An Ode to the Spray Wall

This article originally appeared on Climbing

Novels, skate ramps, and spray walls do not have introductions--they have kickers. As this piece of climbing literature is written in the spray wall style, I also will forgo an introduction and drop right in.

Point of Departure: An American Strip Mall

Suddenly it hit me. I don't know what exactly prompted it. It might have been a twang from Khruangbin and Leon Bridges' Texas Sun (2020) playing on a sound system. It could have been an afterglow from a world-class V2--exquisitely placed tick marks on jibs screwed to large sloper features to make them just a touch better. Or perhaps it was a gestalt of a social setting.

The staff member painting the wall orange above the handwashing sink. The silhouettes of two back-lit climbers approaching one another at the apex of the lead cave. The mother breastfeeding on the crashpad bench. The rambunctious toddler (who, only moments ago, cried heaving tears after falling off the bench) happily pushing and then chasing an exercise ball on the padded floor beneath the Moon, Tension, and Lattice boards. The watchful eye of her father, pushing a stroller, wearing red, white, and blue boardshorts and loose-fitting flip flops. The young woman--let us call her "Nadja"--in the plush warmup tracksuit, hair covered by a hat and hoodie, sitting cross-legged beneath the spray wall. I think it was Shakespeare who famously wrote, in his pastoral comedy As You Like It (1599), "all the world is a spray wall"--or something like that.

All the world is a spray wall because it confronts us. The world stands before us as a concrete object distinct from ourselves, but the only way we can encounter it is through internal experience. The spray wall, in its noisiness and rawness, is a field upon which we have no choice but to impose some order through our decisions and actions--the games we play or choose not to play. Any illusion that this is not a game is stripped away upon encountering the apparent aimlessness of moving upon a spray wall. And what confronts us on the spray wall is ourselves; the spray wall is not some pure and romantic wilderness. We construct the spray wall from processed wood, metal, and plastic. For this reason, I see the spray wall as an example of the beautiful, tragic, hopeful, and imperfect civilization we have inherited from our ancestors.

Among us were young and old and somewhere in between, in various stages of ability and disability. First-timers in rental shoes. Olympians squeezing in a quick session before the next round of World Cups. A variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, identities, and political persuasions. Some religious, some not. Some wearing masks, some not.

We were in an American strip mall just off the freeway. Gym climbing, in some shape or form, was happening all over the country--and in other countries across the planet--at that very moment.

It was here, in this American strip mall, that I felt as close to nature as I have ever. Close to our nature. Social animals who are born, reproduce, and die. Organisms with highly evolved bodies and minds that are at once profoundly fragile and capable of extraordinary feats of strength, coordination, and grace. A group of us getting on together peaceably, engaged in a common recreational enterprise, often looking upward. I felt a sense of awe and wonder. It was, as John Gill would say in his understated style when describing what he called option-soloing, a "mildly religious" experience.

And it felt like here, in a purpose-built climbing gym, was where the action--a zeitgeist, the spirit of the age--was now.

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