Anne E. Williams
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First belay on The Bastille Crack.
All of the great adventures of my life begin with this line from Herman Hesse’s novella, Wandering, and so I can’t start this adventure without saying it out loud:
Many detours I will still follow. Many fulfillments will still disillusion me. One day, everything will reveal its meaning. There, where contradictions die is Nirvana. Within me, they still burn brightly, my beloved stars of longing.
I’m from the state of Washington where I grew up in a small town at the base of Mt. Rainer. I moved to Seattle for college and then stayed there while I pursued acting, started a publishing company, and then became a massage therapist, massage instructor and the Director of Education for a massage school. I have always loved to travel and so I have followed my stars of longing to many unique places in the world including Bhutan, Nepal, India, South Africa, Venezuela, Macedonia, Albania, the UK and Europe, but when my stars of longing reached Colorado, they wanted to stay.
In my day-to-day life, I’m the Director of Education for Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals (ABMP), the largest massage association in the US. I work on projects that support massage and bodywork education, students, teachers and owners/administrators of training programs. I also write massage textbooks and magazine articles on the side. I recently finished a book titled, Massage Mastery: From Student to Professional which took five years of weekends and is 800 pages long (I’ve very proud of its size—it’s epic!). I love my job and I feel lucky every day to work hard pursuing a passion for education.
Many detours I will still follow. Many fulfillments will still disillusion me. One day, everything will reveal its meaning. There, where contradictions die is Nirvana. Within me, they still burn brightly, my beloved stars of longing.
I’m from the state of Washington where I grew up in a small town at the base of Mt. Rainer. I moved to Seattle for college and then stayed there while I pursued acting, started a publishing company, and then became a massage therapist, massage instructor and the Director of Education for a massage school. I have always loved to travel and so I have followed my stars of longing to many unique places in the world including Bhutan, Nepal, India, South Africa, Venezuela, Macedonia, Albania, the UK and Europe, but when my stars of longing reached Colorado, they wanted to stay.
In my day-to-day life, I’m the Director of Education for Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals (ABMP), the largest massage association in the US. I work on projects that support massage and bodywork education, students, teachers and owners/administrators of training programs. I also write massage textbooks and magazine articles on the side. I recently finished a book titled, Massage Mastery: From Student to Professional which took five years of weekends and is 800 pages long (I’ve very proud of its size—it’s epic!). I love my job and I feel lucky every day to work hard pursuing a passion for education.
Owl Rock in Arches National Park.
In the summer of the first year after I moved to Colorado, I drove up Boulder Canyon and saw rock climbers hiking down the road. Something about the gear hanging off their harnesses, their happy, carefree spirits, their sense of camaraderie and adventure, riled up my stars of longing. That fall, I signed up for the Introduction to Rock Climbing class at the Boulder Rock Club, where I met Abram and fell in love with climbing.
Unfortunately, climbing does not come easily to me, and I’ve had a long battle with the frustration of being bad at something I love. I’m fit and moderately athletic but it doesn’t matter. While those things are important, climbing is about the quality of your mind. You have to believe that the tiny nob up on the left is a handhold. You have to be okay with the idea that you might fall eight, ten, twelve, twenty or more feet, and you can’t let that freeze you up or shut you down. You have to go forward in the face of a lot of unknowns. What if there is no place to put gear up there? What if I’m off route and I’m on something over my head? What if I can’t make it over that roof—how will I get down? What if I can’t follow Abram up this route because it’s too hard for me? What if? What if? What if? I’ve never been good with unknowns.
While I will never climb like Abram, I have reconciled myself to climbing like me, and now I focus on what I can do in the moment; what I can bring to the climb, and so I have found peace with myself as a climber and I enjoy the view. There is no way that something like El Cap would be possible for me without a climbing partner like Abram, and I know it. When I look at pictures of El Cap, I am inspired, amazed, humbled, intimidated, incredulous, and psyched. My stars of longing go crazy. I want to see that wall from the bottom. I want to climb all day until the moon comes up in the valley. I want to make my bed on a rock ledge 2000 feet up. I want to wake in the morning and do it all over again until my muscles scream with fatigue. I want to stand on the summit in the sunshine and look down, all that way, to where I started. I am willing to be exhausted, and dirty, and freaked out, and overwhelmed by exposure, and terrified a storm will roll in, and afraid of failure—and Abram is willing too. If I climb El Cap and stand on the summit, it will honestly be the greatest accomplishment of my life. Go up! Let’s climb!
-Anne
Unfortunately, climbing does not come easily to me, and I’ve had a long battle with the frustration of being bad at something I love. I’m fit and moderately athletic but it doesn’t matter. While those things are important, climbing is about the quality of your mind. You have to believe that the tiny nob up on the left is a handhold. You have to be okay with the idea that you might fall eight, ten, twelve, twenty or more feet, and you can’t let that freeze you up or shut you down. You have to go forward in the face of a lot of unknowns. What if there is no place to put gear up there? What if I’m off route and I’m on something over my head? What if I can’t make it over that roof—how will I get down? What if I can’t follow Abram up this route because it’s too hard for me? What if? What if? What if? I’ve never been good with unknowns.
While I will never climb like Abram, I have reconciled myself to climbing like me, and now I focus on what I can do in the moment; what I can bring to the climb, and so I have found peace with myself as a climber and I enjoy the view. There is no way that something like El Cap would be possible for me without a climbing partner like Abram, and I know it. When I look at pictures of El Cap, I am inspired, amazed, humbled, intimidated, incredulous, and psyched. My stars of longing go crazy. I want to see that wall from the bottom. I want to climb all day until the moon comes up in the valley. I want to make my bed on a rock ledge 2000 feet up. I want to wake in the morning and do it all over again until my muscles scream with fatigue. I want to stand on the summit in the sunshine and look down, all that way, to where I started. I am willing to be exhausted, and dirty, and freaked out, and overwhelmed by exposure, and terrified a storm will roll in, and afraid of failure—and Abram is willing too. If I climb El Cap and stand on the summit, it will honestly be the greatest accomplishment of my life. Go up! Let’s climb!
-Anne
