Unemployed geographer and rock climber Atlas can't seem to work or climb or even love right—but he's trying his best to learn how. As he ''vans'' his way across the US with his best friend—leaving one woman behind to follow another—he searches for a state of intense awareness called the ''rockhead,'' while struggling to discover what part of his self is purely will, and what part is simply determined. But when he suffers an extreme fall on 3,000-foot El Capitan in Yosemite, Atlas's search for understanding becomes a struggle for survival. To save his injured partner, he has to climb the hardest section of the wall without a rope—and discovers that the ''rockhead'' lies at the crossroads of what is determined, what is will, and what is love: a place within his own heart.