Beacons of Badassery — Dierdre Wolownick

Dierdre Wolownick is a badass on multiple levels. She is the author of several books, a musician and conductor, and has taught five languages in places around the world. She is also the oldest woman to climb El Cap - which she did with her son, iconic rock climber Alex Honnold, when she was 66. And she climbed it again to celebrate her 70th birthday!

Her memoir, “The Sharp End of Life,” chronicles the journey that led to her starting to climb at age 59 and the lessons learned from her pro climber son and long-distance runner daughter. After reading the book, I promptly bought a copy for my own mom, and then reached out to Dierdre to interview her.

Here’s our conversation about following your yes, understanding real fear versus perceived fear, the strength of knowing who you are, and much more (edited and condensed for clarity and length).

One thing that really struck me in a post on your Substack was this: “When the cosmic circles that drive my life collide with others in the universe, I always shout, ‘Yes!’” And that seems to be how you got started climbing – and ended up on El Cap!

That philosophy really resonated with me because I’ve always tried to live this way, which is how I found myself moving to Colorado on a one-way plane ticket having never set foot in the state before because I had fallen head over heel hooks for climbing.

But it seems to me that saying an emphatic yes like this isn’t as common as it should be for a lot of people. Why do you think you follow your yes while many people seem to struggle to do that?

A couple of reasons. I've thought about that a lot.

The biggest, probably the most forceful, most overwhelming one is the media.

If you are 6, you're supposed to be able to do this. If you are 20, you're supposed to be able to do this. And you're supposed to wear this. And you're supposed to take this drug. And if you're 30, you shouldn't be doing this. But you should be doing this, and people believe that – that's the sad part.

That's the part I don't understand. They buy into that because they're bombarded with it from birth, cradle to grave, they're bombarded with that message.

We’re at an advantage, my family and I, because we didn’t have television. And if you’re not bombarded with that message, it never occurs to you.

It just doesn't occur because we are natural creatures. We're outdoor creatures. Humans are natural beings. And that is taught out of us. In school, we're made to sit still, not move, pay attention.

That’s the main thing. The other is within that framework of being bombarded by, “You have to do this. You have to do that. Don't do this. Don't do that.” Within that framework, we're taught to fear.

You should fear growing old. You should fear getting wrinkles. You should fear this and that. And that's learned behavior.

We're not born that way, but it is learned. It's ingrained in us from cradle to grave. We get this message, fear this, fear this, and then take a drug for it, and then take this drug for it.

We're bombarded with that message, “You're not sleeping. Well, take this drug. It'll make you feel better.” That is so wrong on so many levels. And yet that's what makes money. And that's what runs our society.

It's a never ending cycle. And the only way to fight is to turn it off.

In your film, you said, “You can talk yourself into or out of anything, you have to decide which way you want that conversation to go.” But it seems like most people are better at talking themselves out of things.

How do you talk yourself into things when you are hearing these voices? Even if you turn it off, because you're still going to hear it. You're going to see billboards. It is in our society.

So how do you manage to to talk yourself into things instead of out of them?

That's a process. It doesn't happen overnight. But you have to decide – at some point in your life, you have to decide if you want to be in control or not. That's basically what it comes down to.

Who's going to be in charge of your life?

Is it going to be the experts on the radio or on TV or on online? Is it going to be the experts telling you what to do, which drug to take, which exercises you shouldn't do because you're too old? And all this nonsense.

So you at some point have to decide who's going to be in charge of your life. And that's not taught anywhere, and it’s not encouraged anywhere.

The drug companies want to be in charge of your life. The clothing companies want to be in charge. The marketers want to be in charge of your life.

But you have to have that conversation with yourself.

A way to ease into that conversation is to keep a journal. That's the best shrink in the world.

The easiest way to ease into that conversation about who's in charge of your life is to explore the question in your journal. Your journal is unforgiving. Your journal tells it like it is.

That's probably the best piece of advice out there, to start talking to yourself in your journal. And that's where you can really figure this stuff out.

Have you been journaling your whole life?

More or less. And I would not have survived the marriage, the non marriage I had, without my journal.

A journal is the best shrink in the world, and it can help you figure out anything you need to figure out.

Speaking about fear, your son, Alex Honnold, is one of the most famous climbers in the world, thanks to the movie Free Solo. I always hear people talk about how Alex must have no fear to do some of the things he's done.

Alex has fear just like the rest of us. He’s worked on it all his life. He worked on it and worked on it.

