Jeff Jackson lives in Makawao, Hawaii with his sons Kai and Isaac. He teaches writing at the University of Hawaii Maui College and is one of the owners of Aloha Rock Gym, Maui’s first climbing gym. He partners with the climbing writer John Long on screenwriting projects. Their story, Wandama, is in development with Chockstone Pictures. He’s an active route developer with first ascents of V12, 5.14b, M10, and Grade VI all-free big walls. He’s not active on social media but you can holler at him on his website or read many of his clips at climbing.com.
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Q&A with Jeff Jackson, Award Winning Writer and Former Editor at Rock and Ice
Summit Journal: “As everyone knows, the stories of our lives are the bricks with which we build our true selves.” You wrote this in “A Climber’s Ghost Story, Unexplained,” about the passing of your friend Benji Fink. Turning that maxim to you, who is the true Jeff Jackson?
Jeff Jackson: Did I write that? Nice! I do think that stories are important in building our identities in so many ways — as touchstones, explanations, and ways to organize our lives.
Of course, any story we tell is necessarily fictional since we’ll never capture the essence of a moment by using signifiers like words. Once you reduce a moment to words, the actual experience becomes a reification, not a truth. But that’s OK because, in the best cases, stories can point toward a universal truth like, for example, the fact of impermanence and the painful/beautiful experience of sentience.
The true Jeff Jackson is an ongoing, ever-changing being that’s not reducible to a set of traits, just like everyone. There is no permanent self. I’m not being coy; that’s just how I understand it. I could say that Jeff Jackson is a 61-year-old geezer who likes to climb and, unfortunately,
has to work. I could give you a resume, a list of obstacles I’ve had to overcome, and a history of my life, but that wouldn’t be “true.”
The best, most true answer is that I’m empty of selfhood.
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SJ: You’ve published over 500 articles, but your first story came out when you were 13. What was it about? Has anything about that piece stayed with you throughout your career?
JJ: My first story was published in a magazine for kids called Highlights. It was about an ice storm that hit Parker, Texas where I grew up.
Schools were closed and inches of ice coated tree limbs, which ripped off and came crashing down all over our yard. I got dressed and went outside and everything looked as though it were coated in glass. I remember walking around and marveling at the icicles and frozen grass and weeds. The world appeared transformed; it was a glass menagerie.
This was an early experience of the wonder nature can evoke. I’ve been chasing that wonder ever since, and nature just always delivers.
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SJ: Your first climbing story went to print in Climbing Magazine in 1987, and you’ve basically been writing about the sport ever since. I came to climbing literature a little late, but got the impression that Rock and Ice (where you were an Editor for many years) tended to be more literary and humanizing, which seems to track with your own writing (philosophical bent, an interactive narrator, sincere). In your opinion, how did the two mags differentiate?
JJ: When DR (Duane Raleigh) invited me to edit Rock and Ice (RI) in 2005, one of the things we talked about was how to differentiate it from Climbing. What we noticed was that Climbing was mainly publishing how-to, tips and tricks, short profiles, and focusing on beginner and moderate climbers, and at the same time lowering the paper quality and reducing the size of the mag to save money.
My ideas, in terms of making RI stand out, were two-fold. First, I suggested that we raise the bar on photography and graphics, which, to DR’s credit, we did by going to a large format and paying photographers more money. The other thing I wanted to do was court great writers and shift the focus to storytelling. This is probably what you notice when you look at back issues.
Literary stories with a philosophical bent, interactive narrators, sincerity — that’s what makes a memorable story. I don’t like blow-by-blow beta, tips or tricks, or, worst of all, writers explaining their feelings and emotions in a self-centered way.
Jackson climbing Celestial Omnibus (5.12a), in Potrero Chico, Mexico, an area where he has established countless routes over the years (though not including this one). Photo by Dan Holz.
SJ: As a climber and writer, and someone who gets paid to write about climbing, what gets you to actually sit down and write vs. go climbing?
JJ: Well, I definitely would much rather go climbing. I don’t see myself as a writer. I’m a climber.
For that reason, I’ve never even submitted an essay or piece of journalism to a publication that’s not a climbing magazine. Sometimes pubs will ask me to write something, and I’ll do it, as long as it’s about climbing, but I never tried to make a career out of writing. That was probably dumb since at this point I’ve written hundreds of features, profiles, reviews etc., but I keep pretty busy trying to avoid work so that I can climb as much as possible.
What gets me to sit down and write is the need to make some money. I know that sounds crass, but it is actually true. If I had a trust fund, I’d probably just climb all the time like Johnny Dawes. But then again, I’d probably be fat like Johnny Dawes. I’ve been so incredibly lucky to have editors and publishers and readers who respond to my work and have given me the opportunity to explore this passion for climbing by creating stories that people seem to dig.
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SJ: Hard pivot: do you think about death often? I ask because impermanence is a central theme in many of your articles, and it also features in your piece “Calling All Dirtbags,” in the most recent issue of Summit Journal.
