Hi, I'm Willow Belden, and you're listening to Out There.

This is a podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories in the Great Outdoors.

On this episode, we have a story about love and fear and rock climbing.

The story takes us from the windswept prairie of Wyoming

to the towering cliffs of Colorado and Utah.

It's a story about pushing yourself to overcome your fears.

And ultimately, it's about what happens

when you don't share your partner's obsession.

I'll let writer Stacey McKenna take it from here.

So I've got a confession.

It's the kind of thing I simultaneously want to tell everybody and nobody. And I should say most of the time I tell nobody.

But I'm going to tell you.

The confession is this.

I climb because my husband climbs.

It's kind of embarrassing, right?

We met, we fell in love.

He was really into rock climbing.

I wasn't.

And now, for the past nine years, I've been doing this sport for him.

Funny enough, climbing could have ended our relationship right when it was really getting going.

Mike and I met in 2000. We were in Rollins, Wyoming, the small highway town in the bleak and blustery

sagebrush desert.

...