A Brief Field Guide to Silence

A field guide for use at the crag. No binoculars required. The specimens are loud enough.

The beta shout. Identification: a sentence that begins with what you want to do is, delivered to a person who is already doing something else. Range: one hold to the entire cliff. Recommended action: do not answer. An answer feeds it. It can live on the sound of its own voice for several pitches.

The speaker. Identification: a song nobody agreed to, coming from a pack, a small claim on a shared place. It is always described as not that loud. It is always loud enough to find. Recommended action: ask once, in a normal voice, for it to end. If it does not end, move your rope. Do not debate the playlist. The playlist is a trap. You will grow old inside the trap, still on the ground.

The narrator. Identification: a climber between tries, describing the try to a person who did not ask, with the structure of a documentary. There are setbacks. There is a lesson. There is a plan for the next episode. Recommended action: tie your knot. The knot is a polite way of leaving a story without attending the ending.

The group clap. Identification: applause for an ordinary top-out, started by someone who needs the day to have a soundtrack of approval. Recommended action: keep your hands on your rope. You may nod. A nod does not gather a crowd.

Silence is not a punishment you hand to other people. It is the condition the rock was already in when you arrived. The useful sound at a crag is small. A shoe staying put. A piece of gear seating. The little click of a carabiner that means the system is what you think it is. Everything louder is a person asking the canyon to become a room.

The coalition's standing rule is easy to carry. If a sentence can be replaced by climbing, replace it. Most sentences can. The ones that cannot are short. Take. Safe. Off belay. Your lead. You can run a whole day on those and have a better day than the group running theirs on commentary.

None of this requires a sour face. A sour face is just noise that learned to be quiet. Climb next to your partners. Hand them the rack. Split the apple. Talk on the drive if the drive wants it. When the rope comes out of the bag, let the rope be the loudest idea in the area.

People will call this unfriendly. Friendly is handing someone the end of the rope and meaning it. Friendly is leaving the good warm-up for the person who just walked up. Friendly is not a performance of welcome loud enough to scare the hawks. The hawks were here first. They do not clap either.

The rock has been doing this without an audience for a very long time. It is not lonely. Take the hint.