Originally read at the Celebration of Caleb on Nov. 18th at All Souls Gathering, Shelburne, VT.
You may have recognized one of the songs that Colby played on the piano earlier as Für Elise. There’s a story behind this song. One weekend over the summer of 2013, when Caleb was taking Organic Chemistry at Harvard, we rendezvoused at Camp Ladue for a weekend of water skiing with Winslow and Mary Anne. After the morning ski, I lost to Caleb in 500m races on the rowing machine and we fiddled around on the piano. In his classic Caleb way, he learned how to play most of Für Elise beautifully over the course of a couple hours, despite not having played any music in the last 4 or 5 years. From then on, Caleb could, and would, sit down at the piano at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge or at a HOP piano somewhere on the Dartmouth Campus and play the song when the opportunity arose. And it always sounded amazing.
It was hard to put words together for this. Caleb lived such an incredible life and had so many unique relationships that it would take me a lifetime to do any justice in describing the life he lived, and even then my words would inevitably fall short. So, to spare you all the pain of listening to me ramble for hours, I’m going to narrow my scope and talk about a few things that stick out to me about him.
Caleb was my closest friend, my mentor in so many things, my skiing partner, my climbing partner, and my all around adventure buddy. I went through all of my photos recently, reliving some of our adventures, and I realized that the only times that I’ve ever even bothered to take photos have been when I’m on some trip with Caleb. Those were the times that I looked forward to every year, especially when the post graduation 9 to 5 began to dictate how much time I could spend being a dirtbag. To truly understand our friendship though, you have to remember that Caleb was fiercely competitive. As am I, although I’m not half as talented or smart as he was. So naturally, our friendship was a love-hate one. He was better than me at literally everything and I frequently referred to his talent as the “bane of my existence”. Despite this never ending competition of who could be better at any challenge we encountered, of which there was no question who would win, we enjoyed every minute of it.
In recent years, we struggled a few times climbing together because he had progressed far beyond my ability and I was struggling to keep up. This September in Yosemite, we had a rough stretch and had to talk through our frustrations with each other. After I told him I was tired of having to climb things that were way too hard for me, he told me that he was frustrated because he knew I was better than how I was performing and that I just had to trust myself more. I didn’t realize it until I started thinking about what I was going to say today but now I realize that he believed in me more than I ever believed in myself. That was something that was so special and so unique about Caleb. No matter what adventure he was on or who it was with, whether you were learning to belay for your first time or skiing the Ford-Stettner on the Grand Teton, he believed in you and would push you to do the things you didn’t think possible, because he knew if you just trusted yourself, you could do all the things that you never thought were possible. There is no doubt in my mind that he is the reason why I’ve been able to do all of the things I’m most proud of in my life. He was my inspiration, my source of energy, and the voice in my ear telling me to push harder. I owe him everything and it frightens me to think about how much I’m going to miss him.
The next thing I’d like to share with you all is something Caleb told me one day while we were driving to Rumney. I can’t completely remember the context but we always used to get into some shenanigans there and I think this was his way of saying don’t be an idiot. It’s something that Winslow used to tell him and Arlin when they were growing up. “Don’t be careful, be ready.” When he told me this he said it as if it was something he told himself every morning, and it all made sense to me as a fundamental concept that helped the little Caleb turn into the man we all know today. Caleb was always on his toes and ready for whatever the world was going to throw at him and he never approached any challenge timidly. And to be fair, his idea of “ready” was usually, “bring it on, I’ll figure it out”. And he always would. His idea of ready was not a set of tools he needed, but an awareness that he had the intelligence and skill to handle whatever the world was going to throw at him that day. He was ready for anything and there’s no person I’d rather have with me when shit hits the fan than Caleb.
The last thing I’d like to share with you is a quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that my boss and mentor sent to me a year ago. It has always reminded me of Caleb and will forever inspire me to be more like him. I hope it might provide some insight into his brilliant mind.
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
