Gregory Crouch's Blog, page 23
June 21, 2013
The Supreme Leader Tweets!
China’s Wings review in the Michigan War Studies Review
Gin threatened! Landlords from Hell! Appalling email!
June 19, 2013
Learning To Fly by Steph Davis, reviewed by Gregory Crouch
Learning to Fly: An Uncommon Memoir of Human Flight, Unexpected Love, and One Amazing Dog by Steph Davis
Disclaimer: Steph Davis is a personal friend of mine, I advised her at a few points while she was proposing and writing Learning to Fly, and she graciously mentioned that help in her acknowledgement statement. That said, I’m extremely proud of my association with Learning to Fly.
* * *
Americans love to rave about their individual freedoms. Ironically, most shackle their lives to desires and expectations other than their own and grind out their days without ever bothering to discover their genuine loves and passions. Even more tragic, many of those who do know their hearts can’t summon the courage to take the action true love requires.
Steph Davis is not one of those people. She has no place among Teddy Roosevelt’s “cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” Steph Davis is one of the rarest American breed—a free individual, one of the freest in the land, and she’s cut the whole cloth of her life from her hearts’ desire.
Freedom isn’t easy, however, as any person who has tried to live it knows, and Learning to Fly begins with Davis thrown low by twinned disasters—the disintegration of her marriage and the collapse of her professional relationship with the clothing company for whom she’d been a “climbing ambassador” for most of a decade. Unmoored and depressed, Davis drifts into Boulder, Colorado with little besides her truck, her climbing gear, her beloved dog, Fletch, and a wild, inexplicable urge to skydive.
Inexplicable because intentionally taking a fall is anathema to a world-class climber like Steph Davis who does a fair bit of solo climbing (climbing without a rope). For nearly two decades, she’d kept herself alive by not falling, but Davis sensed crucial life lessons waiting through the doors of skydiving, of voluntarily jumping, and in typical fashion, she throws herself whole hog into the parachuting world, learning in quick succession to skydive, BASE jump (parachuting from earthbound objects like buildings, antennas bridges (spans), and cliffs (earth)), and fly wingsuits.
Davis is, of course, Learning to Fly, it’s a fascinating process, and through her new passion, she returns to her old one, climbing. As she falls in love with BASE jumping, the extreme becomes routine, and before we’ve blinked twice, she’s jumping Moab’s 450-foot tall Tombstone before breakfast every windless morning. It’s a wild ride: Davis fights through two accidents, both of which could have been a whole lot worse than they were, falls in love, emotionally nurses beloved Fletch through her final days, and takes us climbing and jumping in Yosemite, Colorado, the Grand Canyon, Utah, Idaho, Switzerland, and Italy. Particularly excellent are her descriptions of soloing the Casual Route and Pervertical Sanctuary on the Long’s Peak Diamond, Colorado’s premier alpine rock; totally mind-blowing is her story of free-solo rock climbing the North Face of Utah’s —and BASE jumping from the summit.
Davis brings it all off with just the right touches of humility, too, because really, she’s phenomenally good at what she does. She barely has a foot in the same universe as the rest of us. Books are hard to end well, and Steph leaves us with a gorgeous fly-off, wrapping her story of loss and redemption, freedom, love, action, passion, and responsibility into a spectacular leap into a world “vast with possibility” from near the top of the Eiger.
With Learning to Fly, Steph has written a wonderful and inspiring book. I couldn’t put the damn thing down.
High Infatuation, Steph’s website; and Learning to Fly at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, and Kobobooks. She’ll take you BASE jumping, too, with Moab BASE Adventures.
(And a nod to Yulia Brodskaya for creating Learning to Fly’s whimsical and uniquely perfect cover illustration.)
Photos of Iran — adventures on Alam Kuh
Before I get distracted posting photos of my month in Iran, this important detail from the Huffington Post: former Playboy centerfold admits to helping Canadian boyfriend illegally enter the United States.
Such a scandal would never plague Iran.
