Summary:
Broken by an abusive relationship, Emily Meg Weinstein impulsively tries rock climbing on a California road trip, following strangers into the vertical world. Soon, she is consumed by her addiction to the freedom she feels when she’s up on the wall. Holding on to the rocks, she is free from societal constraints and expectations, free from her own sorrows and longings.
Raw and dark, but also funny, Weinstein describes the steep learning curve of becoming a climber, spending weeks at a time sleeping in the back of her Subaru, and a long, dark night stuck on top of a mountain. As she ascends, Weinstein faces her demons, finding power and grace in risk and adventure. Like Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, but in the vertical, or William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days, if lived by a Jewish woman from Long Island, Turn to Stone tells the story of a journey into nature that becomes a crucible of self-discovery.
Against a tapestry of van-dwellers, anarchists, and Jedi-like Stonemasters, Weinstein explores a world where each leap of faith is an existential lesson. From living on the edge, stepping into the unknown, and falling through thin air, Emily learns to forgive her own failures, heal her deepest wounds, and find courage in the face of fear. Throwing herself at walls of stone, she learns what it means to be human. Fitting her body into the rocks’ broken places, she makes herself whole.
Review:
I really wanted to like this book. It ticks a lot of the boxes that would normally make me enjoy it: it’s set in the outdoors, it’s a memoir of experiences in nature and wilderness, it delves into the culture of those who make outdoor pursuits their passion. And when Weinstein writes about climbing, the book is at its best. The descriptions of the act of ascending rock are stellar. Many readers will not have had the experience of hanging from a rope a hundred feet off of the ground with your own strength and your climbing partner as the only things standing between you and splatting on the ground, and you’ll get a taste of that here.
But to be honest, a lot of this book just pissed me off. I think the author wants to sound like a bad-ass rock climber even when she’s a learner, or to sound like the anarchist she claims to be. She keeps interrupting the narrative with rants about religion and politics that come out of nowhere. One minute she describes how it feels to physically exert herself while rock climbing, and the next she’s talking about patriarchal religion and how she spits at America’s “blood-soaked flag”. She doesn’t believe in property but rents in the Bay Area. She espouses the “dirtbag” culture but flies to visit friends in New York. She talks about Israel committing genocide but seems to conveniently forget that when she wants to sleep with a former IDF soldier. She denigrates female-only groups but talks about going on girls’ only weekends. She calls park rangers “tools” and breaks rules right and left. She smokes weed and then climbs, which could endanger herself and others.
I don’t have a problem with a nomadic life, but you are not the only person in the world, and your experience doesn’t trump everyone else’s. I can appreciate that her subsuming herself into rock climbing was beneficial for her, and I’m happy to see more attention getting paid to women in a sport that seems traditionally to be more male-oriented. If you can overlook all of the ranting, the hypocritical behavior, and America-bashing that seems to come up all too often, you’ll find some good sections where the sport of rock climbing really shines. If the negative parts are deal-breakers for you, look elsewhere.
