This beautiful note and video are from Amy McCarthy. They moved me. May they move you.
June 2010
Dearest Friends of Chuck Pratt,
Just about 9 years ago, we gathered on the summer solstice, that glorious long day of light, to celebrate another brightness in each of our lives, the grand and radiant spirit of Charles Marshall Pratt. The evening brought together friends from all over the world, including legendary Yosemite climbers, Thailand travelers, mountain mates from Exum, and bar buddies from Dornan’s.
It was a spectacular setting at the base of the Tetons and a fitting tribute to our dear friend Chuck, who passed without warning one December day in 2000, in the midst of a dream in a Thai bungalow.
December of this year will mark a decade since the world has been without Chuck’s earthly presence. But, he remains a bright light, a beacon of integrity. Even in death he has been the consummate guide, serving as a touchstone for a way of living that embraces simplicity, honor, intelligence, trust and friendship.
While Chuck probably would have eschewed the technological shifts and the frenetic life pace of the past ten years, some of that technology has given me this opportunity to reconnect with each of you, and propelled me to dust off the collection of materials accumulated at the time of Chuck’s memorial. With the help of my husband Forrest, we have woven some of those images together into a tapestry of tribute to a man we both loved and admired.
Sit back. Tune in. Embrace him. Remember. And, share in the journey that is….an Ode to Chuck.
With blessings and gratitude for still loving Chuck,
Amy
Chuck Pratt from amy mccarthy on Vimeo.
1 response so far ↓
1 Suzanne Duarte // Nov 24, 2010 at 10:57 am
I want to thank Amy and Forrest for putting together the Ode to Chuck Pratt. Jeff Foott sent me the YouTube link for it last summer, from which I learned a lot about Chuck that I didn’t know. Since Chuck was a heart friend of mine in the 1960′s in Yosemite and Berkeley, the video brought back a lot of memories of my own profound moments with him. I wasn’t a Camp 4 groupie. I worked in the Tuolumne Meadows coffee shop as a waitress during the summers, and studied English and German Romantic poets at college.
I don’t know how I met Chuck – maybe through Jeff Foott, who I knew at San Jose State and later in Yosemite. In any case, I loved Chuck for his mystical side and his humor. We clicked on the philosophical level. One of my memorable experiences of him was laying on top of Puppy Dome in Tuolumne watching shooting stars and hearing Chuck talk about the cosmos and physics, which he was studying. He introduced me to cosmology! We spent the night watching stars.
He was so ordinary and humble, I had no idea that he was such a star in the climbing world, or that he was so loved and admired by so many people. It was heartwarming to see that he was so loved and admired on the video. But the important point that the video brought home to me was Chuck’s integrity. Besides his humor, which I shared, it was his integrity that influenced me most deeply. That’s why I loved him, and I didn’t even realize it until I saw the Ode video.
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