3/24/08 — For the next month Climbing.com contributor Bruce Willey and his wife Caroline Schaumann will be sending dispatches from Sardinia—an Online exclusive. This is their story: A story of average climbers, with average means on an average quest to explore the uncommon island off the coast of Italy. 

Defining Flow is a dubious if uncertain enterprise. It’s supposed to happen when you’re not paying attention, when you’re deep in the throes of say painting water lilies, blowing an Ornette Coleman riff from the mistral winds in your lungs and igniting a thousand fires. Without thought of flow, but still conscious of the absolute abandonment of deliberation, it suddenly appears out of nowhere. And the minute you think, why yes, this is strange, I’m flowing like a mofo, it disappears.

And it happened to me today. For one sweet day, I flowed. My wife flowed. And we flowed up and down one wholly satisfying climb after another at the Margheddie crag out on the hills far above the sea near Cala Gonone. The bite of the limestone holds felt pleasing to my fingers and I began to trust my feet to smears and tiny edges that would have given my pause the day before. Without putting too fine a woo-woo point on it, climbing seemed exactly what my body had evolved to do, where my mind found it’s most sinuous focus.

We warmed up on an excellent two-pitch route, Festeggiando I Tre Mesi (6a+), and rapping off high above the Mediterranean Sea, I paused to take in as much of the landscape as possible, wishing almost to do the climb again that very day. But there was another line next to it, and another. So we climbed nearly all of them. After lunch of sandwiches and fresh oranges, I spotted a finely featured bowl and hand crack above it. It looked good, too good to bother looking in the guidebook for names and ratings. After passing the crux with prefect jams, I yelled down to Caroline: “No, this is the best route in Sardegna.” It’s a running joke between us punctuated by a lot of truth, and influenced by Maurizio Oviglia’s ecstatic gusto in his guidebook, Pietra di Luna. (www.sardiniaclimb.com)

Because of how the day was going I overshot the belay and began fun-hogging the second pitch. Caroline yelled up that I was running out of rope, so I down-climbed and found the belay. The second pitch Caroline led proved even better than the first, following the exposed arête all the way up the prow of the pillar. In Sardegna they call it Ninna Nanna per Martina (6a+). It’s a climb I hope to recall on my deathbed.