Nurturing Your Creativity, Will You be Ready When Inspiration Strikes?
“Wooo! Welcome to the shit show!”
– Ken Tuach, Simms Valley, NL.
Ken Tuach high atop the frozen waterfalls of the legendary Simms Valley, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
Inspiration is sudden brilliance. It comes in many forms, and if willing, we can be ready to receive it when it strikes. It is intangible, by its very nature it cannot be forced, but it can be cultivated. The call to act creatively might seem random like the universe is just throwing flaming curve balls at a blind monkey with a bat, but I believe that analogy gives chaos too much credit. Inspiration, while never a guarantee, can be nurtured.
My hands are balloons throbbing inside my gloves. I knew it was coming. I was hoping it would not. Exhausted, I swing my axe at the wall and find gracious purchase in the ice. Above me, I can barely make out Ken’s silhouette between the swirling clouds of snow. He is shouting something, it feels important. All I hear is the wind. Another rush of pain surges through my fingertips. Now I’m screaming, and that’s when the first wave of nausea hits. "Well, I’m properly hooped now", I think to myself. Sometimes referred to as the “hot aches”, this incredibly painful sensation occurs when your hands warm up after a period of extreme cold – Climbers affectionately give it another name, the “Screaming Barfies” are legendary among those willing to spend a season kicking ice. I have a theory that most legends feel less legendary at the moment, and this moment is no different.
I remember the first time I decided to climb a mountain. I was eleven. My grandfather owned a scrapyard located behind our house. As kids, we could lose hours in the maze of old steel, broken glass, and tire caves. Raised on Transforming robots and Hot Wheels, this was our Disneyland. I can’t prove it, and the adults will tell you differently, but I swear my cousins and I would spend days erecting colossal replicas of those animated Robo-warriors. Entire summers devoted to building elaborate pulley systems scaling nearby trees to finesse the finer details of my champion’s custom paint job. My fascination with climbing came quite early. At the defiant age of seven, vertically challenged, and constantly craving sugar, I was making a name for myself around the playground as a guy that could climb the cookies out of any grandmother’s kitchen. As I got older my need to get vertical only grew. I needed a bigger challenge, I needed an Everest. Kitchens and dump bots were one thing but a mountain was an entirely different enterprise. A real wall, now that was serious business. It required a solid plan, adequate supplies, and an actual peak to summit.
My list was small but considered. I would need rope, pegs to anchor myself to the wall, and a flashlight. My rope? The yellow nylon sort you find supporting any number of half-finished jobs found in a backyard. Raiding the family tent for the pegs, I came up a few shy of my estimated number of ten. I decided to bolster the ranks with sharpened tree branches. I grabbed my authentic Rambo emergency flashlight, shoved my knitted socks into rubber boots and steamed out the front door towards glory. With any luck, I could be up and down before supper, where I would entertain my family with my astonishing feat over a second helping of dessert.
In the absence of actual mountains, or even large hills, I marched toward the highest landmass I could think of. My grandfather was also in the excavating business. Dotting the periphery of the junkyard were several large pits. Most dug from the side of a slope exposing a rocky wall rising from the mud. In the shadow of this gravel pit, frayed nylon rope running the loops of my corduroys, I took the first steps toward a lifetime of questionable safety.
Twenty-five years on, this memory flashes through my mind as I hang from a frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet in the air, my hands screaming for attention. Why do I keep doing this to myself? I spit through clenched teeth. Only a few more feet and I’ll be face-to-face with Ken. Perhaps he has answers. Reaching the anchor, I drive my tools into the frozen waterfall and start massaging my hands back to life. Ken shuffles over and greets me with his trademark ear to ear grin. “Wooo! Welcome to the shit show!”
I want to argue, to rail against his optimism, but I can’t. He’s right. This is why we came here. Looking past him, the valley reveals itself, as a small window in the weather passes overhead. Forgetting my hands, the cold, and the height I reach for my camera. Exhausted and battle-worn, hanging from ice screws, I am primed, ready for inspiration to strike. As the snow whips around us, I frame one of my oldest climbing partners and friends against the deep winter backcountry of Western Newfoundland.
“What should I be doing?" he asks.
“Nothing,” I shouted back. “You’re already doing it!”
Cold, scared, questioning life choices, this is the state I often find myself in when inspiration strikes hardest. It’s not the struggle that evokes the muse, it’s the joy despite the struggle – Ken’s enthusiasm in the face of nature’s wrath, that devilish grin. Passively waiting for inspiration is a fool’s errand, acting in expectation of inspiration is the business of a serious creator. By intentionally seeking out novel experiences, the pleasant and the uncomfortable, we can help coax the genie from the bottle. It comes down to “hours in”. Show up, know your craft, triple check your knots, and let go.