When driving through the Adirondack Mountains we frequently spot brave souls climbing rocky faces of the mountains which seem impenetrable. A sheer face of rock thirty feet high and (from the road below) looking to be flat and without spots to place a foot. Yet there they are, ropes encircling their shoulders, arms extended to grasp the tiniest jut of a rock. I am told that they are thoroughly enjoying themselves.
The technology of climbing is, by necessity, simple and light enough to be transported in the backpack of a climber while dangling from a spot sometimes a hundred feet or more from the nearest safety below. One piece of that technology is a piton (pronounced pee’ton), a small but sturdy piece of metal which can be pounded into a crack in the stone face. The portion left exposed can be used to provide an artificial step toward the goal of reaching the top. There is also a hole in the exposed portion or a metal loop attached, through which a climbing rope can be snaked to provide additional security for the climber.
All of this which I have just shared with you is purely intellectual on my part. I’ve told you before that I get vertigo when standing on a step ladder to change the batteries in the smoke alarms. My awe for the climbers is real, but there is no jealousy attached; I have no desire to climb a rock face on a mountain.
However, I think there is a metaphor hiding in the definition of a piton. How often, when writing, do we come up against a sheer wall of rock which seems impenetrable. It feels as if we have reached a dead end on our writing quest. We can’t go any further because there are no protruding ledges to grasp or step on.
But it is then that we can call upon a piton…a piece of technology which avails itself to become a new step upon which we can place ourselves. The most obvious writing piton is the Save Draft button. It is a chance to step away, take a walk, go do something else for a while, or re-read the portion of material that inspired the piece in the first place. Maybe all it takes is bringing in the trash can or watering the garden to expose new steps on the rock face. Or, maybe when returning to the text it is clear that the insertion of a piton in the script…a new sentence, a better phrase in the last paragraph written, or the elimination of a line that took us nowhere and created the block…which provides us with the incentive and the direction we need in order to continue.
Sometimes for me it is the Preview button. Seeing the post in its near-final stage with graphic in place and its format on the page is all it takes for me to be re-inspired. I get the picture of where I was headed and how I was diverted to a dead end. It is then that the Edit button becomes my new artificial step…my piton…to get me back on the way to the finish of my climb.
A caution is called for. Articles I have read tell me that the piton has become a destructive tool in many cases, destabilizing the rock face of a mountain and causing instability in the integrity of the face. New technology is producing less intrusive pitons which limit that damage. I suppose the metaphorical pitons can become problematic as well, interrupting the flow of a story or moving a piece from being personal and intimate to one which is intellectual and heady. It is a caution worth noting.
It’s too easy to abuse a metaphor to the point that it fails to be effective. I think I’ve just about hit that point. It’s time to use that last piton I always enjoy: Publish.
Photo Credit: Cascade Climber
