Tides

Nick Bullock Vertebrate Publishing

The memoir Tides is the follow-up to Nick Bullock’s widely read and praised Echoes, published in 2012. The better part of two decades’ worth of alpine climbing in the French Alps, the Himalaya, the Canadian Rockies, Scotland, and North Wales (the author’s home crags) are chronicled. Needless to say the routes are serious and the climbing hard. Bullock is a full-time climber, having saved up enough money from fifteen years work as a phys ed instructor at Her Majesty’s Prison service in the East Midlands of the U.K. It’s an impressive tableau that Bullock has willed into existence: one that that the adventure climber in us might dream about, wistfully or otherwise. Among the many observations that the author makes is that standing beneath one of the grand cours alpine faces in Canada is more intimidating and remote than one might imagine – being relatively close to a highway. There’s certainly no comparing them with their European counterparts, where one is unlikely to have to fight off a charging bear with only a ski pole.

The theme brought forward in Tides is the fleeting, temporal nature of our climbing experiences and the relationships we form while pursuing our passion. What does freedom from a steady job, a committed romantic partnership feel like, is the thread that runs through these pages. At its best, Tides, offers amplified passages of acute awareness of ones self and surroundings. These passages were gained by choosing to travel in waters far from the security of a familiar shoreline.—tom Valis