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It’s rare that I write about anyone twice.
I write about the military for The New York Times, and a lot of that work focuses on how a massive bureaucracy with a uniquely violent mission can sometimes mash apart the lives of the people who wear the uniform. Usually, the best-case scenario is that my reporting shines a light, stops the harm, and the people I’ve focused on can go back to living their lives.
Isaac Wright was different, because the life he went back to living was so remarkable. That’s why I have written an article about him for the Arts & Leisure section, nearly four years after I first wrote an article about him.
The first time I spoke to Mr. Wright, in 2021, he had been out of jail a few hours and there was a chance he was going to prison for a few decades.
He was a 25-year-old Army veteran who had learned that climbing skyscrapers and bridges, and taking stunning photographs from the top, gave him the sense of peace and meaning that he needed after a traumatic time in the military. He climbed dozens of structures all over the country. But he was facing multiple felony charges because the authorities saw his escapades not as a practice in self-realization, but as a danger to the public.
When I wrote about that situation four years ago, I was unsure how it would end. I suspected that the legal system would realize he was a nonviolent offender with a clean record, and give him probation. But probation would probably mean no more climbing, and possibly even mandatory therapy aimed at persuading him that climbing was an illness. It was a better option than prison, but I couldn’t help but feel sad at the prospect of seeing a light that burned so brightly snuffed out by the system.
Two years after the first article, Mr. Wright, who goes by the name Drift — a piece of his online handle, @DrifterShoots — texted me out of the blue, asking, “Did you happen to see the crazy double rainbow New York City saw the other day?” Then he sent me a picture: A double rainbow streaking across a bruised, moody sky, with the sun illuminating the buildings of Midtown Manhattan.
In the photo, above the cityscape was a figure, looking not much bigger than a grain of rice, climbing toward the top of an impossibly narrow spire. It was Mr. Wright. He had sneaked to the top of The Times’s headquarters, free-climbed the antenna that soars from the roof and was texting me about it.
Mr. Wright had nearly all of his cases reduced to misdemeanors or dismissed, and he completed a probation. And he had decided, fully aware of the legal risks and against the advice of family, friends and his lawyer, to keep climbing. In fact, he was climbing more than ever. Now the story had come home, and he was on the roof of my employer’s building.
Over the next couple of years, I saw photos on his Instagram from Norway, Brazil, France, Egypt, China, of him always perched on some hard-to-reach, illicit spot, unapologetically doing his thing. It made me glad. I began to realize that the article from 2021 that ended with Mr. Wright facing jail was no longer the full story.
I learned this spring that he was having a gallery opening in May in Manhattan, and knew it was a chance to tell the next part of his story: how a nearly disastrous brush with the law that might have caused other people to step back led to his stepping forward. He continued to do what he loved, fully aware of the very real dangers posed by both law enforcement and gravity.
In April, I met Mr. Wright, now 29, at his new studio, a former horse stable in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where his huge prints, which sell for thousands of dollars, leaned against the walls. We spent most of a day talking about how he went from a 23-hour lockdown to an art career. He eventually led me up an old staircase to the roof where we looked out at the Manhattan skyline, and he tried to explain why, despite all the risks, he never stopped climbing.
“When I was locked up, they tried to destroy the most precious thing — how I see myself. The police, the prosecutor, the psychologists all thought there was something wrong with me,” he told me. “But that turned out to be a gift. It forced me to question everything I was doing, and why, and what I would sacrifice to keep doing it. And I realized it was exactly what I was meant to do.”
As I typed up the profile, it occurred to me how often journalists write about the worst days in a person’s life, but rarely write about how each person gets to decide how those experiences shape all the days that come after. I was writing about Mr. Wright’s photographs, but I realized how he framed his own life was the real art.
Dave Philipps writes about war, the military and veterans and covers The Pentagon.
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