The Happiness Bomb

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Three days into the sandstone desert canyons of Indian Creek, people were already splitting into their respective clans. The finger crack specialists looked down on the hand crack climbers with their taped up mitts and massive racks of yellow Camalots. They in turn looked up to the thin hands climbers with their serried ranks of red Camalots. The off-fingers (ringlocks) specialists sat together on a boulder making strange faces and contorting their fingers into ever more peculiar stacks…but everyone looked in awe at the offwidth fetishists: a strange breed who no one understood. When things get wide, things get weird. Trust me - I’ve been around long enough to know the truth of this.

As a massive generalisation, rock climbers in the US are very different to those in the UK, and I aspire to be more like the American ones. Despite the fact that Mike & I were punters, some very good climbers encouraged and motivated us. The cheers and shrieks as Mike clipped the chains on a clean ascent of one of the moderate, classic routes at the Creek echoed around the walls. So what if it was three grades easier than whatever the local hard men and women were doing! There was a serious and genuine appreciation of our company, our efforts and our attitude. The clans that gathered together at the start of the day to share gear, finger tape and freshly brewed coffee were just subsets of the big, weird and wide clan that is Creek climbers. Despite the different colours we wore (red cams for thin hands, blue for wide and purple for fingers), we were all the same. When all was said and done and the campfire was roaring, we were all there as one - bodies close together, eyes alive and all that blood and adrenaline coursing to a common pulse.

In many ways, this initial separation into clans and then the enthusiastic, selfless joining together reminded me of a Christmas party I once organised at St Edward’s Primary in Rusholme. The game was a non denominational one of “Lions, Sharks and Eagles”. It was a popular game that involved absolutely everyone (teachers too) and it didn’t matter in the slightest if you were fat or thin, black or white, happy or sad. Most of us fell into at least one of those categories, and so it was perfect for 70-odd juniors and a bunch of year-end-exhausted teachers. At the start of the game, everyone had to decide if they were a lion, a shark or an eagle, and then get in their particular corner of the room. Each choice meant you played by different rules and with different aims. I was the King of the Sky, and my job was to control the menagerie (or at least try to). As the teams coalesced, I felt a tug on my arm. I looked down to see one of the more thoughtful girls in my Y3 class, looking up at me with big eyes through wonky spex. She said “Which corner do faeries go into?” This floored me, because faeries weren’t in the game; you had to be a lion, a shark or an eagle. I explained this to her, to which she replied “I’m a faerie, not one of those other things. Which corner do faeries stand in?” She fixed me with such a look that I knew I was beaten, and so I did the only thing that I could. I said “The Faerie Queen stands right here, with the King of The Sky!”

And so she and I stood there hand in hand, watching as the hordes of lions, sharks and eagles rolled by in some sort of gloriously chaotic order. When all was said and done, and the Christmas party was jumping, we were just one big happy pile of people, dancing to a common beat. Climbers and children- there’s probably not a whole lot of difference between them. I remember Johnny Dawes once saying that if climbing weren’t so serious, it would be the greatest adult toy and I think I agree with him.

By the way, if anyone ever tells you that there are no such things as faeries, then I can assure you that they're completely wrong. I know this because I have met one personally, and I've held her hand.