Rock climbing : on humans, nature, and other nonhumans

This article develops some contemporary themes in writing about humans and nature through a focus on the cultures, practices, and representations of rock climbing. Although as people our cultural-conceptual legacy weighs heavily on us, and the human-nature and culture-nature dichotomies are not entirely escapable, it is possible to think differently about our interrelations with nature, as others such as Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour have shown. Reflection on rock climbing offers some routes into thinking differently. It illuminates nondichotomous moments in the exchanges between human and nonhuman natural bodies as they encounter and reciprocally encroach on each other. But human and nonhuman natures do not act alone: Other nonhuman entities (e.g., technologies, texts, and artifacts) are part of the networks that open and close possibilities for humans and for nonhuman nature. These other nonhumans afford chances for the reinvention of our selves and the spaces within which we act.