Sheffield, England //
Queen of the Meadows
Saying goodbye to Sheffield's cooling towers
Date January 2008
Posted July 2011
Posted July 2011
They stood like giant chess pieces, inanimate, resilient, imposing. For your southern-born author, who as a child had turned a knife over in his soft hands at dinner one evening and read the embossed words 'Sheffield Stainless', these giant foreboding towers meant something. Not least if you saw them with your own eyes then it meant you were well and truly in The North.
When I consider some of the things I've done over the last three years, climbing the steeplejacks ladders up one of the famous Blackburn Meadows cooling towers seems a little bit pedestrian. After all it was just someone's journey to work, and a far less arduous task than the installation of the ladders and scaffolding in the first place. But with the rain pouring down and the likely consequences of being caught (the towers stood mere meters from the M1) it was anything but straightforward. Big thanks are due to Angel for ensuring that, after we unexpectedly discovered the ladders one morning, we got back the very same night and completed the climb. Not so long afterwards the towers were finally demolished.
It's hardly surprising that in a world as safe and secure as our own, most people can't understand why anybody would take an unnecessary risk such as this. Such attitudes were reflected in the comments posted when the local newspaper ran a story about this escapade on their website. Indeed the very fact that it was considered newsworthy says enough. If you were one of those people, or harbour similar views, then you might find the following excerpts from Psychology Today enlightening. And indeed if you set your reading standards a little higher than the local rag then feel free to try tackling the full article, which is available online here.
"What we do for kicks, most people wouldn't do if you held a gun to their heads"
Forrest Kenedy, climber, Georgia
Researchers have long known of physiological differences between high- and low-sensation seekers. According to Marvin Zuckerman (psychologist), the cortical system of a high can handle higher levels of stimulation without overloading and switching to the fight-or-flight response. Psychologist Randy Larsen, Ph.D., at the University of Michigan, has even shown that high-sensation seekers not only tolerate high stimulus but crave it as well.
Psychology Today
Salvadore Maddi Ph.D (psychologist) suggests that well-adjusted people are "good at turning everyday experience into something interesting. My guess is that the safecracker or the mountain climber can't do that as well. They have to do something exciting to get a sense of vitality. It's the only way they have of getting away from the sense that life sucks." [Randy] Larsen is even blunter: "I think risk takers are a little sociopathic."
Psychology Today
"I climb so I don't feel like a robot, so I feel like I'm doing something that is motivated by the 'self.'"
Todd Wells, climber, Chattanooga
"There is nothing more empowering than taking a risk and succeeding"
Frank Farley Ph.D, psychologist
To push away from society's rules and protections, [Frank] Farley suggests, is the only way to get a sense of where "society" ends and "you" begin. "Taking a risk, stepping away from the guardrails, from the rules and the status quo, that's when you get a sense of who 'you' are," he says. "If you don't stretch, try to push past the frontiers, it's very difficult to know that."
Psychology Today
Traditional outlets for the risk-taking impulse have been disappearing from everyday life. As civilization steadily minimized natural risks, Michael Aptor Ph.D. says, and as cultures have sought to maintain their hard-won stability through repressive laws and stifling social mores, risk takers have been forced to devise new outlets.
Psychology Today
In an unsettling paradox, our culture's emphasis on security and certainty--two defining elements of a "civilized" society--may not only be fostering the current risk taking wave, but could spawn riskier activities in the future. "The safer we try to make life," cautions psychologist Michael Aptor, Ph.D, a visiting professor at Yale and author of The Dangerous Edge: The Psychology of Excitement, "the more people may take on risks."
Psychology Today
When I consider some of the things I've done over the last three years, climbing the steeplejacks ladders up one of the famous Blackburn Meadows cooling towers seems a little bit pedestrian. After all it was just someone's journey to work, and a far less arduous task than the installation of the ladders and scaffolding in the first place. But with the rain pouring down and the likely consequences of being caught (the towers stood mere meters from the M1) it was anything but straightforward. Big thanks are due to Angel for ensuring that, after we unexpectedly discovered the ladders one morning, we got back the very same night and completed the climb. Not so long afterwards the towers were finally demolished.
It's hardly surprising that in a world as safe and secure as our own, most people can't understand why anybody would take an unnecessary risk such as this. Such attitudes were reflected in the comments posted when the local newspaper ran a story about this escapade on their website. Indeed the very fact that it was considered newsworthy says enough. If you were one of those people, or harbour similar views, then you might find the following excerpts from Psychology Today enlightening. And indeed if you set your reading standards a little higher than the local rag then feel free to try tackling the full article, which is available online here.
"What we do for kicks, most people wouldn't do if you held a gun to their heads"
Forrest Kenedy, climber, Georgia
Researchers have long known of physiological differences between high- and low-sensation seekers. According to Marvin Zuckerman (psychologist), the cortical system of a high can handle higher levels of stimulation without overloading and switching to the fight-or-flight response. Psychologist Randy Larsen, Ph.D., at the University of Michigan, has even shown that high-sensation seekers not only tolerate high stimulus but crave it as well.
Psychology Today
Salvadore Maddi Ph.D (psychologist) suggests that well-adjusted people are "good at turning everyday experience into something interesting. My guess is that the safecracker or the mountain climber can't do that as well. They have to do something exciting to get a sense of vitality. It's the only way they have of getting away from the sense that life sucks." [Randy] Larsen is even blunter: "I think risk takers are a little sociopathic."
Psychology Today
"I climb so I don't feel like a robot, so I feel like I'm doing something that is motivated by the 'self.'"
Todd Wells, climber, Chattanooga
"There is nothing more empowering than taking a risk and succeeding"
Frank Farley Ph.D, psychologist
To push away from society's rules and protections, [Frank] Farley suggests, is the only way to get a sense of where "society" ends and "you" begin. "Taking a risk, stepping away from the guardrails, from the rules and the status quo, that's when you get a sense of who 'you' are," he says. "If you don't stretch, try to push past the frontiers, it's very difficult to know that."
Psychology Today
Traditional outlets for the risk-taking impulse have been disappearing from everyday life. As civilization steadily minimized natural risks, Michael Aptor Ph.D. says, and as cultures have sought to maintain their hard-won stability through repressive laws and stifling social mores, risk takers have been forced to devise new outlets.
Psychology Today
In an unsettling paradox, our culture's emphasis on security and certainty--two defining elements of a "civilized" society--may not only be fostering the current risk taking wave, but could spawn riskier activities in the future. "The safer we try to make life," cautions psychologist Michael Aptor, Ph.D, a visiting professor at Yale and author of The Dangerous Edge: The Psychology of Excitement, "the more people may take on risks."
Psychology Today
