without drowning. Thirty years later he wanted to find out whether dreamers holding their breath in dreams do so physically as well. The answer was yes. He and other lucid dreamers were able to signal from the dream and then hold their breath. They could also breathe rapidly in their dreams, as revealed on the monitors. Studying breathing during dreamed speech, he found that the person begins to breathe out at the start of an utterance just as in real speech (LaBerge and Dement 1982a).
Hemispheric Differences
It is known that the left and right hemispheres are activated differently during different kinds of tasks. For example, singing uses the right hemisphere more, while counting and other, more analytical tasks use the left hemisphere more. By using lucid dreams, LaBerge was able to find out whether the same is true in dreaming.
In one dream he found himself flying over a field. (Flying is commonly associated with lucid dreaming.) He signaled with his eyes and began to sing "Row, row, row your boat...." He then made another signal and counted slowly to ten before signaling again. The brainwave records showed just the same patterns of activation that you would expect if he had done these tasks while awake (LaBerge and Dement 1982b).
Dream Sex
Although it is not often asked experimentally, I am sure plenty of people have wondered what is happening in their bodies while they have their most erotic dreams.
LaBerge tested a woman who could dream lucidly at will and could direct her dreams to create the sexual experiences she wanted. (What a skill!) Using appropriate physiological recording, he was able to show that her dream orgasms were matched by true orgasms (LaBerge, Greenleaf, and Kedzierski 1983).
Experiments like these show that there is a close correspondence between actions of the dreamer and, if not real movements, at least electrical responses. This puts lucid dreaming somewhere between real actions, in which the muscles work to move the body, and waking imagery, in which they are rarely involved at all. So what exactly is the status of the dream world?
The Nature of the Dream World
It is tempting to think that the real world and the world of dreams are totally separate. Some of the experiments already mentioned show that there is no absolute dividing line. There are also plenty of stories that show the penetrability of the boundary.
Alan Worsley describes one experiment in which his task was to give himself a prearranged number of small electric shocks by means of a machine measuring his eye movements. He went to sleep and began dreaming that it was raining and he was in a sleeping bag by a fence with a gate in it. He began to wonder whether he was dreaming and thought it would be cheating to activate the shocks if he was awake. Then, while making the signals, he worried about the machine, for it was out there with him in the rain and might get wet (Schatzman, Worsley, and Fenwick 1988).
This kind of interference is amusing, but there are dreams of confusion that are not. The most common and distinct are called false awakenings. You dream of waking up but in fact, of course, are still asleep. Van Eeden (1913) called these "wrong waking up" and described them as "demoniacal, uncanny, and very vivid and bright, with . . . a strong diabolical light." The French zoologist Yves Delage, writing in 1919, described how he had heard a knock at his door and a friend calling for his help. He jumped out of bed, went to wash quickly with cold water, and when that woke him up he realized he had been dreaming. The sequence repeated four times before he finally actually woke up—still in bed.
A student of mine described her infuriating recurrent dream of getting up, cleaning her teeth, getting dressed, and then cycling all the way to the medical school at the top of a long hill, where she finally would realize that she had dreamed it all, was late for lectures, and would have to do it all over again for real.
The one positive benefit of false awakenings is that they can sometimes be used to induce out-of-body experiences (OBEs). Indeed, Oliver Fox (1962) recommends this as a method for achieving the OBE. For many people OBEs and lucid dreams are practically indistinguishable. If you dream of leaving your body, the experience is much the same. Also recent research suggests that the same people tend to have both lucid dreams and OBEs (Blackmore 1988; Irwin 1988).
All of these experiences have something in common. In all of them the "real" world has been replaced by some kind of imaginary replica. Celia Green, of the Institute of Psychophysical Research at Oxford, refers to all such states as "metachoric experiences."
Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist from the University of Alberta, Canada, relates these experiences to UFO abduction stories and near-death experiences (NDEs). The UFO abductions are the most bizarre but are similar in that they too involve the replacement of the perceived world by a hallucinatory replica.
