My sister just told me about 9/25 (Dolly Parton Day), and I know I may have missed the bus this year, but the following are reasons that all climbers should look to celebrate the greatness that is Dolly Parton.
(For the uninitiated, 9/25 is a wink at “9 to 5”. What a way to make a living!)
I’ll say up front that when we lost Dolly this August, the world got a little less sparkly. But Dolly never struck me as someone who’d want us moping around, so this is a celebration, rhinestones, glitter, and all.
Reason #1: She is the patron saint of the reading list.
In 1995, Dolly started the Imagination Library, which mails a free book every month to kids from birth until they start kindergarten. As of this summer, it has gifted more than 332 million books across five countries. Three hundred and thirty-two MILLION! I have trouble finishing five.
She started it as a tribute to her dad, who couldn’t read. She called him “one of the wisest men I’ve ever known,” but believed that not being able to read “probably kept him from seeing all his dreams come true.”
Reason #2: She was a philosopher, whether she’d admit it or not.
Speaking with a philosophy background, I can say without a doubt that Dolly could hang with the best of them. Heraclitus had rivers; Dolly had umm, Dolly had charm! Plenty of Dollyisms translate directly into Climbish:
- “Storms make trees take deeper roots.”
- “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain!”
- “I’ll never harden my heart, but I’ve toughened the muscles around it.”
- “A peacock that rests on its feathers is just another turkey.”
- “Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”
- “It costs a lot to look this cheap.” (Honestly, this last one should be the motto for Patagonia)
And then there’s my personal favorite: “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” What a legend!
Reason #3: She loved the mountains that made her.
Dolly grew up in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, one of twelve kids in a cabin she joked had “two rooms and a path.” She said the Smokies had “a heart of their own,” and she put her money where her mountains were. In 1991, she helped open the Eagle Mountain Sanctuary at Dollywood with the American Eagle Foundation, and over their 35-year partnership the foundation released more than 400 bald eagles into the wild.
When wildfires tore through Gatlinburg and Sevier County in 2016, she set up the My People Fund, which sent $1,000 a month to more than 900 families who had lost their homes.
She also said that “mistreating Mother Nature, that’s like being ugly to your mama.” Leave No Trace has been trying to say that for decades. Dolly just said it better!
Reason #4: She has routes. Plural.
Did Dolly Parton climb? As far as I can tell, no. Did she climb the charts? Obviously. But climbers have a way of honoring the things they love, and Dolly made it onto the rock.
- There’s a route called “Dolly Parton” on the Death Fall Wall at Q’emlin Park in Post Falls, Idaho. According to the local parks department, how it got its name is “a mystery that seems as old as Dolly herself.” (I’d like to think she would have gotten a kick out of that line.)
- In Central Oregon, there’s a V5 boulder called “Jolene,” named because the song was stuck in the first ascensionist’s head at the time. According to Mountain Project, it features “fun little moves and crimps.”
How to celebrate 9/25 like a climber (for those of us planning ahead to next year)
- Donate to the Imagination Library, or sign up a kid in your life. Bonus points in September, which happens to be Imagination Library Month.
- Go send Jolene. Or try. Or at least sing it to your belayer until it’s stuck in their head!
- Get outside somewhere with trees and eagles, and leave it better than you found it.
- Rhinestones on the chalk bag. Non-negotiable.
- Take her advice: “If you see someone without a smile today, give ’em yours.” That goes double for the new climber at the gym staring at the auto-belay.
Dolly once called herself “just a working girl.” Well, she’s clocked out, but the rest of us still have plenty of work to do: reading, climbing, being kind, and figuring out who we are, on purpose. That sounds like a 9 to 5 worth showing up for.
See you next 9/25. I’ll be the one on Death Fall Wall in rhinestones.
