Book Review - A Feeling For Rock

A Beta Magazine Submission

Posted on Wed 21 September 2022
This book review was featured in Beta Magazine in 2021. If you'd like to learn more about Beta Magazine's mission to connect the voices of everyday climbers and elevate women's experiences in climbing and other adventurous sports, please follow on Instagram (@betamagazineclub).

A Feeling For Rock landed on my doormat right when I needed it to. After a weekend of mixed levels of fear and getting frustrated climbing boulder problems, Sarah-Jane reminded why I actually climb. A Feeling For Rock is a fantastic collection including poetry, cartoons, photographs, articles and anecdotes. It is deeply personal; a reflection of climbing viewed through Sarah's own analytical and querying mind, but simultaneously so relevant to anyone at any level of experience within the community. I want to say A feeling for rock is a love letter to climbing, but to do so would grossly diminish it's power. Sarah-Jane Dobson has instead created an eclectic meld of art, wisdom, experience, biography and a springboard for discussion and progress. I don't want to be too extreme when I say this book is a masterpiece - but I truly believe it is.

Each section draws out a new aspect of climbing structured around 57 short chapters titled with a different emotion that rock evokes - from easy ones like 'love' and 'joy', to knottier feelings such as 'vehemence 'repulsion', 'biliousness' and "privilege". For each, Sarah explores her own understanding of that feeling through her experiences, thought experiments, reviews, interviews, tips, essays, articles, drawings - and even the criticism she has faced in the comments section of online publications. We learn about getting older at the crag, and how relationships with non-climbers can crumble or twist. We explore the language of naming conventions, and the colonisation of routes that young Europeans have taken to so emphatically. Sarah does not shy away from questioning the very foundations of climbing practice to see if she can make more space; ushering in new thought, or new ways of doing things.

But Sarah provides practical advice too, and in amongst her musings, peppers advice for new starters by explaining trad climbing, and belaying. For more experienced climbers, Sarah reinforces a slow and caring approach to climbing - not just for yourself -but for everyone around you. We also discover the secret to exceptional climbing. If you read it for no other reason than this, you will not regret it.

My favourite part of the whole book is a short chapter on belaying as an act of love. I find belaying unbearably dull and avoid it at all costs; this chapter really opened my eyes to how important - not just from a safety perspective - belaying is to trust generation and relationship building. My belayer is my closest friend, and I now see her in a completely different light. When we climb, I trust her implicitly and totally. She knows exactly how I like my rope, and can tell immediately if I am becoming uncomfortable- without a word spoken between us. Each time she checks my knots, and I reach for the wall, we learn a little bit more about each other. Our relationship continues to be re-carved, are-energised and affirmed through belaying, and I had never noticed it before. How could I have ever considered it dull?

Sarah does this though. She pulls apart the everyday minutia of climbing and asks questions of both herself and the very essence of the experience. You're bought along for the ride, and after a while, you start a bit of introspection yourself.

The book is warm and welcoming. I'm still very new to the climbing world, and I worried I'd be immediately ostracised by complex terminology, or finicky descriptions of routes I couldn't relate to. But there is none of that here. This book feels like you're sat having coffee with a friend, listening to her talk about the things on her mind. You're both bound by the invisible, twisting rope of shared love, and though you have different shaped experiences, you are invited to indulge in your love, consider it, and interrogate it from all angles. You are welcomed into this world, regardless of your experience, your age or your background. Sarah helps you find your place, gives you a warm hug, and encourages you to look around.

This book has become my manifesto. Not just for climbing, but for life generally. I truly believe even those with no comprehension of climbing, nor any interest even in the outdoors, could find great inspiration and wisdom from Sarah. If you find yourself struggling to find your place within rock climbing, you're not quite sure where you fit, what you want to achieve, why you take part, A Feeling For Rock will have something for you. A truly wonderful book that will brighten your climbing experiences.

You can follow Sarah-Jane Dobner either on instagram (@afeelingforrock) or at her website: website here