There is an important difference between lucid dreams and these other states. In the lucid dream one has insight into the state (in fact that defines it). In false awakening, one does not (again by definition). In typical OBEs, people think they have really left their bodies. In UFO "abductions" they believe the little green men are "really there"; and in NDEs, they are convinced they are rushing down a real tunnel toward a real light and into the next world. It is only in the lucid dream that one realizes it is a dream.
I have often wondered whether insight into these other experiences is possible and what the consequences might be. So far I don’t have any answers.
Waking Up
The oddest thing about lucid dreams— and, to many people who have them, the most compelling—is how it feels when you wake up. Upon waking up from a normal dream, you usually think, "Oh, that was only a dream." Waking up from a lucid dream is more continuous. It feels more real, it feels as though you were conscious in the dream. Why is this? I think the reason can be found by looking at the mental models the brain constructs in waking, in ordinary dreaming, and in lucid dreams.
I have previously argued that what seems real is the most stable mental model in the system at any time. In waking life, this is almost always the input-driven model, the one that is built up from the sensory input. It is firmly linked to the body image to make a stable model of "me, here, now." It is easy to decide that this represents "reality" while all the other models being used at the same time are "just imagination" (Blackmore 1988).
Now consider an ordinary dream. In that case there are lots of models being built but no input-driven model. In addition there is no adequate selfmodel or body image. There is just not enough access to memory to construct it. This means, if my hypothesis is right, that whatever model is most stable at any time will seem real. But there is no recognizable self to whom it seems real. There will just be a series of competing models coming and going. Is this what dreaming feels like?
Finally, we know from research that in the lucid dream there is higher arousal. Perhaps this is sufficient to construct a better model of self. It is one that includes such important facts as that you have gone to sleep, that you intended to signal with your eyes, and so on. It is also more similar to the normal waking self than those fleeting constructions of the ordinary dream. This, I suggest, is what makes the dream seem more real on waking up. Because the you who remembers the dream is more similar to the you in the dream. Indeed, because there was a better model of you, you were more conscious.
If this is right, it means that lucid dreams are potentially even more interesting than we thought. As well as providing insight into the nature of sleep and dreams, they may give clues to the nature of consciousness itself.
References
Blackmore, S. J. 1982. Beyond the Body. London: Heinemann.
———. 1988. A theory of lucid dreams and OBEs. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain, 373-387, ed. J. Gackenbach and S. LaBerge. New York: Plenum.
Delage, Y. 1919. Le Revel Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France.
Fox, O. 1962. Astral Projection. New York: 370 University Books.
Gackenbach, J., and J. Bosveld. 1989. Control Your Dreams. New York: Harper & Row.
Gackenbach, J., and S. LaBerge, eds. 1988. Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain. New York: Plenum.
Green, C. E. 1968. Lucid Dreams. London: Hamish Hamilton.
Hearne, K. 1978. Lucid Dreams: An Electrophysiological and Psychological Study. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Hull.
———. 1990. The Dream Machine. Northants: Aquarian.
Irwin, H. J. 1988. Out-of-body experiences and dream lucidity: Empirical perspectives. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain, 353-371, ed. J. Gackenbach and S. LaBerge. New York: Plenum.
LaBerge, S. 1985. Lucid Dreaming. Los Angeles: Tarcher.
LaBerge, S. and W. Dement. 1982a. Voluntary control of respiration during REM sleep. Sleep Research, 11:107.
———.1982b Lateralization of alpha activity for dreamed singing and counting during REM sleep. Psychophysiology, 19:331-332.
LaBerge, S., W. Greenleaf, and B. Kedzierski. 1983. Physiological responses to dreamed sexual activity during lucid REM sleep. Psychophysiology, 20 454-45s.
Price, R. F., and D. B. Cohen. 1988. Lucid dream induction: An empirical evaluation. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain, 105-134, ed. J. Gackenbach and S. LaBerge. New York: Plenum.
Schatzman, M., A. Worsley, and P. Fenwick. 1988. Correspondence during lucid dreams between dreamed and actual events. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain, 155-179, ed. J. Gackenbach and S. LaBerge. New York: Plenum.
Tart, C. 1988. From spontaneous event to lucidity: A review of attempts to consciously control nocturnal dreaming. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain, 67-103, ed. J. Gackenbach and S. LaBerge. New York: Plenum.
Tholey, P. 1983. Techniques for controlling and manipulating lucid dreams. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 57:79-90.
Van Eeden, F. 1913. A study of dreams. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 26:431-461.
Back to Publications
19 July 2008
Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense "Girlfriend is Better"
Abla used to always said this was my song, not sure why. We listened to the YMSB version so i was pumped to see it was a talking heads song!
18 July 2008
Liberate Your Itunes Purchased Music!
If you've purchased music from itunes you have probably run into some frustrations with their digital rights managment. not no more!................
check it
16 July 2008
15 July 2008
13 July 2008
10 July 2008
Do Mountaineers Know the Meaning of Life?
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Reuters Article
Do Mountaineers Know the Meaning of Life?
When Conan the Barbarian was asked the meaning of life, he replied, "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women." It's too bad he never met a bronze-age mountaineer: If he had, he might've been a little more grounded.
According to a New Zealand researcher, mountain climbers have an uncanny grasp on living that perhaps brings them closest to understanding what it all means. University of Victoria museum and heritage studies professor Lee Davidson interviewed 22 New Zealand-based climbers and spent several more hours studying them. Afterwards, she learned that mountaineers tend to have higher-than-average senses of belonging and feelings of identity, along with a general core grounding that comes from climbing.
"It's a way to look for meaning in life, it gives people a sense of focus, makes them see what's really of value," Davidson, a climber herself, told Reuters.
"Many people struggle these days with a sense of belonging, but the climbers that I spoke to all had a very strong sense of identity, that to me was the most significant finding," she said.
Davidson also claims that, contrary to popular opinion, mountaineers aren't all adrenaline junkies driven only by their search of dangerous thrills. Instead, they thrive off of the hard work and incremental payoff afforded by the long process and focus of climbing mountains. Decisions in climbing often have real-world consequences not offered by other "leisurely" pursuits.
"Most people don't do this for a bit of a thrill, it's not the central attraction," Davidson said. "Yes, you face danger, but it's calculated and you acquire skills that enable you to navigate this danger. It's really sensible."
Davidson may be an award-winning researcher, but before you go solo-climb K2 in search of the meaning of life, you should know that the prize came from the Australia and New Zealand Association for Leisure Studies. I don't know how they do things way down south, but I'm pretty sure I majored in Leisure Studies here, and I sure as hell didn't get a degree for it.
— Ted Alvarez
08 July 2008
mass. Drivers are assholes!
In the past 2 days i have had the same exact scenario happen. I am forced to ride in the center of a lane, the farthest right one, because there are parked cars on the side of the road. I'm looking out for myself and i'll be damned if i'm gonna let myself get pinched between a parked car opening their door and some fucking fatass, oil chugging, dunkin donuts wolfing, asshole driver. So i take the whole lane. They honk. Both times i've had the opportunity to speak with these ignoramus's(?!?!, cracker barrel eg-nor-a-moose!). I simply ask them if they know that i have the same right as them?......they don't like that. It turns to swearing very quickly. One guy said he hould get out and slap me! Then i ran the red light in front of him and he said "you ran a red light!" i gave him a big confirmative thumbs up. Another time, this old man who was just walking by told me to shut the fuck up. I replied wittingly "fuck you old man". The times they are a changin'....cars arent ruling the road. You are stubborn, unwilling to change, unwilling to slow down. You probably want to drill in anwar, avoid the real problem, avoid changing your behavior, leave the problem for your kids and their kids.
Solutions:
1. Stop educating, start retaliating. How?
A. "you just bought yerself a new tire!" ( as i stab their rubber with the 'ol spyder
B. Find a pamphlet or make one that can educate drivers about bikers rights. Talking doesnt work, they get real defensive when you approach them.
C. Write some educational messages on my bag and helmet.
I think i'll avoid option A for now.
