Erratica

From acclaimed singer-songwriter Brian Laidlaw, a transformative interpretation of the art of climbing.

After Brian Laidlaw climbed El Capitan, Yosemite’s iconic stone monolith, he found himself facing a seemingly simple question: “So, what was it like up there?” It isn’t enough, he knows, to merely relay the sensation of stone beneath his hands—not when his poet’s sensibility translates elevation into metaphor one ascent at a time. And so, he begins a poetic exploration, chronicling his climbing journey from California’s Erratics to his home in Moab, Utah.

In Sierra Nevada, he “traces the lines” of moon-washed sandstone. In Lake Tahoe, he “revises” routes between the granite crevices of Lovers Leap. In the Flatiron scrambles of Colorado, his first free-solo venture, he muses, “I want to write the poem of this boulder, to give its line expression by way of my body.” Along the way, he beckons us into a community bound as much by hardship as by carabiners. Together, they exchange crash pads, chalk, and advice as they test each foothold. Kindred strangers knit into traveling bands of belayers, sharing meals and cautionary tales. Here, any passing climber holds the ability to shift “spontaneously into the best coach I’ve ever known.”

Exhilarating and lyrical, approachable yet profound, Erratica invites us to clip into a community of climbers, to measure our humanity against the expanse of stone.