Fighting my way through Collis’s twelve o’clock feeding frenzy, I spotted John Joline, manager of Dartmouth's climbing gym, at the salad bar, outfitted with his usual two pairs of fuzzy tights and a pockmarked down jacket.

“Oh. Oh, hi. Hi, Kelsey!” John pats my shoulder, straining his eyes two inches from my face. “It’s Lizzy, John,” I laughed.

Despite the blitz-confirmed lunch and a year of casual acquaintance, John never fails to mistake me for someone else. Nonetheless, he beamed as he attentively inquired about my climbing fitness, change of major, and plans for the upcoming months. We paid and settled into an unoccupied room after a brief search; John objected to sitting in Collis Commonground, “Well, let’s just look around. We don’t want to distract anyone trying to study.”

Enthused, John gushed, occasionally stumbling over words, “Oh no, no I haven’t been getting out much, but I have been taking students on these nature walks. Up by Velvet Rocks and such. They’re really lovely, quite lovely.” His focus then shifted from the outdoors to politics, neatly evading the subject about which I had hoped to interview him, namely himself. Animated, but in no particular rush, John is known for his intense discussion of the upcoming elections, which has often spawned many unanticipated detours en route to the cliffs or the climbing wall. Our conversation proved no exception.

John insisted that I sit to his left because he can see and hear better on that side. He explained that he suffers from nearsightedness and nystagmus, a condition that causes his eyes to shift constantly, blurring his vision, which explains his trouble easily recognizing people. A skilled climber, John admitted that his poor eyesight causes setbacks on new routes, but that he feels it an asset with respect to thinking and writing about art--stripping away surface limitations about how he perceives the work.

A 1970 Dartmouth Studio Art major who rowed lightweight crew, John is the Dartmouth Mountaineering club’s proudest asset; he manages the climbing gym, women’s climbing group, and teaches climbing classes. He instills a love for the sport in all his students, solid outdoor ethics, and a strong sense of community that continues to impress climbers from various schools. After one sport-climbing class with John Joline, former three-year heavyweight rower and senior Owen Cadwalader reported, “John's love and enthusiasm for interacting with cliff faces is infecting…he climbs as smoothly as a dancer moves across the stage and becomes visibly excited whenever you talk with him about climbing,” Owen laughed. “Watching John climb and being encouraged by him…turned a frustrating sport into an exciting passion."

John has often regaled me with his story of how a visiting Middlebury student told him how impressed he was that everyone at Dartmouth was so nice. John replied, “Why wouldn’t they be?” Yet I think many of us have him to thank; as both a role model and an outdoor club leader John has helped to build the culture here.

Although to most Dartmouth students, John is a permanent campus fixture often seen in the corridors of Robinson, he only returned in the early nineties. Having U-railed across Europe and received an MFA in art, John eventually settled across the river in Vermont. He credits his staying largely to a string of luck. In addition to the time he devotes to the outdoors club, John teaches art classes Lebanon and pursues his own projects, about 85 of which the local gallery, the Alliance for Visual Arts in Lebanon featured in a 2006 spring exhibit of his work. With no demands, John’s charismatic personality has won him the support and respect of his peers; friends freely offered him both his current housing and a car.

John lives outside Norwich in a shack without running water or electricity. He uses Dartmouth facilities to shower, which he views not as an inconvenience but expediency. He enjoys luxuries many of us are far too busy to attend to between meetings--bubble baths and fancy dinner dates. “Living on the economic fringe allows me more time to pursue my own thinking, writing, art and climbing,” remarks John between slow, thoughtful bites. Asked what his average day was like, John responded, “I don’t really have any average day,” except, he admits, his routine meals at Boloco. The full play-by-play layout of his week includes philosophical meditation, work, teaching, climbing and even nature walks, but never in any particular order.

To John, life is art, and he holds it to high aesthetic standards. He does not set himself a fixed course. He lives an extraordinary life in the present.