Читать книгу The Sharp End of Life - Dierdre Wolownick - Страница 11

IF YOU’RE GOING TO conquer a monster wall like El Capitan, you have to have a damn good reason. My friends in Sacramento were too polite to ask me outright. “Why? You retired from teaching; you can rest now. Read the books you always said you had no time to read. Write some books. Why this? At your age?” But it still came through in all the things they didn’t say. I recognize it, because I’ve asked all those questions myself.

Eight years before I stood at the base of El Cap, when I was fifty-eight, I asked my son to take me to the indoor climbing gym where he trains. A bout of tendinitis was keeping him from climbing for a while, so it seemed like the right time to start on my modest goal: to see what he was up to. To learn the language of climbing so that when he came home from one of his adventures and told me excitedly about what he’d done, I could: a) understand what he was talking about, and b) wisely choose my reaction. The vocabulary of climbing is so specialized that often I didn’t quite get whether the adventure he was relating was a triumph, a mishap, a day well spent, or a disaster. And I wanted to know. I wanted to be part of his life, to share his triumphs as well as his disasters.

People had begun writing about him. An occasional ad for climbing shoes or gear, or a feature article, would be accompanied by a photo of Alex on a granite wall, or having breakfast in the van he lives in as he travels to his next climb, or just looking over a cliff into the void. Small articles featuring him or one of his climbs trickled into our house. He must be pretty good, I thought as I placed copies on the coffee table and on a shelf in my office. After the first few, it seemed important to save them for him. The term “archive” didn’t occur to me until years later. At the beginning, it was just an unusual collection that embarrassed him and made his Grammie proud.

So that day, at the gym with my son, my goal was to learn as much about his life as I could, and maybe make my lumpy, uncoordinated way up half a wall so I could understand what was involved. Although Alex couldn’t climb that day, he could belay me.

Dealing with my fear of heights is definitely going to be a big part of this, I thought as I struggled into the unfamiliar harness. I’d been up many skyscrapers in New York City and remembered viscerally the twisting in my gut any time I approached an edge, a railing, whatever I perceived as the end of safety. Even thick glass didn’t deter the feeling.

So I began the first climb with trepidation and a frank acknowledgment of limits. I was thirty-four years older than my son, who was already an adult; he was babysitting me. My chicken arms were weak, my body was flabby, and I knew I must look silly and awkward to him as I struggled up the artificial wall. But those thoughts fell away in a few seconds. Then all that existed was the wall, the handholds, and the tiny chips I could push against with my toes to get taller and reach higher. Only the next move.

I tried to remember to use only the same colored holds for hands and feet, as Alex had instructed me. When I reached the top of my first route and exultantly slapped the metal bobbin, it took several seconds for the thought to occur to me: I was forty or so feet above the floor, hanging on a skinny, little rope—and having the time of my life!

I looked down (I shouldn’t have been able to do that) and smiled at Alex. That fraction-of-a-second glance linked us, bonded us in a way I’d never expected. This was what he’d been up to all these months and years. This exhilaration, this thrill that coursed through me was just a tiny bit of what must drive him, what he must feel when he ventured out onto real rock. It reminded me of how much I’d always loved climbing on things when I was little. Trees. Lampposts. Fences. Buildings.

I climbed twelve routes that day, each one all the way to the top. I didn’t know, then, how unusual that was. Now, years later, I’m happy if I get in seven or eight climbs in a gym session. The routes I do now are harder, of course, but back then they were all hard. All new.

THAT FIRST DAY ALEX took me to the climbing gym, it was just the two of us. And then he left. Off on another adventure that would probably wind up in a magazine somewhere. For weeks, that afternoon replayed in my mind. Each time, I felt the same rush of excitement, of rediscovery. I’d loved climbing as a kid—now I knew I still did. How had I let myself forget?

For the next month, my mental replays were a mixture of longing and fear. How could I go back to the climbing gym without Alex? I didn’t know what I was doing or what anything was called. He’d explained it all that day, but the intervening time had erased a lot of that knowledge. I knew, though, that I could learn the gear, the knots, and the vocabulary while seated at my computer.

That wasn’t what kept me away.

Each time I walked back to my office after a day of teaching, I saw the photos and posters of Alex on a wall outside my door. I had been on a wall, too—a small, artificial wall, but a wall nonetheless—and the intervening month had left me feeling bereft. Fifty-eight, lumpy, out of shape despite the running I’d started a few years back. My roles—as mom, teacher, freelance writer, musician, and property manager—defined my life. I spent my days seated at a computer, in class, on the phone, or doing chores. I had no time for yet another life, especially one that demanded youth and fitness.

But then I remembered my afternoon with Alex . . . and it got harder and harder to remain the responsible adult. The mom and the teacher both wanted to go climbing! So one day, I wore pants that I could climb in to work, tossed a T-shirt in the car, and, after my last class, I headed downtown instead of home. Before I could chicken out.

