chance encounters in the american southwest

This autumn was a quiet one, and with our doors mostly shuttered, the goings on at 225 N 4th St bore little resemblance to the bustling hive of activity of days past. We spent lots of time with each other, harvesting the last crop of the season, carving pumpkins, getting the rocket mass heater up and running, and hosting fam dinner theme nights (our latest and greatest, Goth Night, was a smashing success). Yet for as much as we’ve grown together, we’ve felt apart from the community and everyone in Marquette with who we shared our home, bouldering cave, and greenhouse. After nine years of friends, climbers, family, and weary travelers tramping through the door, the MCC misses good company.

Most of our current occupants moved in after the onset of the pandemic and can only imagine our home as a hub of companionship and community. December, however, brought a reunion and a reminder of the nature and function of the MCC.

As soon as classes let out for winter break, two current coopians struck out for the sandstone cliffs and canyons of the southwest. Brandon, our current president, met with a couple of high school pals to take a road trip that would land them in Red Rock Canyon while I (Fischer) joined climbers Micah, Will, and Zoe and set out for the same crags. We left with vague notions of meeting up with Ian Girard, MCC founder and patron saint, but we had no concrete plans. All we knew was that we’d be spending lots of time breathing in desert air and forming calluses under our fingers. 

Through chance and good fortune, four different MCC presidents had united in Red Rock within a week of our arrival. These four were Ian, now living in Salt Lake City, Ivan Swart, who currently lives in St. George, Utah working in wilderness therapy, Bryce DeMers, the most recent former prez who just moved to Moscow, Idaho, and Brandon Caltrider, our current captain and commander. Bryce I first saw as a dark outline on the horizon—Micah recognized him as he approached through a field of boulders at Kraft, having just driven down from Oregon with a car full of climbing gear and two dozen squash. Ian and Ivan pulled into camp a few days later, Ian taking a nearby site while Ivan laid out his sleeping bag on the cracked ground beside his car.

During two weeks I spent in the desert, our paths wandered and intersected. Ivan and Ian would tackle Solar Slab while I went along with Brandon to boulder and Bryce and Micah explored Joshua Tree. All of us went to jam hands and feet into cracks at Yin and Yang while rock exacted it’s revenge on joints and skin. In the evenings some of us would share a fire and exchange stories, providing a window into past iterations of the MCC.

In those few days living alongside people who had helped to build the greenhouse I ate from, construct the bouldering cave I climb in, and grow the community that I was surrounded by, I began to appreciate the impact that almost of a decade of cooperative living has had. Ian, Ivan, Bryce and Brandon are all teachers and guides, taking time to help and encourage others and foster in them the same love of climbing and the outdoors. 

Even though it’s a little more difficult for us to do that at the moment, it’s encouraging to think of all of those who have passed through the MCC and those that will in the years to come, operating as a self-sustainable living and learning environment that serves as a model for a conscientious community.