04 July 2008
Best Game - CURVEBALL! (I used to get to level 8 back in the day....)
if you want to play again, right click and select "rewind". post a comment for your highest level......
Free Online Flash Games - OTS Arcade
Free Online Flash Games - OTS Arcade
atavist
I learned a new word today. I was reading ed abbeys collection of short stories, abbeys road. He was talking about america and how he regards it with extremely moderate love..."best to stay behind the virgin mountains, near dutchman draw and pakon springs, the kind of place where ana atavist belongs".
28 June 2008
26 June 2008
Posted using ShareThis
23 June 2008
Jun 12, 2008 7:34 PM
Frozen Sweat
from Alpinist Readers' Blog by David Goodman
Northeast Couloir is one of three classic ice gullies on North Peak, 12,242 feet, in the High Sierra. Rated class 4-5 ice and five pitches in length, the guide book described it at 50 degrees.
"That doesn't seem too steep," I thought, as I put my hand in various angles imagining what 50 degrees looked like.
I figured it would be in great shape in late September, and looking at the photo in the guide book, it looked very doable as a solo climb.
My previous experience of climbing ice routes was in the Canadian Rockies with my older brother Bill, five years ago. My memories of that fledgling outing were of exhaustive postholing, snowy conditions, frozen fingers, shattering ice, and getting used to ice tools and front-pointing on WI 3 routes. Not what I would recall as fond, but memories nonetheless. The image of climbing a moderate ice route in late, sunny September got me excited.
Living in Eugene, Oregon, in the flat expanses of the Willamette Valley at 500 feet elevation, I found myself daydreaming about getting on the high, white granite and ice, seeking solitude and challenge. Lately, I've been questioning why I seek the challenges of climbing. Why put myself in risky situations? I needed to find answers to those mid-life questions. This climb provided more than just answers.
I spent my first two days in the Sierras with splitting headaches, doing mild day climbs, drinking lots of water and eating ibuprofen. From a distance I reconnoitered the ice gullies on the north face of North Peak, and spotted a party on the far left gully, the steepest of the three. As I glassed them through binoculars, clinging spider-like to the white wall, I began to question my desires. The self-doubts began to rise--all those questions of putting myself at risk that I was seeking answers to.
"Well, I'll just check it out and do what I can do", was my self-assuring answer. I was already giving myself a way to back down.
Morning of the fourth day came too soon. I greeted the hot chocolate and coffee with childlike enthusiasm in the cold alpine dawn. I was already tired of the bland oatmeal though. But it was quick and filled a hole. I packed, paring down my weight to the absolute necessities of the ice climb. Most of the weight was for the "just in case" scenarios: ice screws, pitons, slings, a full-length 8.5mm twin rope, and gortex shell. Snacks and a quart of Cytomax rounded it out.
"I'm just going to check it out," I was saying. I had rehearsed my backing off procedure, if indeed, I needed to.
The hike in to the glacier at the base of the north face went fast. I was already anxious. I could feel it in my stomach, creating an emptiness where confidence needed to be. I ascended the ledges up to the toe of the glacier. There were the gullies, no longer a photo in a guide book, but the real thing.
"Is that something I can do? What am I getting myself into? Is this just plain stupid, naive? Will doing this really prove something to myself?"
Months earlier, I had backed off Mount Hood's Leuthold's Couloir. What was that all about? I could have climbed through that nausea, I felt. After that attempt is when the questions began. I considered getting rid of all my climbing gear.
"Why do I have all this shit if I'm not going to use it?" Ice tools hanging on nails in the closet, along with my memories, dreams, and desires.
I needed to know that I could get on a route without knowing that I could already do it. I needed to put myself in the position of pushing beyond comfort, into the unknown, and not know the outcome.
The sun was high in the deep blue sky as I gazed at the ice gully. Plenty of time to climb and get back to camp. I emptied my pack gear, unpouched my crampons, and unholstered my ice tools. My arsenal. I munched, but was too anxious to really dive into lunch. Finding the middle of the rope, I tied a bite into it and clipped it to my harness, gathered up a few coils, got on the glacier, and took off toward the bergschrund at the base of the far right gully.
