I don’t know why it’s so hard to be thankful. And I don’t mean like seeing a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. I mean like being a turkey and seeing the day after Thanksgiving. I don’t mean in a “gee thanks” kinda way. I mean in a wellspring of teary blubbering at the blessings that have graced your life.

I don’t know why when surrounded by opportunity, I still focus on the obstacle. I don’t know why when graced with so much potential I only see the costs. I don’t know why when in my reflection others find beauty, I only see the blemish. I’ll begin to obsess; I’ll stare and stress and press and pick at those parts of my life until I’ve managed to turn my face as red and scarred as my soul.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been stressed lately. I’ve been unmotivated and insecure. I’ve been battered and bloodied and bruised and yet the only fingerprints I can find on the club are my own.

I don’t know why it’s so hard to be thankful.

At the very least my country gives me one day a year where I’m forced to realize just how asinine it is to wallow in want when you could be and probably should be rejoicing.

It’s become a bit of a tradition around here, the Thanksgiving letter. The statement of for what I’m thankful. I’ve been debating this a lot lately, and it’s been tough, as this has been a tough couple months. It’s been hard to see what I’m thankful for. So I think this year I’m going to spend a little time on who.

In 1996 I met Gary at my gym. He was an exceptional athlete, usually climbing with his wife, and, honestly, he never gave me the time of day. He was too busy climbing to be bothered. Subsequently, it came as more than a surprise when he suddenly asked me if I was interested in joining him on a climbing trip to the Owens River Gorge. With only a handful of trips to J-Tree under my belt and a few twitchy leads in the gym, I seemed the least likely choice for a partner. As Gary was one of the most talented climbers I knew, already leading well into the 5.12 range, not to mention the coolest guy in the gym, what with his pony tailed hair, his former-bodybuilder delts, and his utter disinterest in well, most everything that wasn’t interesting, I was positively astonished that I had been invited to join him.

As it turns out, Gary and his wife had recently had a baby boy, so climbing trips were only facilitated with a third partner. Basically, he needed a babysitter.

I think somewhere between my willingness to follow him up near anything in the Gorge and that moment when he looked down from the anchors of "Show Us Your Tits" and saw his son napping quietly on my chest while I lay on my pack in the spring sunshine of the Eastern Sierra, Gary and I became friends. I’ve been climbing with him since - and for the last four years, almost exclusively so.

But in Gary I have found far more than a rope gun and occasional belay slave who has encouraged me and supported me and coached me relentlessly on all my toughest ascents. I’ve found family and the person who has been arguably and consistently my best friend since this young man went west eleven years ago.

Gary grew up in Canada, a natural athlete who excelled in nearly every pursuit. An Olympic alternate in 1976 for the Canadian swim team, a member of the 1980 water polo team (needless to say, he doesn’t have much nice to say about President Carter), and an ex-champion bodybuilder. He has degrees (and frequently advanced degrees) in education and philosophy and psychology. He red-points 5.13 at age 43, and he didn’t even START climbing until he was 33. He even has the two most well adjusted, well-behaved children I have ever met. Ever. And he still has his hair.

Fucker.

But what inspires me most about Gary isn’t the fact that he’s smarter than me. Look, in my career, EVERYONE is smarter than me. It isn’t that he’s a better athlete. In my circle of friends, almost everyone was a collegiate athlete, and there are at least three Olympians. To put it bluntly, I’m the LEAST athletic person at my gym.

What impresses me most is his unrelenting, unwavering, utterly unflappable sense of self-confidence.

Gary approaches every decision, right or wrong, with poise and confidence. Not with arrogance or trepidation. He sees the risks and accepts them. He walks boldly, and in every part of his life, he climbs.

Gary has always been this person. You can see it in the way he carries himself. In the way he has lived his life. It’s made him successful at almost everything he has set his mind to doing. It isn’t without cost. For sure, he has made mistakes, and he has his scars (eleven surgeries in six years). But those scars tell the stories of a life unafraid.

Gary has been like an older brother. He has been the one person I would trust the most if, when out on the rocks, the shit really came down. I know that with Gary as my partner, when presented with real risk, real danger, I could rely on him to keep his head together, to make hard decisions, and to do everything possible to get us both out alive. He’s the friend who leapt off a cliff rather than face an oncoming avalanche. And survived both the fall and the trek out. He has found the presence of mind to aim for the dirt in the midst of a 50-foot ground fall. He has kept his cool in the face of life threatening run-outs on the rock, grizzlies in the Canadian outback, class six waterfalls and bone shattering rapids, and impossible corners on his motorcycle.

And he’s the one person who, when I took the longest falls in my life, both physically and emotionally, always held my rope fast.

So thank you, Gary. Thank you for your otherworldly patience despite my regular histrionics on any number of climbs. Thanks for not just booting me off the cliff in frustration when I start in with those histrionics. Thanks for convincing me to swap my stupid, sloppy, stretched out climbing shoes on what would become my favorite on-sight. Thank you for getting me to the hospital when I landed on my bean, and thank you for getting that same bean to the top of Black Velvet Canyon despite my concussion and the imminent thunderstorm two days later. And thanks for being the one person who called me daily and got me out of my house and out of my head when I most needed it.

Your friendship and your coaching has meant more to me than you know. I’m a better climber and a better person because of it. And for that, I am truly thankful.