You talk in your book about different situations that scare you, and in your film you stated that “fear comes from not knowing.” How do you handle your fear and work through it? And has what causes you fear changed the more you climb and do things that were once scary?

I was terrified at the beginning.

But you have to be able to distinguish between the two types of fear first. And most people never get to that point because it's not encouraged by the media or encouraged by anybody, really.

But there are two kinds of fear – that real fear, you hear that snarl of the saber tooth tiger chasing you. That's real fear.

The rattlesnake.

You hear that rattle, you should pay attention. Fight or flight, or do something.

The other kind is perceived fear. And that's what afflicts most people is the perceived fear.

Perceived fear is what limits most people.

They're not sure whether it's real fear or perceived. So let's just go with the real, just in case. So they act accordingly, as if it’s a real threat to them. There's so many examples of that in everyday life.

I have a friend who can't drive over a bridge. She knows the bridge is safe. She knows she's not gonna fall into the ocean. She knows. Nonetheless, her perception is telling her that all these horrible things can happen.

It's like with my son. What I imagined was going on out there when he would leave on an expedition, it bore no resemblance to what actually happens. And that's true for most fears.

At one point in your film, you talk about how you were at the top of a climb while the others in your party were setting up ropes, and you were thinking, “I can't help with anything, because I'm too scared.”

When I got to that first ledge where they were all hopping around the ledge doing stuff, one of them took off their harness, and it was a big ledge. Nonetheless, that big ledge was 200 feet up, and my legs were hanging off, and it was terrifying.

I sat there until I could convince myself that, well, it's not terrifying for them. So what's the difference?

And that's the difference. It was my imagination.

True, if you fell off that ledge, yes, it would be very, very dangerous, but I was not going to fall. I was attached three different ways. I was attached to this wall. I was not going anywhere. And they knew that, and I knew that.

But I had not yet convinced myself of that. That it was only a perceived fear. Once I did, it started to go away.

But that's the big thing about fear. A lot of it is warranted. People say, oh, I could never climb. I'm afraid of heights.

Well, duh! If you have half a brain you should be afraid of heights. But it's not the height that you're afraid of. It’s the falling off that.

So once you're tied in - and like in the gym, I had the strongest climber in the world on the other end of my rope. Once I internalized this message, I knew that nothing could happen. I might fall 3 or 4 inches, but that was about it.

*Dierdre with son Alex Honnold, on a route ironically called Lurking Fear*

You talk in your book about how, basically, you were putting your life in your son's hands when you started climbing. How do you handle letting him take charge of situations when he's more experienced?

And has experiencing that fear connected you on a different level with him? You're not free soloing El Cap, but you're feeling a similar kind of fear, just on a different level of climb.

The very first time I went out climbing with my son was at Lover’s Leap in California. It's up from here (Sacramento) about an hour, and it's in the Sierra at about 6,000 feet.

There are two parts – a smaller hill and then a bigger wall just across the trail from each other. We went on the bigger wall first, and Alex led, of course, and we did this 3 pitch thing.

It was a zig and a zag – you start over here, go up one pitch, go across, and then go up the rest.

It was so hard for me. So hard, so scary, and I didn't know anything. I had only been climbing maybe a month or so, maybe two or three months. But we did it, and I knew he had me.

At one point though you go up, and then you have to cross the face horizontally. I'm at the right side of this traverse against the slabby wall, and the thing you have to put your toes on is like this wide [gestures with fingers very close together], and my toes don't bend, and they're very fragile.

I look at it, and think, “This is all no way. I can’t walk across that.” And there's nothing to hold. It's just slab. (Editor’s note: Slab is the worst!)

And I looked at where it finished. You know where this traverse finished. It's a corner, a right-facing corner, which is like a wall. So if I came off, my toes came off, I would swing into that wall.

We were there for a very long time.

I was very patient, and I tried and tried, and I finally got through it. But that's not the story, though I was in that frame of mind already, so I was terrified.

We got to the top. It's 400 feet, and it's a big mountain all covered in trees.

And Alex, as I popped up, over the top, exhausted, he said, “Okay, mom, you're okay getting down by yourself. Right?”

I wasn't too sure what that meant. By myself?

He says, “Yeah, I wanna go try something.”

I don't know. He treated me like a baby. I knew nothing, you know.

But he said, “You can get down by yourself, right? Just go down through the woods over there. Just keep the wall on your left.”

I did not know at all what I was doing. And I got lost. There were these big slabs you had to slide over, and to me that looked like I was off trail. I went down the whole shoulder of this mountain by myself, thinking all the way, I'm off trail. No, this can't be a trail, this can't be a trail. Climber trails are often pretty weird.

