Reader,
The following is a letter to one Sanni McCandless, the longtime girlfriend of Alex Honnold. Recently I watched her go through an emotional gauntlet in the documentary Free Solo, a record of Honnold’s campaign to climb El Capitan without ropes. Free Solo captures more than just rock climbing, though; the documentary also tells the story of Alex Honnold’s seeming transformation from a reptilian climbaholic to a kinda-more-in-touch-with-his-emotions boyfriend.
Sanni goes through a gauntlet few of us can claim to have experienced: watching your significant other dance with death. Her role in the film is vital. We feel the pounding in her chest when Alex misses a hold, and the crack in her voice the moment she hears he successfully made the summit. Bloggers and film reviewers responded with sympathy for the emotional toll this must have taken on her. I believe she deserves sympathy, but my perspective on her is a little more skeptical.
Here is what I’d say to Sanni if I could:
Dear Sanni,
You poor thing, they’re saying. Alex Honnold’s girlfriend. The Honnold’s girlfriend, the sugar-smile blonde who swooned for a Spock amongst the adrenaline junkies. You’re being admired and pitied. There are whispers, about how Alex indicated you would fade away like mist off the waterfall of his full-throttle lifestyle. Like all the other girlfriends. He even reveals his wayward thoughts of you as an omen, a “non-climber” whose presence leads to injuries. The media loved talking about this when they interviewed you in early 2019. How does that make you feel, they’d ask, about his stark indifference early in the film. You poor thing, everyone is thinking, and I am not thinking that at all, for I think I know you.
You’re a junkie!
You’re an adrenaline junkie, just like Alex is, but of a different breed. An emotional adrenaline junkie. He gets high off of climbing gargantuan slabs of granite, but you, you’re up there far past him, hanging from the true peaks of human experience, touching the heavens, defying the towering indifference of his heart. You could’ve chosen anyone; let’s be real here. You could have laid down under the stars with an emotional aficionado for the rest of your life. You’re beautiful, intelligent, and bold enough to give Alex Honnold your number in a book store.
You love dating Alex for the same reason Alex loves free soloing.
Don’t you?
You see, my first question to you if we met would be: do you think you and Alex are the same in some way? I would be fascinated by your answer. You would probably use the word “driven” and some fairly ambiguous language spiced with transcendental keywords. However, I don’t believe for a second you would admit to how addicting it is to always be climbing a person. Especially someone who’s lost his fear of death to the point where I wonder, and maybe right so, if he’s on the verge of wanting death in a distant and hidden urge, that perhaps died after El Capitan but lives in all of us, ready to be released.
Your head is probably cocked by now; you’re frowning, and feel like relating to the stuff in there that’s true, but your gladiator’s spirit wants to grapple with that which is false, and I respect that. In the end, I don’t know you. Your secrets are safe.
A little background on me. I’m a new climber, barely 3 months, wandering around a small local bouldering gym with chalk all over my hands, not really sure what to do with myself. I’m single too. You and Alex, you’ve figured out two things I haven’t, and that’s climbing and love.
What I do have, though, is a love for the self-evident joys in my life. My amygdala is fearful and overactive; I am not fearless like Alex. No, no. I am lucky. I savor both the thrill of conquering fear, and the quiet solace in the knowledge that yes, Rich, the risk was worth it.
Who knows, I may change. I am certainly like you two in that when I love something, I go for it with all my being. Perhaps an El Capitan is waiting for all of us, that sleeping giant that will awaken one day and we will be lost in the act of scaling it.
I wonder if that’s who Alex is for you, Sanni.
Best,
– Rich
Richard Freeland 