"OK. Let's see what this is all leading to." The rope trailing, I did my best French technique as the slope steepened, and soon needed to sink an axe pick for balance. The commitment begins here. I sucked in a deep breath of cooling air and visualized climbing. Ready.
Dropping the coils of rope, I am now on both tools, half front-pointing, half side-stepping, the bergschrund gaping at me. I look down in, about fifteen feet to the dark-shaded ice and rock below. To the left, the bergschrund narrows as it nears the gully wall and is easily crossed. I swing a tool into the far side of the bergschrund wall. The unconsolidated snow provides no purchase. I look down the face below the bergschrund. The glacier drops away. The gripping begins to stir. I swing my right tool farther out onto the face of the ice gully and thunk, it sinks up to the head with my overswinging. I scout out rock and ice ledges for my frontpoints to gain purchase. Pulling on my tools and stepping up on my frontpoints, I find some confidence and get a feel for the climbing.
Exhilaration pulses through me as I pull onto the face of the ice gully. I continue up a few tentative feet, my eyes darting for pick placements. Stagger your swings, keep them apart, don't overswing, don't over kick. My skills now come into narrow focus on the four square feet of ice in front of me. Bill's supportive cajoling during our Canadian climb springs to mind. I judge the ice with each swing of the tools.
"Well, this feels solid."
I feel secure. I am soloing, though. My tool placements are my belay. Should I back off now? I crane my neck and look up at the dazzling blue sky as it fills the notch of the couloir above me--the sun brilliant white as it glances on the snow at the gully exit. It beckons me. I need to do this. Five pitches,
I judge the angle to be more like 60 degrees. It angles steeper above, but only for a body length or two. I swing. The tools again sinking to the head. Either through just-gained confidence or simple lack of ice climbing wisdom, I continue up with rope trailing. I'm doing it. It is at once so mentally liberating and freeing, as the only thing on my mind is climbing. Yet I am so completely enslaved, chained to my ice tools and the ice itself, to complete this climb.
I begin to get into a rhythm: OK. . . swing right there and plant the pick. . . looks and feels solid. . . move feet up. . . eyes darting again, looking for pick placements. . . heart racing, panting, dry mouth, 12,000 feet altitude . . I'm really doing this. . . sweat running down my forehead into my eyes, stinging, making me squeeze my eyelids tight for a moment. I'm overswinging, at times bashing my knuckles into the ice. It seems removing the pick takes more effort than anything else. I have to rest. I plant both tools, and move my feet up under me into a monkey-hang position. I don't look down. I need to focus on what is above and success, not what is below and failure.
My breathing slows. I relax. I look up at the exit notch. I still have a ways to go. I charge on again, relaxing into my rhythm until my heart and breathing race again. I pause, sucking Cytomax from the hydration bladder in my pack. Then the gurgling sound of sucking air--the bladder is empty. I curse myself for sacrificing liquids for the sake of a too heavy pack. Stupid. My feet are numbing. My calves burn. My thighs ache. My throat is parched as sweat drips onto the lens of my sunglasses. I'm spent. I've hit a wall. I've got to get off this climb. I've been swinging ice tools and kicking in frontpoints for almost an hour and a half. The aerobic work-out has me hammered. I begin to have "dumb" arms, as my ice tools glance off instead of finding solid placements.
"Man, don't fuck up now. Keep it together", I silently urge to myself.
Thirty feet to go and I have that anxious fear of being so close yet too far to stop. Just a few more placements. Ten feet. Thunk, thunk. I pull over the lip of a moat and stand on small, level platform of snow. The afternoon alpine sun warms my face. I did it.
Exhausted--emotionally and physically--I don't feel the exhilaration and exuberance that I was anticipating from completing the climb. Still on level snow, I throw off my pack and lean my helmeted head against the granite wall of the gully. Sneaking a look at what I've just climbed, I realize that I should anchor in. I find a narrow crack in the granite wall and pound in a bugaboo piton. Clipping in, I can finally and completely relax. Many minutes pass before I can even bring myself to open my eyes and look around. Looking down the gully, I can't see the bottom as the slope curves under me.
