My fear of falling is surpassed in my life only by my fear of stagnation. For all of my adult life I have wandered, unable to take root in one place for too long, even when I have tried to do so. Perhaps my failure to synthesize permanence has been the expression of some latent, subconscious desire to avoid the imprisonments of circumstance. But regardless of any and all efforts, there have been portions of my years, bricks laid heavy as the seasons, during which I have found myself feeling immobilized behind the walls of time.

Winter hangs like a shroud over the days, even beneath the persistent sun of the Front Range. The brightness of morning is belied by the chill of the air, and it is all one can do not to stay indoors, not to seek some simulacrum of warmth through a windowed lens. And yet we burdened by cold must abandon our swaddling clothes with each dawn, and face nature’s refusal to reason, armed only with layers and the iron conviction that these months will thaw.

Andrew Lenec

Andrew Tristan Lenec grew up at the foot of one of the East Coast’s most popular climbing destinations, and has still never touched any rock there. He enrolled at the New School University in Manhattan to study Creative Writing before leaving the city and moving to Hawaii, where he eventually received a degree in Music and was discovered by climbing. After spending time in Australia and the Pacific, Andrew moved to Boulder to pursue the sport and in a futile attempt to sate his wanderlust. He is currently an Instructor at ABC Kids Climbing and, when not working with children, can usually be found in one of the city’s many parks with his nose as far in a Kindle as one’s nose can be, because actual printed books are unfortunately too heavy and cumbersome to travel around with constantly.