Q: Do you believe in rules and standards?
A: Yes I believe in rules and standards. We must abide by certain societal values, norms, mores, etc., to avoid chaos, yet it was Christ who continually taught the difference between the spirit of the law and the letter. He always was breaking some or other law, such as the Sabbath, and his great comment was, man was not made for the Sabbath, rather the Sabbath was made for man. That’s true about everything. Rock climbing, for example, has its ethical issues. We have to get beyond the outward rules, though. We must not abide by them mindlessly and allow them to be a source of bitter judgment toward others. The rules are only of value, are only instructive, when we keep them in perspective, realize their importance as to our safety, or to fair play, and understand the difference between the letter and spirit. There were climbers in my heyday that would destroy you if they thought you violated some or other tiny rule of the game. The rule to them was more important than the person. 

Q: What's the most shameful thing you've ever done?
A: I believe probably everyone has dark moments, where we failed in integrity or possibly for an instant became evil incarnate. I am terrified that there are moments of that kind in my past. I suffer from them, but I have come to know why such things happen. I never much knew why I did certain things. I was unable to put into subjection emotion, fear, and the like. Delicate, and perhaps more artistic, individuals go to dark places easier, at certain difficult points in life. 

There are things that exist in what Yeats called “the age-long memoried self” and that, as he said, “shape the elaborate shell of the mollusk and the child in the womb” and that teach the birds to make their nest, and he says genius of any sort is a crisis that joins that buried self for certain moments to our trivial daily mind. Of course Yeats believed in “personifying spirits” that he called gatekeepers, who would throw Villon into the hands of harlots. Through their dramatic power these personifying spirits bring our souls to crisis, according to Yeats, to “Mask and Image,” as he said, caring not a straw whether we be Juliet going to our wedding, or Cleopatra to our death, for in the eyes of those spirits nothing has weight but passion. In that sense, I agree that passion keeps us alive and honest. When we go dark, we have lost the passion for some reason. 

Instinctively the artist-type will bring him or herself, even unconsciously, to the greatest obstacles he or she may confront, just short of reaching total despair. The line is as delicate as that certain person himself, and to cross into despair is when something shameful is done. 

As a young climber, I suppose the most shameful thing I did was play into the criticism and take on its darkness, rather than stay focused on the joy and light of the climbing before me. When I was standing before the beauty of the rock and glancing at the clouds or pines and could smell the air, I marveled that I should be so blessed. I admired every friend. Despair was seriously outmatched at those times, and passion was in the lead.