Call us 'Clavins' because we cliff'd - The Chaff with Scott Stephenson

Very early in our investigation, we suspected cliffs. They had been quiet for too long. No suspicious crumbling. No unsolicited jutting. Just cliffs, existing. That’s not normal. That’s not journalism.

 

We kept hearing phrases that pointed to a larger drop-shaped truth. Locals talked about things “going over the edge.” Surveyors looked uncomfortable. The air itself felt sloped. Something was brewing.

 

So we prepared the only way The Chaff knows how. We read up. We asked around. We stared meaningfully at topographical maps until someone told us they were upside down. We began fieldwork. We wore wool socks and serious expressions.
At first, the signs were subtle. Hikers seen carrying ropes for “just in case” scenarios. A troubling number of local expressions ending in “off a cliff.”

 

We assembled the core Chaff cliff team. This meant culling from the staff those with vertigo, fear of heights or unresolved boulder trauma. The remaining few were brave, limber and had strong feelings about escarpment taxonomy. We were ready.
The site we selected had all the hallmarks. Sharp inclines. Natural drama. The kind of silence that sounds like it’s waiting. We brought gear, snacks, two portable thesauruses and a weather-resistant binder of past cliff reviews. Spirits were high. Elevation? Soon to match.

 

The climb began in earnest. Step, test, lift, breathe. Cliff etiquette dictates silence, but we allowed the occasional whispered pun. “This reporting has its ups and downs,” someone said. They were immediately made Head of Metaphors.

 

As we rose, the view expanded. Trees thinned. Winds picked up. One of us claimed to see the curvature of narrative. Another pointed out a shadow that looked like a comma. We pressed on. The terrain grew theatrical. Moss arranged itself like a proscenium arch. Even the lichen seemed to be watching.

 

Roughly halfway up, we found it: a ledge. Natural. Sturdy. Suspiciously convenient. We dubbed it the “Suspensory Shelf” and broke for lunch. Sandwiches were eaten. Notes were jotted. Someone read aloud from an early Chaff column on coastal erosion and cried a little. It was beautiful.

 

From here, we saw everything. The full drop. The way the rock face curled like punctuation. The dark line where shadow met sediment. We also saw the warning. Carved into stone, faded but legible: “DO NOT SERIALIZE NEAR EDGE.” Next to it, a faded drawing of a typewriter teetering on a brink.

 

We took it under advisement.

 

Then came the decision. Should we push higher? Or was the Suspensory Shelf the story? This was the editorial moment. The classic Chaff cliff-call. And we chose the only path available to us: upwards. For truth. For clarity. For a wide-angle shot.

 

That final stretch was steeper than expected. The rock grew less co-operative. One crevice was filled with pamphlets from a now-defunct climbing zine. Another held what looked like an old press pass from 1996, still laminated, still tragic. A chunk of shale featured the unmistakable imprint of a flip-phone.

 

We climbed past it. And then the summit came into view. Flat ground. Shrubs. A real horizon. We were steps away from the top when the ground shifted. A crunch. A moment’s pause. Then, motion. Then, memory.

 

Some say it was the rock beneath us that gave way. Others claim it was overconfidence. All we know is that the cliff did what cliffs do. It asserted itself.

 

And The Chaff fell.

 

Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. Not as commentary. We fell, like a dropped lead, through layers of our own reporting. Past the drafts we never published. Past the lingering footnotes of hubris.

 

As we plummeted, we saw it all again. The pamphlets. The warnings. The shelf. The suspicious squirrel waving goodbye. There was time enough to regret our headline (“Peak Cliff?”) and to remember that we had, in fact, checked “yes” on the release forms.
There was even a brief discussion of what to name the descent. Suggestions included “Vertical Investigative Phase” and “The Sudden Beat Drop.” Neither caught on.

 

We landed, eventually, on our own archival material. Padded by forgotten profiles of mid-range rock formations and one unsolicited poem about chert. There was groaning. There was dust. There was a sense of being exactly where we needed to be.

 

At the bottom.

 

And from there, Part One began.

 

That’s where you came in.

 

Next week, a return to standard cliff coverage, including: the ethics of crag naming and what counts as a bluff.

 

Chaff forever. Cliffs ongoing.