Inspiration
- April 2014
- Hi Steph
… however, “happiness is only true when shared“ (Christopher McCandless).
Hola Steph,From far away Frankfurt, where I’ve been living now for 19 years – I was born and bred in Madrid, learnt how to climb in La Pedriza – I would like to humbly join the looooooooooooooooooooong line of your admirers and THANK YOU for sharing with us your thoughts, your feelings, your philosophy, your outlook, your good and not so good moments, and your huge amount of knowledge about climbing and life.
I read your book “High Infatuation” in two nights. Which means that, since I am the single father of an (already pubescent) 11 year old boy, with a full-time job, I have to get up at 5am every morning and my “me-time” does not begin again until at least 8pm, when he goes to bed, you literally kept up at night!! You truly are the first woman who’s managed that without having even met!!! 😉
It has been said here many, many times, but still, I would like to join the vox populi and tell you: YOU ARE A GREAT INSPIRATION!!!! THANK YOU!!!! In return, I would like to tell you about this little ritual of mine I perform every time, just before I start climbing, ever since I read your book and watched some of your on-line videos. I hope you and your readers don’t mind:
While standing all racked up at the bottom of the route, I lean against the wall and touch her with my hands and my forehead. With my eyes closed I take a deep breath through my nose, so that I can smell the rock, hold it for a few seconds and breathe out loudly through my mouth. Then, whilst looking up at the route, I take another deep breath through my nose and say to myself: “Steph Davis, Wolfgang Güllich, enjoy!!!”, breathe out loudly through my mouth again and begin to climb.
I always do it and it helps me focusing on the climb. I also fool myself to believe that by evoking my two private heroes, I would somehow take both of you with me along the route.
Thank you for being there, Steph!!
Héctor
Hola Hector,
Thank you so much: actually, I have done the same thing many times when climbing 🙂 Many of my friends are heroes to me, and sometimes when approaching a hard move that I imagine would be very easy for one of them, I just give myself the beta: “Just pretend you’re such-and-so (it’s whichever friend is really good at that kind of move or kind of climbing)!”
It almost always works 🙂
Steph