I finally got down to the bottom. I was a wreck by then, mentally, thinking, what is he trying? He's up here by himself. He has a rope, but he doesn't have a partner. What's going on?

Actually, before I got down, a little before I got to the ground, I’m thinking, “Oh, my God. He's going to go down that by himself.”

Now this is like 15 years ago, and I'm thinking, “Oh, no, I shouldn't have let him go. I’m his mother, I should never let him go. What was I thinking? How stupid can you be?”

I didn't know what he was back then. I didn't know what he was capable of. Nobody would assume that anybody's capable of that.

So I got down to the bottom, absolutely wrecked, rushing as fast as I could, imagining seeing this body splattered on the ground.

And I got back to the base, and he's standing there chatting with a friend of his, just chatting over coffee. He had down climbed it – had down climbed this purely vertical wall.

I was beside myself. I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything.

I just let them chat, and they chat, and I just listened and tried to absorb some of the vocabulary, because I'm a language person. I speak a lot of languages, but didn't yet speak that language. I was trying to pick up what they're talking about.

I was looking up at this wall thinking, “Oh.gosh! What did I do? How could I let him do that?”

I know I couldn't let him or not let him do anything. He's in charge.

So he finished talking to his friend, and I congratulated him on what he had just done. He was really elated that he had done it, I could tell. And his friend was quite incredulous, too.

And his mother was wrecked.

At this point, we're in this gully between the two walls I mentioned before. And Alex had heard me talking about how someday I'd like to learn to lead. I didn't really realize what it meant yet, but I knew that was the next step,

So Alex said something offhanded like, “Oh, would you like to lead a climb?”

And I was like, “Oh, yeah, you think I can? You think I can?”

So we walked around this other formation. It's called The Hogsback, and there's this 3-pitch climb, not for my son, but for most people. It's about two to three hundred feet total, and it's kind of leaning, it's not vertical, and it's very blocky. There are all kinds features, and it's a crack climb, though you don't need to use the crack if you don't want to.

So it's everybody's first trad lead. And I knew that was what was available in the region. I knew I'm gonna lead Knapsack Crack! I was so excited.

But just getting to the base is really hard. It's really sketchy. If you misstep, you'll go tumbling down many hundreds of feet, so that alone messed with my head.

So we got to the base of the climb, and I'm trying not to think about what's below it, and I got ready. I'm going to lead. I'm going to do my first lead!

And Alex looks at his harness…you know who Alex is. He did El Cap with no gear.

He took off 7 pieces of gear, and he held them out, and said, “Here, this is all I have. Use it sparingly.”

Use it sparingly. What the hell does that mean?

So I look up at the wall like, “Oh. Well, maybe I could put one there and then one there, and then go back down and take the other one out.”

So I started up. And I was too new to know that was dangerous. I was too new to know. He shouldn't have done that, you know, I didn't know anything.

I feel like that's a thing that happens a lot. You don't know what you don't know when you're starting.

Exactly. I was so lucky that day.

You don’t know how to evaluate it. He did, though, but he was on such a different plane of existence than the rest of us. To him this is like walking on the sidewalk – which he has said on numerous occasions.

So I said, “Okay, he thinks I can do this. I'm going to do this.”

I started up, and every time I came to the perfect placement, I'd look down and say, “no, I'm gonna need that later,” and I'd keep going. So I basically ran it out.

The first pitch ends on a big tree. You sling the tree, and I got to the top, and I knew Alex could just walk up behind me. But I was practicing, so I slung the tree, and I belayed him up, and all that stuff. He was probably giggling the whole way up.

And then I did the whole thing that way. I had 7 pieces of gear, and I knew that I'd need three pieces to make a gear anchor. That leaves me with four pieces to do three pitches.

This story needs to be out there. It gives you an insight into Alex's head, too, I mean, to him this was SO easy. How could it possibly be dangerous?

That's the difference. You didn't know how to evaluate it. And he, in theory, did. But he was so far above, he didn't really know how to evaluate it for you.

Exactly. He does now. He does. He was young.

And I survived it. I finally made my three piece anchor and got it all together. By the time, I got everything ready to go, Alex just kind of popped up behind me.

Like, good job. Good anchor, mom.

Good effort. That's his phrase, “Good effort. Good effort.”

It evolved after that. But that was the very first one. And that was kind of good – not training exactly, but it was a good thing to make me face.

