Two years ago I was here in Indian Creek, nursing sore fingers and sitting at a campfire. One night, I exited the campfire early and retired to my minivan, determined to write about Indian Creek, determined to put its magic into elegant and original words. For a long time I gazed through my windshield at the fire and my friends and... nothing. I couldn't write anything.
Robert James Waller has this great commencement speech on Romance where he says that "romance dances just beyond the firelight" and that any attempt to pin it down will only destroy it, or at least not do it justice.
I know better now than to gaze at my friends and attempt to put this place into words. For four seasons I have grown up with these people. They've taught me how to ringlock, do a bodyshot, persevere, and be vulnerable. On paper, I guess that the "magic" of Indian Creek -what brings the people- is the orbital force of debauchery and splitter cracks. All I'll dare to say out of respect for the fragility of romance, is that there is so, so much more. These things -the ridiculousness and the fantastic climbing- are simply doors, and if you dare to cross through them you open up worlds of opportunity that just don't exist in places without desert sunsets and wax boxes.
