Q: When did it all begin?
A: I doubt it began with this world, but here we find ourselves. I was swept up in the wonder of life from its beginning. When I was twelve, living in a magical country setting of northwest Denver, my family felt a mysterious compulsion to move to Boulder. It was my destiny to be a climber, or so the romantic in me believes. If, as Bob Dylan once said, there are spirits that govern this world, I would have been just the one to be presented the incredible riches, beauty, and possibilities of the mountains and climbing. 

It was natural that the mad creativity with which I was blessed should, at some early point along the journey, turn upward along a path toward rock. My wonder and creativity then exploded in a powerful new dimension, although I never have stopped investigating other paths as well and finding promise in anything that comes along. 

Q: What has been your life's work so far?
A: My wife tells me I seek to find beauty and art in everything I do. As an artist, I care about the process of that discovery and am engaged almost always in some form of creativity. 

Perhaps it makes me a true artist, in the sense that I have always been dedicated to the process more than the end. 

In terms of writing, I have never believed I was merely a “climbing writer,” as my writing always has had a broader and truer literary aspect. The topic of climbing has been convenient, as a bread-and-butter vehicle. Having a certain renown in climbing, I had a ready audience. But because of my passion and ever-developing inventiveness in writing, I did make writing a life work. 

Several of my books have been called landmark achievements, such as “Swaramandal,” which Tom Higgins and others felt might have been the most creative work to come from climbing at the time. “Master of Rock” is said to have been a revolutionary book, opening the way for the new generations, showing them what the thresholds were, in terms of not only achievement in climbing but also how to live life with humility and integrity. I suppose I was trying to teach myself those things also. Michael Chessler says no American guidebook had more impact than my “High Over Boulder,” which led the way in terms of including stories, history, humor, and philosophy to otherwise potentially technical and stale writing. Jim Perrin wrote in a column that my book “Direct Lines” was the best writing since Patey’s “One Man’s Mountains.” My article “The Black Canyon With Kor” shook up the world, to use words of Mohammed Ali, causing people to weep with laughter or hate me for portraying their hero Kor in a comical light. I believe my book “How To Be A Master Climber in 10 Easy Lessons” has touched people, because they’ve written me and said so. One of the country’s great poets, Reg Saner, says something to the effect that no book in climbing was more imaginative than my “Climbing Everest,” especially since I did not climb Everest or ever did any serious mountaineering of which to speak. I believe I was the only one who could have written my history of free climbing in America, “Wizards of Rock,” My latest book, “Everything That Matters,” has some of the best writing I’ve done, but whether the climbing world is the measure of the art time will tell. I suspect only a few would open those pages and realize how special they are. It seems writing was a life work, when I consider that I had some twenty or more articles in assorted anthologies of best writings and over a hundred articles published, yet strangely my best writing is poetry. I’ve written many hundreds of poems and also many hundreds of songs. 

Writing indeed has been a life work, but so have other pursuits, such a karate, art, photography, and trying to learn how to be a better person each day, struggling in this mortal realm to master myself as it has seemed necessary to master various arts. 

My work the last twelve years has been to be the best husband and father I can be.