Erratica (On Climbing, Language, and Touching Stone)

"Erratica maps deeper meaning onto the rocks we climb with lyric reflections, philosophical explorations, and campfire-caliber storytelling that kept me reading late into the night."—Maya Silver, editor-in-chief of Climbing Magazine 

Part adventure narrative, part philosophical inquiry, and part love letter to climbing and natural spaces, Erratica is a radiant exploration of what happens when a human body meets the earth with full attention.

After Brian Laidlaw climbed El Capitan, Yosemite’s iconic stone monolith, he found himself facing a repeated question: “So, what was it like up there?” It isn’t enough, he knows, to just to describe the sensation of the rock beneath his hands and feet—a climb is so much more than physical movement. 

This seemingly simple question initiates Brian’s poetic quest for the perfect metaphor, traveling from the erratics of his youth in California to the towers of his current home in Moab, Utah. He traces lines up moon-washed faces in Indian Creek and edits his body language under boulders in Joe’s Valley. He lives parallel lives and dies parallel deaths on free solos in Colorado, and eventually, back in his childhood stomping grounds in the Sierra Nevada, he writes and revises routes of his own. 

Along the way, he beckons us into a community bound as much by narrative as by rope. They exchange gear, chalk, and advice as they test each foothold and fissure. Kindred strangers knit into traveling bands of belayers, swapping snacks and cautionary tales. Here, any passing climber holds the ability to shift “spontaneously into the best coach I’ve ever known.” 

Exhilarating and lyrical, approachable yet profound, Erratica invites us to share a rope with this community of climbers, to measure our humanity against the expanse of stone.