At the counter, I rented a harness and special climbing shoes. They were stiff and hard to put on, but the rubber coating would help my feet stick to the tiny holds I’d need to use to push myself upward. I carried my gear into the main climbing room and sat down on a small set of metal bleachers. All over the sculpted plaster walls, people hung on colorful handholds in various contortions, creeping upward. Some shouted as they moved. Some stopped for a while and seemed to be thinking. One young man fell off the roof section suddenly and swung. I gasped. He dangled on the rope while his partner lowered him slowly to the blue foam surface at the base of the climbs.

They were all young. They all had perfect, thin bodies and back and shoulder muscles that rippled as they moved. All of them.

I looked down at my pudgy legs. Moved my shoulders and knew full well that nothing was rippling behind me. Jiggling, maybe, but definitely not rippling.

But I had driven all this way. Shame to waste the gas.

It took several tries to remember how to put the harness on. The waist was simple enough, and I managed to buckle that. I knew how a harness looked when someone was wearing it—but there were more straps than I seemed to need, and they hung in all the wrong places. The loops I thought should be circling each thigh . . . didn’t. It resisted all logic, a humbling reminder that even a simple thing like a harness wasn’t intuitive yet. I finally figured it out, just before deciding to go ask for help.

Once I’d conquered the harness and put on my shoes, I fiddled with the belay device I’d rented, trying to trigger some memory of what Alex had showed me. I hadn’t belayed that first time, only climbed, so I’d never used one. The young man from behind the counter came out to the practice ropes to watch me to prove to him that I could tie in as a climber and knew, at least in theory, how to belay. He gave me a temporary card to certify that, and I stepped a bit closer to the climbing area.

Then arithmetic stopped me.

It takes two people to climb, one on the wall and one on the ground, belaying. The climber’s rope is looped over a bobbin at the top of the wall, and the other end is threaded through a device on the belayer’s harness. If the climber falls, the belayer locks off the rope, stopping gravity from taking over. After that, the climber can dangle until he’s ready to either get back on the wall and try again, or lower off. Then they switch roles. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

So if I wanted to climb, I needed a belayer. But as the old saying goes, to have a friend, be one. To find myself a belayer, I’d offer to belay for someone. So I walked around the perimeter of the climbing area, looking for groups of an odd number.

“Would you like a belay?” I said timidly to the first person I saw who was waiting for his two friends to finish a route. He did, and I explained how new I was. His name was Mark. He helped get everything rigged properly, and started to climb.

I gripped the rope as hard as I could, suddenly smitten by the awesome responsibility of the belayer. Everything else was pushed out of my mind. I couldn’t even think of my climber’s name. If he fell, his life was in my hands. Literally. I pulled the rope back around my hip, the way he’d shown me, then eased up my grip and tried to feel his weight, tried to anticipate his moves. With each stretch of his arms upward to the next holds, I took up some more slack in the rope.

When he topped out and leaned back to be lowered, I was startled by how much a person weighs on a rope. It lifted me off my feet a bit. I regained control and got him safely to the ground. Then I remembered to breathe.

Now it was his turn to belay for me.

As I stepped up and grabbed the starting handholds, I was overwhelmed trying to recall everything Alex had told me, showed me, explained to me. So instead I just took a deep breath and started to climb. One hold at a time. No thoughts at all except for the next hold. And the next. And then I was at the top.

Until that moment, the only time I had ever entered the zone, where no thoughts are allowed in, was when I was playing the piano, painting, or running. Normally my mind is a constant whirl, focused on many things all at once. But sitting on a piano bench or in front of my easel, I’m often surprised by how much time has passed, unnoticed, when I get up again. Running was the same—I’d lose track of how far I’d gone or how long I’d been out.

Climbing—even on a small, introductory-level artificial wall like this—made me dig so deep that nothing else could penetrate my mind. This was problem-solving, figuring out how to get from one point to another, using length, body weight, and angle of throw for dynamic moves, where you throw your body at a handhold. And then there was the sheer physicality of it.

For the rest of the evening I focused, dug deep, and climbed with Mark. We’re still friends, eight years later.

I tried other things at the gym that evening, including a yoga class for climbers. Things I never did in my normal, ordinary life. At the end of the first class, I talked with a young woman—they were all young—I’d noticed because of her beautiful, perfect body and smooth yoga moves, and her climbing harness lying on the floor next to her. I needed a partner to climb, and she was in the same predicament. It was her first day climbing.

Eight years later, Michelle and I are still friends, and each January we celebrate our “climberversary,” our annual observance of the day that changed both our lives.

All of a sudden, I had friends. Lots of them. But like everything else in climbing, these new relationships made me dig deep. And remember.