The Bird - Jim Bridwell

The Bird, because climbing is like flying... this idea goes with us along the broad climbing lines of this demanding book, where the opening lines on the inside front cover leave no room for doubt: Jim “The Bird”  Bridwell was for thirty years the strongest American climber, and one of the best in the world. Reader beware! This is not an easy book, perhaps because, like an unwanted child, such a complex subject as climbing proved hard to bring up. Written four-handed with his friend Giovanni Groaz and edited by Michele Ricci, the text suffers slightly from a certain stylistic stumbling, which is easily got past if you are really interested in understanding the personality of “The Bird”... A man of whose inner life little shows through, few statements about himself, few about his own character, his own behaviour.
Much can be sensed about this exceptional man if you are willing to listen to the statements that flow from the facts and from the feats he actually accomplished.

“ Uncertainty (doubt) is the enemy of success. It is a ghost that slips in beneath the layers of the conscious mind. Riding the wreckage of past failures it comes back to the surface to annihilate concentration. But what does this have to do with climbing in Yosemite? “

That is who Jim Bridwell is: few words, a lot of action, no room for the luxuries of the soul. Fear, hesitation, uncertainty... are facets of one and the same coin, which we shouldn't worry about, especially when climbing in Yosemite, there where ... “a certain sense of insecurity, which can potentially become fatal, is what makes climbing an adventure”.

Here we take note of a time now lost, a touch of “Alpine style”, when Bridwell himself admits that “equipped with primitive gear, the climber at the start of the sixties ventured into hostile vertical territory relying only on his mental capacities, his technical skill and his courage”. There is no doubt, as mountaineers and expert hikers know well, that the human being counts for far more than the technical gear he uses to climb.

Before our eyes we have an essential collection of slides from Bridwell's life, a collection of stories cut to the bone, from which emerges a certain reluctance to show his most intimate, most personal thoughts, but from which the lessons in style cannot escape. The Bird is a Gentleman with a capital “G”:

“The aim of climbing had two faces. Getting to the top of something, a spire, a pinnacle or a face, was one, but the more important one was how you got there. There were rules about how the game was played, and these set climbing apart from other sports. The rules weren't written in a book but rather... “  we would say handed down from one generation to the next (Ed.).

The Bird, not at all like reckless Icarus who flew too high, has always been a man of great prudence, as we have also read in his own words: he was aware of the risks he ran along “the line that divides a mountaineer's daring from stupidity … as thin as a razor's edge”.

Just one very brief hint at Bridwell's inner workings... when he talks about the conviction that was forming in his mind. We are talking about 1975, when his friend Frost had convinced him that pure technical difficulty was not enough; there had to be something else in climbing, a level of commitment and adventure that made it spiritual.

A “black & white” book, free of the commercial Technicolor you sometimes find in certain books that are too calculated, too carefully designed to be sold rather than to be read.

Further information about the book

Publisher: Versante Sud
Authors: Jim Bridwell – Giovanni Groaz – Michele Radici
Pages: 304 + 16 black and white photographs
Price: €19.00
ISBN: 9788887890761

Where to buy the book:
Libreria Bellisari – Mountains, hiking, trekking, climbing and …

Other leading figures of the vertical world tell their own stories in Uomini e Pareti 2.

Another book devoted to a great climber is Topo di Falesia by Jerry Moffatt.