The Pink Bench

In January, on my way to Hueco Tanks State Park, I stopped at a pink concrete bench under a Texas Brown Tree, a cottonwood, or a populus if you’re into Latin names. Around 5pm, I watched the light turn the landscape yellow, then orange, then red, and then pink.  As the sun saturated the horizon, I imagined what’d it be like share the moment with someone, to holds hands and feel our fingers locked together. I pictured romance on the pink bench.

Two months earlier I stood in front of a hundred guests at Alex Honnold and Sanni McCandless’s wedding. For three minutes, I spoke about the couple’s love, explaining that marriage required passion and commitment. I projected my ideals and looked to my imagined wife in the crowd. I imagined our eyes meeting as I spoke about love. A month later, the day after my 40th birthday, I traveled to Ayampe, Ecuador for Emily Harrington and Adrian Ballinger’s wedding. They read their vows in front of the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean. My heart faltered again. I felt happy for my friends but conflicted. Thoughts of my failed engagement created waves of emotion as I watched my newlywed friends kiss.

Sanni and Alex, two amazing people, hugging me after my speech. Cait Bourgault photo.

I returned from Ecuador,restless. Maybe it was the holidays, or watching Love Actually, but I needed time alone to think. On the drive from Vegas to Hueco, I listened to podcasts with Dan Savage and Esther Perel. While getting gas on Route 93, I scrolled through TikToks of modern dating advice.  When I stopped in Phoenix, I read The Passion Trap: Fixing an Unbalanced Relationship to doze off. I wanted to educate myself on relationships, to leave Hueco a better man.

A few days after New Year’s, I felt fatigued. I drove from one El Paso hotel to another- all full- before eventually crashing in my van. The aches could have been from multiple days of bouldering. Though I slept for eighteen hours and felt horrible, a rapid antigen test came back negative. I headed to Melon Patch, a twenty foot series of huecos on North Mountain. From the summit, I kept walking towards the wall behind it. At the base, I put on my rock shoes, and started up Sea of Holes (5.9+), another 350 feet of huecos in a shady corner. I recalled soloing it a decade ago with Nik Berry, who pointed out holds and ticked crimps as he climbed above me. Without my friend this time, I searched for each hold as my hands numbed out. I couldn’t feel my feet and was too cold to remember ten year old beta.  I kept climbing, stopping only to warm my hands in my armpits. I topped out, coughed a few times, and walked slowly from the summit of North Mountain back to my relationship podcasts and books.

Me topping out Melon Patch. Sea of Holes climbs the Hueco covered wall just left of the corner system. Amy Bliven photo

The following day, I took a PCR test, which came back positive for COVID-19. An El Paso Airbnb provided a quarantine spot while I recovered. The studio had a king size bed that filled the room except for a three-foot walkway into the kitchen area. Earlier in the summer, my ex texted me when she got COVID. I’d bought her groceries and flowers. When I stopped by our old place, I found her new boyfriend quarantining with her. In El Paso, I worked on not texting her and paced back and forth in the 36” walkway to pass time.

“The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else,” a friend told me. We live in an age with endless dating possibilities. Get an app, swipe right, and match with someone new. Boom! You’re over a breakup. But I found the apps harsh. “I can’t date you. I’m a fangirl of your ex,” one match wrote me. Bumble, Tinder, and Hinge all had similar vibes. Even Boulder, a dating app for climbers, felt grim. I felt too sensitive for the rejection. Finding someone who shared my obsession with climbing sounded nice, but the swiping made me question modern love.

But that’s the current paradigm. Don’t like your current partner? Find another one. Don’t like your second choice? Keep swiping. There are 7.73 billion people in the world and you can date any of them. However, this huge selection creates a paradox of choice. With so many options, it’s easy to have a shallow relationship; when it gets difficult, move on. Love means choosing someone, going through the hardships, and fighting for them when there are other options. Now as Esther Perel says about finding a partner, “The one today is the one who’s gonna make me want to close my apps.”

A few days after my quarantine, when my symptoms dissipated, l started to boulder again and spend time with my friends. After climbing, I photographed Blair and Pete with their basset hound Sam at the pink bench. I shot Amy and Madeline on the bench.  On President’s Day, my friend Marci and a crew of six more women, met me at the pink bench. I wanted to get used to being around women, to be less afraid of women hurting me. I snapped a few group photos and individual portraits on the bench, and left feeling overwhelmed.

An intimidating crew of ladies at the Pink Bench

Just before sunset, flummoxed by all the women, I got lost driving back to Hueco. On a random street, a flock of Texas Grey Birds, rock doves, or Columba livia if you’re into Latin names, flew around a ranch. They swirled through the air, diving, stopping on a fence, then flying again. I grabbed my camera from my passenger seat and photographed the birds.  They landed on an electric wire, spacing themselves evenly, and looking out towards the park. Then a single rock dove landed on the wire below the rest. I was that bird.

The lone rock dove

“We are 1020 Pond parking. 1076 Meddle Detector,” Hueco guide Jason Kehl radioed in as we lugged pads towards East Mountain.  A few minutes later, Jason grabbed the sunny holds and hefted his body above a steep airy climb. A fall would see him pinball down a slab. He quickly stood on top of the first ascent of Gorilla Negra (V6/7).

While he rested, I asked him about his relationships, and how he’d gotten over them. Over the past few months, I’d talked to dozens of climbers about their successful and failed loves. Tommy Caldwell told me about his first marriage, divorce, and second marriage. He offered advice about being comfortable alone. Honnold and I spoke about love and detachment. “You can’t hold on too tightly,” he said.

It all sounded nice but I wondered if it was what men in secure relationships would say. I’d seen Honnold carry his pregnant wife around the kitchen, I’d watched them work on the New York Times Crossword together. I’d seen the small moments where they held each other tightly. I wanted these small moments and also the larger moments, of whispering I love you, proposing in the mountains, and of making grand gestures. I wanted to care deeply and I wanted that same depth of care from a partner.  

 But perhaps that was a skewed view of love that I learned from watching The Notebook too many times or reading too much Shakespeare. Maybe the realistic view of love involved a modern Romeo and Juliet, a pair of detached lovers in an open relationship, who cared about each other, but only a little. Then when presented with the idea of killing themselves for love, they just shrugged their shoulders and upgraded to Tinder Gold.

I searched for something different in Hueco, at least in my climbing. In the past decade, I’d spent around seventy days in Hueco, climbing most of the accessible problems. This trip, my body felt feeble. I’d neglected it post-breakup, I faced the challenge of unsending problems, flailing on old projects, and battling the Hueco bureaucracy to explore new areas. I looked for something new.

On the first ascent of The Pink Bench- photo Jason Kehl

Back on East Mountain, while Jason rested from Gorllia Negra, I dropped a rope down a tall slab nearby. I cleaned the holds, chalked them, and tried the moves. I climbed the right line, which was less of a highball and more of a short solo.  I tried not to hold on too tightly to the iron edges as I smeared precariously twenty feet above a yucca. Then I fired the left line, trying hard on a long lock off as I fought into a scoop. My idyllic vision of love on the concrete bench seeped into the routes, and I named the right line The Pink Bench (V2) and the left line 5pm Sunset (V2).

“The bench was dark brown once,” Jason Kehl told me, relating how the locals bought used paint from the El Paso Lowes to change the color from white, to brown, to blue with a Christmas ribbon, and to its current pink. “It gets painted all the time.”

The pink had seemed romantic. But it turns out, it was just a bench. My view of love felt so wrong and so incorrect. I fought to imagine something better. I thought of how the pink bench should be a place where I could sit alone, watch the sunset, and if someone showed up to watch it with me, that’d be great. If no one showed up, ever, and I spent the rest of my life alone, that’d be OK because that’s the uncertainty of life.

The Pink Bench as the sun set.

Just before leaving Hueco, I heard another story about the bench. The pink bench was supposedly a meeting point for coyotes smuggling immigrants across the El Paso border. I pictured people crossing the border for love. I thought of the people I’d photographed at the pink bench. I wondered who they would have smuggled across the border, who they would have tried to save. I attempted to reconcile that story with the image that fit a detached concept of love. I thought of the pink bench, and the eleven climbers that I’d photographed on it. Had I turned around while taking their pictures, I would have seen the sky turn yellow, then orange, then red and then pink. Had I turned around, I would have watched the sun set with them.