Crossing Zion
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About the Author

Keith Johnson has a fast-paced tell-all style that appeals to readers of all ages, back grounds & interests. After working as a mountain guide in the 90s he took his hard earned Sherpa skills to urban schools, Indian reservations and a maximum security prison - anywhere that needed a man of character willing to work where most 'sensible folk' dare not go. Keith has traveled throughout the mountain and desert regions of the west as well as Nepal and Europe. Keith's singular relationship with Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa has proved to be a major factor in both the writing and the way he lives his life. Inspired by his friend, the Crossing Zion tour is dedicated to honoring the memory of the late, great Sherpa, as well as bringing light to the unsung Sherpa climbers and people. In fact, Keith teamed up with Sherpas to form Everest Aid, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Nepal.

Reviews

'Outdoors' - 2015Climbing Back Author brings tales of adversity to life.It's appropriate that Keith Mark Johnson is a climber. The man has spent most of his life hanging on by a fingernail to poisonously addictive relationships, to his integrity, to the roof over his head, to his very sanity. And, of course, to tiny nubbins on sheer rock faces, hundreds of feet from anything remotely horizontal.Johnson's climbing background is the primary reason the Ellensburg resident will be the featured speaker at tonight's inaugural meeting of a Yakima climbing group. But his climbing exploits aren't why he's worth the trip to Glenwood Square.The guy is just plain fascinating. In print and in person.Very few of us have the insight or courage to pinpoint our own weaknesses, much less admit them to anybody. In his book, "Crossing Zion," Johnson is practically screaming out his failures and foibles at the top of his lungs. OK, OK, so it's actually only on paper ... but that's the way his book reads: like a tale regaled at the top of a madman's lungs, full of gesticulating and erratic direction changes and hilarious anecdotes and baying at the moon.Frankly, I couldn't put the thing down. And I'm not even a climber.A caveat: I used to climb a little, but haven't in many years. I also used to run competitively, though also many years ago, and before picking up "Crossing Zion," I was reading a bestseller about runners called "The Perfect Mile" that's already being turned into a motion picture. Frankly, that book was boring me."Crossing Zion" may be a lot of things, but it is never boring."I've never worked so hard and never questioned what I've been doing so hard for years. Man, I don't know if I can make it," Johnson told me after I'd arranged to meet him about Crossing Zion,"I reveal everything in this book," he said. "My soul is just poured out onto paper. I was a lost human being a lot of this time. People would read this [book] and go, 'Geez, I'm not the only person going through this crap.' Climbing is my sanity, my sanctuary."And it has been so to a fault, one he readily admits. Where another person might turn to drugs or drink to escape the pain of a dysfunctional relationship or the guilt of a family failure, Johnson has invariably turned to climbing. As a result, he has lived much more of an impoverished existence than one would expect from someone so obviously intelligent and with such a marketable skill. (The writing, I mean, not the climbing; Johnson has guided professionally, but it certainly hasn't been lucrative.) Fortunately, that vagabond hand-to-mouth, fingers-to-rock-wall lifestyle makes for interesting reading. Johnson says he wrote "Crossing Zion" both as "a soul purge" and as a confessional mea culpa to his two daughters, to whom he has been a part-time dad at best. "I thought, by God, if I drop dead, I want them to know who their dad is the good, the bad and the ugly."The book interweaves tales of climbing trips some humorous and some harrowing into the fallout from his personal life. The characters and dialogue are wonderfully visual, from "the Dude Boys" (young climbing friends for whom "dude" is an essential component of every sentence), to his emotionally mercurial second wife Zoe, to Boyd, the World War II veteran at a middle-of-nowhere cafe who tells Johnson that "human beings are rotten, greedy, selfish bastards" ... who can still salvage a little grace by helping out others along the way.The book's title refers to a 1992 trip Johnson and a climbing buddy made across Utah's Zion National Park, a trek for which they were profoundly ill-prepared. The hardships of that experience essentially become an underlying theme through much of the book: Suppose you are on a journey in which you may not have what it takes enough courage, sufficient water, whatever to reach your destination. Suppose you reach the crux point, at which turning back means accepting failure and taking the next step means you will no longer have the option of retreat.Do you take that step?Can you really control your destiny on a life journey that will throw up one obstacle after another? Will that creek the one your map says you'll cross in 12 miles be there? What if it has gone dry and there's nothing awaiting you out there but dust and doom? Understanding that, if you then take that next step at the crux point, is that courage? Or is it selfishness and hubris? What are you trying to prove? And to whom? Those are the kinds of questions Johnson delves into while "Crossing Zion."Check out this excerpt:Ironically, as an aging climber, an over-developed sense of self-reliance was now the gift and curse of my make-up. I'd learned to avoid a helping hand at almost any cost. I had wanted to be Mel Gibson in "The Road Warrior," walking away from the wreckage, with the sand pouring out of the tanker, wounded and upright, the last man standing at the edge of the desert. And when I strapped on my crampons and grabbed my ice axe, I was that Road Warrior. Thus, climbing became a religion unto itself and the mountains were the church.And with that juice pumping through my veins, I'd turn my back on the most basic element of humanity: asking for help when I needed it. Better to suffer and beat yourself to death than to admit weakness and turn to a friend and ask him to lighten your load. Better to face the fear alone. Climbers don't admit feelings of helplessness. This is the great evil that must be eradicated. Control is everything.And then I got older. And I made mistakes. And there were times, cruel, wicked times, when alone, on my knees, with every known survival tool tried and abandoned, unable to out-think, control, buy, beg, borrow, steal, outrun or out-climb the fear, out would come the prayer. Never was it pre-planned. Never was it forced. Just a primal, reflex, knee-jerk reaction from my soul that said, "Please God, help me." Incredibly, it often worked. Of course, as soon as the impending disaster was overcome by one "coincidental" miracle or another, the cockiness would come back and a sense that I was once again the one in control would return to cloud my universe.Great stuff. And there's much more to recommend about "Crossing Zion."Anybody who followed the 1996 Everest tragedy will be rivetted by Johnson's insights into the late Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa, who felt vilified by Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" article in Outside Magazine, returned to the Himalayas to prove himself and died in an avalanche.Weekend climbers will laugh out loud at characters like "Nick North Face" and Johnson's experiences with high-school-aged climbers at a popular Oregon sport-climbing area, Smith Rock. ("Smith ROCKS, dude!") And, of course, losers of the heart will shudder at the ex-wife who keeps him like a love-addicted yoyo, pulling him in and casting him out at her whim.But ruinous relationships and gnarly rock faces haven't hurt Keith Mark Johnson's ability to tell a tale. See for yourself.Outdoors editor Scott Sandsberry can be reached by phone at (509) 577-7689, or by e-mail at ssandsberry@yakima-herald.com -- Scott Sandsberry, editor of Outdoors Magazine Outdoors Magazine, 2015

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