Also, barring utter disaster, after last night’s 1-0 US victory over Honduras, the United States will be joining Iran in the final round of the World Cup in 2014.
It’ll take me a few posts to bust out the full run of trip photos, but first come pics from the early part of our exchange between the American Alpine Club and the Alpine Club of Iran. Shortly after we arrived, we headed to the Alam Kuh massif in the Alborz Mountains nortwest of Tehran. The single biggest memory I took away from this trip was of the warm and friendly Iranian people.
Curbside diplomacy: Lydia Pyne and Marilyn Genenati making friends north of Tehran
Americans and Iranians getting organized at the Alam Kuh trailhead. (Note the blue truck– I’ll have a whole series of blue truck photos to post.)
Mary Ann Dornfeld on the hike up
The north face of Alam Kuh
Back: Me, Mahsa Hokamzadeh, Saeid Mahmodi, Jim Donini, Majid, Shaima Shadman; front: Mohammad Bahrevar, Mohammad Norouzi, Hassan
Mark Wilford and Mohammad Bahrevar hiking into the cirque
Taking laps on a moderate crack climb near the hut
Mohammad Bahrevar, Shaima Shadman, and Jenn Flemming in the Alam Kuh hut
Shaima Shadman and Rosie the Riveter
With Stephen Alvarez in our high camp tent
With Mohammad Bahrevar making a recon of Alam Kuh’s north face
Mark Wilford and Mohammad Bahrevar
Mahsa Hokamzadeh high on Alam Kuh
NG photog Stephen Alvarez doing what he does
Jennifer Flemming giong all glam-glam in front of the Alam Kuh hut
Mohammad Norouzi
Breakfast in a guest house the morning after we got down with the Supreme Leader watching from the far wall
Alam Kuh is a gorgeous mountain with an impressive north face. I wrote about the Iranian-American climbing exchange in Rope Diplomacy: On the Steeps in Iran (available asa $.99 eBook), which includes more than 30 of Stephen Alvarez’s incredible photos. (Which are a hell of a lot better than these!)
June 18, 2013
Positive sign in the nuclear standoff with Iran?
The AP reports the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov as saying that Iran is ready to stop its twenty-percent enrichment of uranium.
However, Lavrov was vague about his sources and what his claim goes against what President-elect Rowhani said shortly after his election.
If true, that’s a major concession, and the first hopeful sign in the Iran v. the World nuclear stalemate in a long, long time.
Fingers crossed, although I’d suspect the UN negotiators and inspectors have been in a “show me the money” mode for a long time, too.
It’ll be interesting to see whether or not Lavrov’s sources prove legitimate. If so, it’s also interesting to note that the story broke through Russia. Two undemocratic governments with common cause in Syria doing their best to legitimize each other?
None of the other news services seem to have broken the story yet.
Here’s the BBC’s “Iran country profile.”
Update #1: here’s an AP article describing a meeting between the incoming Rowhani and the outgoing Amdinejad. Sure wish the Islamic Republic would end the house arrests of Mir Hosein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, mentioned at the end of the article.
Update #2: Iran has something else to celebrate–something truly important–their national soccer team beat South Korea on Tuesday, and they’re going to the 2014 World Cup.
June 17, 2013
Iran – what happens next?
According to The Wall Street Journal, the United States and the European Union plan to press Iran on the nuclear issue in the wake of Hassan Rohani’s election to the Iranian Presidency.
Here’s a WSJ article describing Rohani as a moderating force.
Near the end, the article says: “As he [Rohani] gained momentum, the campaign became a stand-in for the public’s grievances over the regime’s policies, from its nuclear negotiation tactics to its management of a declining economy strained by sanctions and lack of social freedom.” It seems like there might be some difference between what the Iranian public wants, hopes for, and expects in terms of change and reform and what President Rohani intends to deliver–and is able to deliver–because no matter what his intentions, the Iranian President is subservient to the Supreme Leader. (A sentiment I can see echoed in the AP story linked to below.)
Those seem like circumstances with the potential to create a crisis of rising expectations.
The WSJ posted this interesting graphic illustrating the power relationships and structure of the Iranian government.
