The Coalition's Official Stance on Feelings at the Crag: None

Official stance of the Man's Climbing Coalition on feelings at the crag: none.

This is a complete policy. It does not have a subcommittee. It does not have exceptions for breakthroughs, for breakups, or for the particular sunset. You may arrive with a full interior life. You may not unpack it on the rope.

Fear is allowed to exist. Fear is a report about physics, and physics does not require a speech. Store it in your hands, where it can improve your grip, or store it in the decision to come down. Announcing it to the ledge is a second activity. The ledge is busy. So is everyone on it.

Joy is permitted on the ground, briefly, and only if it does not become a toast. You did the thing. The thing is the record. A circle of people telling you what the thing means is a reception, and receptions belong to weddings and product launches. Climbing has the parking lot. Nod. Coil the rope. Eat the food you brought. If you need a larger ceremony, you did a smaller climb than you think.

The feelings we see most often are not fear or joy. They are the need to be witnessed, and the need to narrate a project that is not currently happening. Both of these are requests that other people stop climbing and become your audience. The coalition declines on their behalf. Their turn is the point of their day. Your inner weather is not an emergency.

There is a sentence we will not be using. "I just need to process." The crag processes rock. It has been doing it for longer than the coalition, and it does it without a check-in. If something in you requires processing, the car is a private room. The approach can be one too, if you keep your voice down. By the time your shoes are on, the processing is over. What remains is the move.

We have heard the objection that this is cold. Cold is a temperature. Bring a layer. The policy is not cold. The policy is a refusal to make other people's climbing into a place where you put your week. Your week can walk back down with you. It walks very well. It has had practice.

The founding handshake adopted this stance in a single clause, because a second clause would have been a feeling about the first one. None. We have reviewed it. The review took no time. The stance stands.

Bring your strength. Bring your judgment. Leave the group journal at home. Nobody here is going to ask how the route made you feel, and if you tell us anyway, we will assume you have not finished tying in.