The buzzy feeling of accomplishment and successful self-reliance suddenly wells-up in me and erases the self-doubt. In a rush, those earlier questions that seemed so intractable begin to find answers. I let out a loud "whoooooop." It echoes down the gully walls and carries across the glacier. A big smile comes across my face. Another whoop echoes and I begin wishing that this high moment was being shared, creating bonding memories.
My thoughts go to my brother and tears well-up in my eyes. Exhilarating joy of accomplishment turns to lingering anger and frustration over his premature, cancerous death. I "whoop" again, but through clinched teeth, the whooping becoming a yell of anger and rage. My state of exhaustion has allowed this buried anger to find light.
The untimely death two years ago of Bill, my climbing mentor, is still seeking a reason within me. It was not suppose to be that way. Tears continue to warm my eyelids, and I surprise myself with the depth of emotion rattling me. I collapse on my pack, continuing to yell and weep as it feels so good to release these coiled-up emotions. I look down the gully through teary eyes, and just at that moment, a golden eagle soars past. I am looking down on a golden eagle!
"What are the chances of that? How do things like that happen?" I ask incredulously.
Being mindful of greater-than-life happenings, I just nod at the synchronicity of the moment, knowing that Bill is here in spirit. Perhaps riding on the wings of an eagle.
22 June 2008
A review of a hardwear store here I found:
A fun place to shop and browse... - William Fonvielle - Jan 1, 2005
A fun place to shop and browse. Someone on a blog I read actually took someone to Economy Hardware on a date. Personally, I would have preferred a good movie and a nice restaurant, ...
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful? Yes - No
More from Cityvoter.com »
21 June 2008
20 June 2008
19 June 2008
Dream Machine
dream machine
This is one of the coolest things i have ever seen on the internet. i was high but when i did this i had intense visuals. i turned off all the lights and closed my eyes, put my face close to the monitor.........wheeeeeeeeeeee!
You can track me now....
apparently, when i get this set up, you can click this map and see where i've been if i have my phone and it's turned on that is...........
miahgps
i like it fresh
someone is playing their guitar outside. he sounds ok. good enough for me to keep my music off. but i might just have to drop some knowledge on him here in a minute. i'll let you know what it is. boston is beautiful. it's so old, it has that new england feel. it's an old place filled with young people. it feels like it's been that way for a long time.
i'm testing this thing out with a program i use called foxytunes. it lets me control my player (itunes, vlc, windows media, winamp) from my firefox window. this feature lets me push a button to show you what i'm listening to:
Listening to: Younger Brother - The Receptive
....we'll see how that goes
18 June 2008
The end of the beginning..........
It has been a crazy journey the last couple days. I was out of my comfort zone a lot, always a good thing. I am completely disoriented in this city, a feeling I haven't really experienced in years. Boston is great, so many new people to meet, places to see. I didn't realize until I was driving through New York, but I really was scared to come out here. People asked me if I was and I always said no, but now I realize that I am. I am no longer under the care or influence of school or military. I am no longer a child, I have been pushed out of the nest. My schooling begins now, I have the freedom to pursue anything I want to. I need new goals. I need a plan.
I met a 3 day old person the other day, her name was Adelaide, I always liked that name....
I got called an asshole by a guy who was trying to get money to save the whales in the middle of South Station....
I've probably wasted at least a tank of gas just because I'm lost all the time...
If I eat another chesseburger I will puke
There are tons of farmers markets here almost everyday of the week!!!!!
I got a this badass hat, it's blue accented w/ yellow, it has the alaska flag on the front and says "denali alaska" and on the back has the elevation. F'in sweet..
I miss you all..
Younger Brother - Happy Pills
Here is a new copy of this song. It is one of my favorites and the one in the playlist below is bunk.
14 June 2008
11 June 2008
03 June 2008
01 June 2008
31 May 2008
15 May 2008
05 May 2008
30 April 2008
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