I learned that I could free solo Knapsack Crack. I didn't want to, but I could if I had to. And I did have to.

So fear comes in many shapes, and you have to learn to evaluate whether it's real fear or perceived fear. And I didn't know this back then.

You started climbing at age 59, and became the oldest woman to summit El Cap at age 66, then summitted it again at age 70.

I got started at 35, which is old for climbing. But I feel like I found it at the right time for me – when I needed the physical outlet, when I needed this community. Do you feel like you found climbing at the right time for you?

No. I could have been a force.

I was a climber when I was a little kid, but climbing wasn't a thing back then. Nobody ever heard of it, and and I was a little girl. I was supposed to wear dresses, and I was supposed to behave myself. So we climbed lamp posts, and we climbed trees. We climbed buildings if we could.

I was a really good climber, but I wasn't supposed to. You climb a lamp post in a dress, well, the little boys can see your underpants, you know, stupid things, so I gave it up, and then life took over, and I was a teacher, and I was a mother.

So I could have been a real force. And I loved it, but it wasn't in the cards for me.

Are you still glad you found it now?

Oh, yeah. Heck, yeah. I wish I'd done it earlier.

I would have suffered less because I’d get all these pictures of him [Alex] in magazines and online. And I’d see these things and think to myself, “Holy crap, that looks dangerous. Is he really doing what I'm thinking?”

I always assumed that I was interpreting the photo wrong. Because I’d look at that, and say, “No, nobody could do that. I must be reading it wrong.”

I guess my mind was protecting me. I would just put that aside. And I did that for years.

Do you have any advice for people who are getting into climbing when they’re older? Whether like 35 or 40 or your age getting into it? If they don't have Alex as a son?

Yeah, I had that big advantage. It is a big, big advantage.

Don't look at the magazines. It's all lies! Perfectly formed young male bodies – don't look at the magazines.

One thing I read – I can't remember who said it – but when she was growing up, she didn't see anybody out there who looked like her.

So what? So what? Oh, people say, I have to have a role model who looks like me. Bullshit.

Just go out and do it. If you want to climb, go, climb. If you want to conduct an orchestra, go conduct an orchestra, do it. (Editor’s note: Dierdre founded and conducted an orchestra in Sacramento.)

Why do you have to have somebody else to hold your hand and show you how to do it. Just go do it!

In your film, your daughter was quoted saying, “Something I really admire about Mom is that she's never let other people's (or her own) conceptions of limits actually limit what is possible for her. It's been a great gift to grow up with her as an example of a strong and powerful woman.”

What is your definition of a strong woman?

A hundred years ago, they called it a flinty woman.

It's somebody who knows them self one hundred percent. You cannot be a strong person if you don't know who you are.

And the best way to find that out is in the journal. You can talk to a shrink or good counselor; those are helpful as well. But you don't want other people's views to cloud the issue.

You want to figure it out yourself, so that you provide your own answers.

And if you don't know who you are, one hundred percent, you cannot be a strong woman, cannot be a strong person.

You're gonna waffle. You're gonna be wishy-washy about certain things because you're not sure who you are or what she would do in that situation.

Strong has a lot of different meanings, but it comes from the basis of knowing, of understanding exactly who you are – who you are, what you want, and what that will do for you and for others.

That basically is the underpinning for mastery. And if you're gonna be a strong person, mastery is kind of your goal.

This is where Alex had an edge over the rest of us. He knew when he was born what he loved to do, what he wanted to do. He knew he was capable of doing it, and he knew exactly what it would do for him. And he never, ever wavered from that.

That's why he is what he is now. He never wavered from that.

It drove the rest of us crazy because we didn't understand. We didn't understand what he was capable of, and it’s so hard to raise a kid like that. Oh, God! It was hard!

If I'd known then what I know now about him, it would have been a lot easier, but I assumed he was a normal one year old or a normal two-year-old. But a normal two-year-old can't do one-arm pull-ups on the swing set!

It makes you intolerable to other people, but that doesn't matter. It's only to yourself that we're talking about here.

You can't be a strong person if you don't know one hundred percent who you are and what you want, what you need, and where you're going, and what it will do for you and for other people.

This is what I've learned from raising Alex.

Massive gratitude to Dierdre for sharing her perspective and experiences – and for demonstrating that it’s never too late to try something new!

Read more from Dierdre on her Substack and follow her on Instagram @dierdre_wolownick_honnold. Also, be sure to check out her book, The Sharp End of Life, and watch her film, Climbing Into Life.