Larissa, Simone, Olga, and Yuliya climbing in the Grimsel region of Switzerland. ©Karen Bockel.

When I am out in the mountains climbing with my Chicks, my friends or my colleagues, I often think about how lucky I am to get to go to places like these, to call the mountains home.

What stirs these thoughts are often just the tiny glimpses of what makes this world so special, so different.

This past weekend, for example, I was out in a beautiful, remote region of Switzerland. I was with four women, mostly new to the mountains. We had a long trek to our mountain hut where we going to spend the night. The trek followed a narrow footpath above and around cliffs and gorges, adorned with steel cables and ladders along the way.

Not five minutes would go by before one of the four would stop to take a picture, or three, again, and again. I started getting impatient and urged the group to keep up the pace. I wanted them to concentrate on moving along.

Then I caught myself. This was their first foray into the wild and beautiful alpine world. Everything was new and they had to take it all in. The view of a giant glacier above a granite-walled gorge, the sound of the melt-water rushing down the narrows, the wildflowers along the rocky steps, the stones piled into cairns guiding the way through fields of talus, the brilliant blue sky above. The mountains were so new and so fascinating. It was as if they saw it all with the eyes of a child.

Views I had seen many times, steps I had taken without a second thought, evoked their curiosity and wonder. “Just amazing!” they said.

The next morning we started up a glacier in the pre-dawn to find yet more unexpected, previously unimaginable experiences. Navigating with headlamps, the women heard the first crunch of their crampons on the old, hardened snow and ice. And so they kept going, finding new horizons as they went.

At the end of the trip, their legs were beyond tired, their backs were bruised from their packs and their skin burned from the sun, but their eyes shone so brightly, and they could not stop recounting what they had just lived. My heart was full.

Christina Lujan, who is Cheyenne/Arapaho/Taos Pueblo, climbing in Utah. ©Kitty Calhoun Collection. Afterward, Christina wrote, “What happens when your friend is Kitty Calhoun? 
Have you ever had a moment where you didn’t know you didn’t know something until you knew it? 
For example, did you know you truly are the only thing stopping you from going further?
I have an incredible amount of power and control in my life, I just never believed it until I was hanging off the side of a cliff and I realized the only thing stopping me from going up was me. 
Like I said…..what happens when your friend is Kitty Calhoun?” 

“That’s not the story I had in mind,” I said in disappointment.  

“Can’t you tell me about the bravest warriors? Those who were brought back from the dead? Didn’t they train during the day and feast at night as they prepared for the battle of Ragnarok?” I asked.

“No. They were just men who killed and got drunk,” the storyteller said. “I will tell a story about Freya, the goddess of love.”

Kim Reynolds and I were meeting with a Norwegian storyteller named Heidi.

We’d just climbed a difficult ice climb in Norway and cameras were rolling to record the exchange for an Outside TV segment.

I had read that Vikings drew courage and inspiration from Norse Mythology and I hoped to hear the storyteller tell a Norse Myth that paralleled our experience. 

Instead, Heidi insisted on telling the story of Freya. 

“Freya wanted to enter Asgard––the heaven made by the gods. But, when she approached Asgard in the nude, it scared the gods because they’d never seen anything like her before. Afraid, the Gods tried to kill her, but in vain. Finally, they accepted Freya and she taught them determination, courage and wisdom.

I was distraught. Freya was not the story I wanted to hear.

I called my storytelling coach for advice.

“Well,” he said. “It might not be the story you want to hear, but it’s the story you need to hear. The story of Freya is about the journey. It’s about acceptance and how we treat each other and the environment while on our summit quests. Love always wins over conquering, using and abusing.”

Twenty years later, I reflect on this story, thinking about how to make positive change through climbing. I believe it starts with making connections and a commitment to sharing resources and listening to how others see the world.  

Meanwhile, the Chicks Scholarship for Women of Color was conceived when Chicks Alumna Jennifer Reikenberg generously pledged her cancelled Mt Baker course-fee to a woman of color to take a Chicks course. Details to be announced soon.

The AMGA, as well as many of our sponsors, also have lists of ways that you can Pass It On!

Kitty Calhoun, expedition leader, on the first female ascent of Makalu, the world’s fifth highest mountain. 1990. Nepal Himalaya. ©Kitty Calhoun Collection.

Revelation came to me while relaxing with friends. It was after giving a slide show at a climbing festival.

“Good story, Kitty, but it didn’t happen that way,” John, my Makalu Expedition teammate, said with a smile.

“Yeah?” I asked.

Then he went on to describe the events of our climb totally differently than I had experienced them. According to him, the weather had been horrendous with high winds and numerous large storms. I remember feeling blessed with clear skies and sunshine! Hearing him tell the story, I could not believe we had been on the same expedition. And, it occurred to me that we saw the same things but interpreted those things differently, through lenses shaped by our individual pasts.  

In a recent sermon addressing racial injustice,

Pastor Scott Fine built upon my concept of lens when he said that no one sees everything and no one sees perfectly. Everyone is of infinite value and we are all connected. Build bridges of understanding; lift others up through caring.

Meanwhile, Zahan Billimoria, a black Patagonia ski ambassador, exhorted a group of us to act driven by love and compassion, not by guilt. When he said this, I felt tension rise in my gut. Z doesn’t know my history. 

He doesn’t know that I spent every weekend skiing or playing tennis with my dad. My dad, who modelled minimalism for me, was also a proud Southern attorney. His great, great grand uncle, John C. Calhoun, led the state’s rights movement and was vice president of the confederate states. When the colleges decided to rename buildings that were named in honor of John C Calhoun, or tore down statues of him, I thought about dad and the stories he had told.

Dad had explained our past like this,”It was a socio-economic system where black people were treated like family and all their needs were provided for in exchange for work. Some white people mistreated black people, but those were bad apples. And, the bad-apple-stories were the ones that got told.” That was my father’s lens, and it was also what I chose to believe.

However, because of Z––what he said and how he said it––I am looking at history through a different lens. I can see systemic racism and discrimination rather than merely a few bad apples. All my life, I’ve heard stories told about black people, but now I am hearing black people speak for themselves. 

So what now?

The next steps can not be a performative act, but must have depth to carry lasting change. They will be motivated by a genuine desire to lift others up and in recognition of our intrinsic interconnectedness and equal worth rather than a sense of guilt or obligation. I, and my partners at Chicks, look forward to creating change, and to reporting more in the next newsletter.