JJ: Death is the universal theme. When you write about death, you grab the reader’s attention. Some would argue that sex (romance) is also a great theme, but I’ll point out that procreation is simply the other side of death. You can’t die unless you’re born, so procreation and death are actually the same thing. If you’re writing about anything other than sex or death, you’re kinda blowing it.
The biggest problem with much climbing writing (and climbing films) these days is the lack of ambition in terms of subject matter. So much content is granular detail about one’s personal experience. Here’s how I felt on this five-move boulder problem. Here’s how I overcame my fear of failure. Here’s how I dealt with a setback. Too many climbing writers are myopic — they can’t see beyond the boundaries of their own body and mind in terms of storytelling.
You can, of course, use your experience to evoke a universal response, but give me a theme/experience that’s as universal as death. There are only two experiences that you’re guaranteed in this life: birth and death. Writing that deals with these universal experiences transcends genre.
I do think about death, doesn’t everybody?
Maybe I’ve had too many close calls in the mountains. Or maybe I’ve read too much Zen. Or maybe I’m too sensitive. Or maybe I’m just old and feel the end creeping up. I’m 61 so I’ll be dead soon. We never know how long we have, but we damn sure know that the end is coming. If you don’t think about death, then perhaps you should. Contemplating death and impermanence has a way of reordering your priorities.
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SJ: If I may, in many of your pieces, there seems to be something you want the reader to take away. I wouldn’t necessarily call it moralistic, but perhaps encouragements or koans for contemplation. Are you hoping the reader engages further with your text and ideas?
JJ: I would absolutely love the reader to engage with my text, but more important to me is that the reader enjoys the piece.
These days, when everyone is busy and algorithms dictate the content that appears in front of people — content that’s customized to a reader’s specific tastes and interests — writers are lucky if anyone even reads their story. My goal is to write something that has no extra words, no extra ideas. I try to be succinct and hopefully come up with something that has some depth, but mostly entertains.
Secondary to that, but also an outgrowth of that desire to entertain, is the thematic element or deeper point to the essay. A good essay will have a deeper meaning that gives the reader something to chew on. Moby Dick is about a guy hunting a white whale, but it’s also a story about revenge. That’s the difference between plot and theme, and I do hope my stories have both.
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SJ: Some of your more recent pieces circle around fatherhood. Are you writing these days, in some sense, for your boys?
JJ: Absolutely everything I do is for my sons. That might sound like hyperbole if you don’t have kids — or maybe you love differently than I do — but I wake up, go to sleep and dream for my boys. Kai is 18 and Isaac just turned 15. I can honestly say that every story I’ve ever written is for the people I love. That sounds incredibly corny, doesn’t it? But my sons and my girlfriend, Jess, and my parents and dear friends are the readers I pretend to be when I’m editing my work.
Jackson on the cover of Rock and Ice, 264 (July 2020), one of the last printed issues of the magazine.
SJ: Continuing one of today’s themes, impermanence, what have we lost with the departure of climbing magazines like Rock and Ice and Climbing? As a counterpoint, is it possible that we have gained anything?
Great question! I see a big problem with a lack of gatekeepers for content. Now, anybody with fingers and a keyboard can publish their work — release it into the world. Some people release doves into the world, but some people release shitbirds. There’s something to be said for a vetting process. Good editors are invaluable.
Another problem is that writers (photographers, artists) readily give away their work, and that makes it incredibly difficult to make a living as an artist. If you give your work away for free, then your work is worth nothing. Think about that. So now you have to try and monetize art by blogging or making videos. These forms are inherently shallow as I discussed above. The result is a lot of slop (AI and otherwise). In that environment, the best work often disappears under a pile of… slop.
Have we gained anything? Well, you can now watch the move-by-move beta on every climb Anna Hazelnut has ever done, and it’s very entertaining. (Substitute any famous climber who uses YouTube as a way to fund their climbing…) What else have we gained from the loss of print climbing mags? Um…
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SJ: You’ve published many articles, essays, poems, short stories, and screenplays, developed around 1,000 routes, and are older than Basho was when he came to the end of his own “narrow road to the deep north.” Integrating these loosely connected ideas, if you had to choose one lesson learned across the disciplines of writing, climbing, and life, what would it be?
JJ: Practice the art.
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SJ: And, lastly, what can Summit Journal readers expect to read from you next?
JJ: I’m working on a profile of my soul brother Duane Raleigh who was the Publisher and Editor in Chief of both Climbing and Rock and Ice for a few decades. He is hands-down the most interesting and accomplished guy I’ve ever met. The stories of his close calls and cutting-edge ascents on rock and ice would fill a book, but he’s way too humble to ever speak about them. Luckily (or unluckily), I was his climbing partner for a decade, so I can lift the lid and let out some of the ghosts.
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Feature Image: Jeff Jackson climbing Sancho Panza (5.11b) in Potrero Chico, Mexico, 2018. Jefe was one of the early route developers of this now-famous destination, beginning in the early 1990s. He even published the original guidebook for the area, Mexico Rock, in 1999. Photo by Jess Chambers.