Scrambling Into A New Season

The Joy of Spring

By Stio

Words by Scott Channing, Photos by Black & Kole

Spring ahead and fall behind - two clever terms that remind us which direction to set our clocks for daylight saving time each year. Yet, every year these words impact our adventure life in a much more literal way - the shorter the day, the less time we have to play. Don’t get me wrong, winter days are wonderful, but quite objectively, the amount of daylight we have to get outside and take advantage of is significantly shorter! Instead, garage projects, knitting, and whiskey-sipping-jigsaw-puzzling take over our dark evening life as the sun sets before we even get home from work. And so, it is with great joy that we celebrate spring’s arrival by packing our 1987 Volkswagen Vanagon van and heading to the desert for spring's first bouldering trip. It’s a time when 50 degrees and sunny means flip flops and tank tops - a temperature that later in the summer will have us ironically grabbing our down jackets in the mornings.

Spring ahead. Arguably our favorite holiday, a celebration of one more hour: one more boulder to climb, one more trail to ride, one more fish to catch, one more hour to spend rubbernecking on the way to our destination because of this headwind smashing our old Vanagon and slowing our speeds to 45 mph on the freeway. So it goes, but away we slowly go toward a long weekend in Joe’s Valley, Utah, bouldering in the sandstone canyons carved out by each winter’s snow melt. I’ve been climbing in Joe’s Valley since 2003 and feel an intimate connection to the steep canyon hillsides searching for the subjective perfect boulder with the perfect shaped holds requiring the perfect movement and strength training that I probably, definitely don’t have. However, some days I get lucky and it all comes together just enough to find myself sitting atop a newly climbed boulder staring out across the tan and black streaked rocks strewn about the canyon, watching others hike from boulder to boulder searching for their own moment. These achievements seem to gift us a fleeting clarity of being that exists only when single minded goals are met with a determination that only allows room for success because failing, or in this case falling, are not options.

Spring ahead. When we finally arrive at camp my wife, Samantha, and I set up our van as though we are early homesteaders staking claim to what we believe to be forever ours. Something about living out of a van makes you want to park it at as though it will never be moved again. It needs to sit stoically amongst the boulders. The doors must face outward such that when walking towards the vancamp it feels like walking up the pathway leading to your tiny four wheeled cabin. Outside the doors, we raise the awning to cover our patio so we can grill, read, and gaze out upon the valley. Lights hang from the awning so at night our home shines with a welcoming glow to all visitors. And then, in the morning we tear it all down and hustle to pack it all back up so we can get out and go climbing. We’ve been waiting all winter and wouldn’t want to waste a second of daylight. Just then Samantha reminds me that the extra hour today is ours, and the moment we’ve been waiting for is present. I fall back to the van and put a second pot of coffee on the burner. She’s right, maybe the joy of spring isn’t about doing more, but having the time to do less. We grab our coffee and sit outside under the awning, slowly sipping.