Ali Akbar Dareini of the AP published “Iran’s Rowhani urges ‘path of moderation’” this morning. Reading his story, it seems like Rowhani’s proposed policy of moderation and greater openness about the Iranian nuclear program while refusing to consider halting uranium enrichment translates to “Talk-talk-talk, spin centrifuges, spin centrifuges, spin centrifuges.”
I hope there’s more cause for optimism than that.
June 16, 2013
The Iran elections – the morning after
Mosque in Esfahan
Lots of purple in the streets of Tehran last night. News sources are reporting major celebrations in Iran in response to Hassan Rouhani’s decisive victory in the Presidential elections.
1. From a Reuter’s report: “This victory is a victory of wisdom, a victory of moderation, a victory of growth and awareness and a victory of commitment over extremism and ill-temper,” Rohani told state television. Crowds in Tehran chanted: “LONG LIVE REFORM!”
2. A brief BBC profile of Rouhani.
3. A BBC story titled “Rouhani Victory – Time for Change in Iran?”
(And no, the various news sources haven’t come to an agreement on transliterating his name, so I’ve tried to be consistent with each source.)
It’ll be interesting to see whether Rouhani’s election sparks real change. The election result sure makes it seem like a majority of the Iranian people would love to have some, but any that does happen will have to happen under the watchful eye of this gentleman, Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khameni, watching here from the wall of Esfahan’s Friday Mosque:
Ali Hosseini Khameni, Iran’s Supreme Leader
And he carefully guards this man’s legacy, who watches from another wall of the mosque:
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
As I listed in yesterday’s post, there are excellent Twitter feeds reporting on events in Iran: @Zealous_Iranian, @IranNewsNow, @khasayarsha, @thomaserdbrink, @persiankiwi, @tehranbureau
Much on my mind have been the wonderful Iranians with whom I traveled and climbed during the 2011 climbing exchange between the American Alpine Club and the Alpine Club of Iran which I wrote about in my eArticle Rope Diplomacy: On the Steeps in Iran, which includes more than 30 stunning photos by National Geographic photographer Stephen Alvarez.
I hope my friends are keeping safe and doing well.
June 15, 2013
More on the Iranian election
Following up on yesterday’s post about the Iranian election.
1. An AP summary of the electoral process in Iran.
2. AP report on the election, which looks it was possibly won outright by Hasan Rowhani. (If any candidate wins a clear majority in the first round of balloting, it obviates the need for a runoff between the top two, which would have been held next week.)
3. The BBC report on the election. Plus, 12 BBC photos of the election.
4. @Zealous_Iranian, @IranNewsNow, @khasayarsha, @thomaserdbrink, @persiankiwi, @tehranbureau are interesting sources of Iran news on Twitter.
5. The Christian Science Monitor labels Rowhani a “reformist,” and although he’s certainly considered the most reform-minded of the candidates and the election result strikes me as likely reflecting the Iranian people’s strong desire for change, let’s see what he actually does before we jump to large conclusions. He’ll be operating under lots of constraints.
6. Ah the problems of transliteration… none of the news sources can agree on how to spell Rowhani’s name: Rouhauni, Rowhani, Rohani…
I’d bet money she voted for Rowhani
Rope Diplomacy: On the Steeps in Iran about my experiences in Iran in the summer of 2011
June 14, 2013
The Iranian Election
Having visited Iran twice, in 1999 and 2011, I’m particularly interested in news from the country. Here’s the BBC story on the election being held today in Iran. Going to be very interesting to see what comes of it.
I wrote about my 2011 experiences in Rope Diplomacy: On the Steeps in Iran, which spends a lot of time among Amazon’s top ten books about Iran.
(Available as an ebook from Amazon for $.99; includes more than 30 photos from NG photographer Stephen Alvarez.)
Jim Donini and me with a bunch of the Iranians we climbed with in 2011. (Back row: me, Mahsa, Saeid, Jim, Majid, Shaima; front row: Mohammad, Mohammad, Hassan) Good times!
