The following is a book review of Spare These Stones: A Journey Through Southern Climbing Culture by Andrew Kornylak, published by Mountaineers Books in August 2025.
John Long is a legendary figure in the world of rock climbing, celebrated for his groundbreaking ascents, literary contributions, and indelible impact on the climbing community. Beyond the rock, John’s storytelling has left an equally profound legacy. He is the author of over 40 books, including the seminal How to Rock Climb series, and countless magazine articles.
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By John Long
In the title essay, “Spare These Stones” (itself a Shakespeare quote), author and photographer Andrew Kornylak quotes photographer Robert Adams (Re, “The New West”) declaring that, “Landscape pictures can offer us … three verities—geography, autobiography, and metaphor. Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring; autobiography is frequently trivial; and metaphor can be dubious. But taken together . . . the three kinds of representation strengthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact — an affection for life.”
In terms of books — and I mean the physical articles we can hold in our hands — many classics are the result of another three verities: image, word, and design. The design is often overlooked because few save for insiders appreciate how art often combines content with presentation, which is what sage design is all about. Excellent photography dies within a poor design, but soars off the page when deftly offered. When both image and design provide a visual superstructure for the written word, and all three verities are top-shelf, the work forms a seamless whole worth close study, which is what Andrew Kornylak and designer Melissa McFeeters have pulled off with Spare These Stones. Here is an art book full of images to get lost in, stories you’ll remember, set in a design that produces not a mere book, but a haunting museum piece. A look behind the curtain. A moment of time forever young, I shit you not.
Photos from the book, Spare These Stones, by Andrew Kornylak
It is hardly surprising that Andrew Kornylak, one of the finest photographers working in the outdoor arena (and one of the first to mash-up skate/street and graffiti stylings with contemporary art photography), has compiled a tome of prodigious images. But the spare, telling prose, rich in anecdotal yield, is what brought the book home for me. And by “home” I mean the gestalt of the book illuminates the humanity and purpose all climbers share who learned the ropes, and came of age, at a home crag or area, as so many of us did. In Kornylak’s case, it is all about southern rock, where we touch the universal by way of the local cliffside. Funny how that works, and in Spare These Stones, it works like a magic lamp.
The “story,” no matter the genre, is always the internal DNA of the viewpoint character(s). And the Southern rock climber’s experience, which comes alive in Spare These Stones, has a feel and patina all its own. I encourage all reading these lines to purchase the book and experience the secret sauce that as Adams reminded, is our affection for life. An enchantment that all climbers, who tied-in young, and came to know firsthand. That internal riptide we feel when looking at photos of our early years, with our crap gear, no money, and our five- dollar haircuts, living on top of the clouds. It might be on a scruffy crag tagged bottom to top, the base ankle deep in rubbish and broken glass. The rock soft and sandy and forty feet high. But the moment hands and feet met stone and someone hit play on the boombox, and our friends started talking that shit, there wasn’t a better place to be on God’s earth. This is the enchantment that Kornylak bottles in Spare These Stones. A silver bullet articulated circa 1898 by British naturalist and wanderer, W.H. Hudson, in his long-forgotten masterpiece, In Patagonia.
Is it not strange that the sweetest moment in any life pleasant
or dreary, should be when nature draws near to it, and, taking
up its neglected instrument, plays a fragment of some ancient
melody, long unheard of on the earth . . . restoring instantaneously
the old, vanquished harmony between organism and environment.
Here is Adams’ “affection for life.” The experience without price of simultaneously belonging to both a scrappy home crag and a fellowship of friends that span the eons and the globe, reminding once again that metaphorically speaking, there is only one rope, and we are all tied into it. I have my friend Andrew Kornylak to thank for reminding me that I grew up with something to love. His book is a testament to that whole, shimmering milieu, served up Southern Style.
Buy SPARE THESE STONES
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