Very happy to have been present when Alex Honnold visited Somerville Bouldering in 2019. The women on stage strike me as, well, being in a moment that most women and men only dream of. Alex, on the other hand, reminds me of a dying breed... perhaps that of the character of Clay Bell from Guns of the Timberlands or maybe Logan Cates from Last Stand at Papago Wells. Not in a "draw fast and make the first shot count" sort of way, mind it. But in a.. can teach us about how to get out of -- and in Alex's case, get into AND out of -- a pretty awful situation sort of way. Incidentally, the character of Junie Hatchett in Last Stand at Papago Wells has festered in my mind since I first read the book as a teenager growing up in Madurai, India:
