Q: What's another moment in your life that changed you?
A: In 1967 a friend had a terrible psychedelic experience in which I was partly responsible and in which I was caught up. I was so sorry, and in pain, and tormented by it all I utterly ended my desire to progress ever again as a climber. I was only at the tender age of turning 20. Anything I did in climbing after that was no more than a reflection of what I already was, and to this day I wonder how much farther I certainly would have progressed had that nightmare not happened. I imagine I would have climbed El Cap thirty more times, gone much farther in bouldering, and become a far better free climber. 

Q: Who's the most important person in your life? Why?
A: My wife is the most important person in my life. She has the best perspectives on life, is the highest quality person, and is the kindest of anyone I know.

Q: Is it important to have a plan?
A: It is important to have a plan, every day, as long as you know you will revise and adjust it and have the liberty of dispensing with it altogether when a better idea shows itself suddenly. True creativity is such that you cannot start off deciding to write a poem or a piece of music and then go about forcing it to happen. You will never succeed at anything of value, with that approach. You let the poem, the piece of music, tell you what it needs. 

The poet Yeats said he drew much of his best work from the “Spiritus Mundi,” or a bank of images that float out in some ethereal world of the spirits, and that much of his best work was “given” to him, of a sort, simply appearing to him, almost as an apparition. My life goes this way. Songs more or less appear, as though given to me, and my best work always has occurred in my mind, or soul, before I could write it. Life itself begins to appear in imagination, and we live it, or we live some form of it. We must let life tell us what it needs, rather than impose our petty egos on every situation. 

Q: Who's a climber you have respect for? Why?
A: No one has excelled Peter Croft, in terms of beauty of spirit, humility, and greatness. Among the older guard, more and more I respect Dave Rearick. Of all my great mentors, and I have had some of the greatest climbers as my partners and inspirations, Dave strikes me as the most humble. He has never spoken ill of anyone, to my knowledge, in an attempt to build himself up. He has never failed to acknowledge the achievements of others. He never has exaggerated his own achievements. He simply is even and honest. Yet his writing, such as his essays about climbing the Diamond, or his small treatise on Split Pinnacle Lieback, and other pieces, are clean and brilliant the more I look at them. His writing simply is good, the way his heart is. 

Q: Who’s your best climbing partner? How did you find this out?
A: Many climbing partners meant a lot to me. I suppose the “best” could as easily be Van Freeman, because he is a person who made me laugh. He laughed at our comedy and simply was to be trusted. He felt like a kindred adventurer. We lived in Yosemite for a couple weeks on fried potatoes and Lowry Seasoning Pepper, climbing and walking my slack chain. He wasn’t a strong climber but jon sheer guts followed me up any 5.10 off-width I was hair-brained enough to lead.