Читать книгу The Sharp End of Life - Dierdre Wolownick - Страница 15

YEARS LATER, AS I watched others at the climbing gym, I often found myself moved in ways I would have never expected. Seeing a good climber glide up the wall is like watching ballet; the grace, agility, unexpected movement, the sheer beauty of it often captivated my gaze as I shrugged into my harness, pulled on my shoes, or just waited my turn. To a lumpy, nearly sixty woman who had just begun to climb, the sight of someone older than me, like my friend Mark, making his way skillfully up the wall was thrilling.

Mark was inspiring. All of the climbers I’d met and befriended so far were young. Supple. Strong. Their muscles rippled. Besides just climbing, they ran or skied, flew on hang gliders or climbed ice. They did pull-ups and push-ups and all kinds of contortions that I knew I’d never be able to do.

Mark had shoulder issues. A hearing problem. A foot thing he mentioned now and then. He was retired, and he climbed—hard. At least from the point of view of a beginner who only climbed indoors, it looked hard.

A climber I could relate to!

He loved to teach, and I wanted to learn it all. His climber friends—and there were lots of them—became my climber friends. It was the best kind of therapy.

With a sport where one mistake can kill you or your partner, it’s good to have a mentor who can show you what to do and what not to do. How to thread the rope through the belay device. How to pull it back so you have control over your partner’s descent without burning your hand as the rope slides through your fist. What to clip to your harness in case you fall off your climb. Even something as simple as tying your shoes—I had no idea that the laces on some climbing shoes could affect their fit and their grip on the wall. I watched Mark and all my new friends at the climbing gym, studied them and their moves, their choices. And tried it all.

I knew I could do this. If I could learn to play the piano, master several languages, and travel the world by myself—then I could surely learn to climb a rock. That thought flashed through my mind over and over as I worked hard to follow the others. Especially after we started climbing outdoors.

AFTER A FEW MONTHS of climbing in the gym together, eating pizza and drinking ciders and beers together downtown after our sessions, my climbing tribe decided it was time for me to climb outdoors. Laura, Mark, Bob, and some others I didn’t know yet were going to climb at Cosumnes River Gorge, about an hour from Sacramento, and they invited me to go with them.

I woke several times the night before. As my daughter often puts it, adventures are exciting! She gets so psyched about starting her thousand-mile bike rides that she rarely sleeps well the night before, either.

We took Highway 50 as it snaked up into the Sierra, before turning onto a smaller road, and then an even smaller one. The others chatted during the ride, but I just listened. They had been climbing for years and the more they talked, the more ignorant I felt. I didn’t know any of the Sierra climbing areas they spoke of. I marveled at how Mark and Bob, both older climbers, could recount how they’d made their way up a particular route. I doubted that I would ever remember every move of a climb like that.

It was March, and I shivered from the cold as I shouldered my pack, stepped over the metal guardrail, and followed them onto the trail. Everyone but me wore special, rugged shoes they called approach shoes, all the color of dirt and the outdoors. I was wearing light, white running shoes.

We hiked single file into the gorge. The others pointed out sticks growing on both sides of the sandy, narrow trail.

“Poison oak. Don’t touch it. Don’t even get it on your clothes.” They each had a poison oak story to share.

I looked intently each time they pointed one out, but all the sticks rising from the sand looked exactly the same to me. I’d never learned to recognize poison ivy in the east, and it looked like I was going to be equally unsuccessful identifying poison oak in the west.

The trail became rockier and steeper, and soon we were scrambling between trees and boulders, down into a narrow gorge. The Cosumnes River rushed past, thirty or forty feet below. It was swollen with spring snowmelt and, at times, we had to shout to be heard over the roar.

When we reached the base of our climb, everyone put their packs down and started pulling out gear, some of which I had never seen before. I knew I’d learn what it was used for soon enough, but for now, I focused on my harness and staying warm. The layers I’d worn, a turtleneck and flannel shirt topped with a thick fleece jacket, were clearly not going to be enough. I jammed my gloved hands into my pockets and stamped my feet.

I knew how to belay in the gym, but this was real rock, and the consequences of a fall were much more serious. I watched Laura climb a short route that followed a crack twenty-five feet up a sloping, curving face of granite. She pushed her hands into the crack and pulled on them. I winced. That had to hurt.

In just a few minutes, she was at the top. Confused, I stepped back and tilted my head to examine the top of the wall. Mark explained that while I’d been getting my harness on, Bob had walked back up to the top of the small formation we’d walked across on our way in, and set up the toprope. I craned my neck more to get a better look.

The anchor bolts looked like they were right on the edge of the wall. Those metal rings, permanently attached to the rock, would hold the anchor that would in turn hold the climbers’ rope as they took turns climbing up and lowering off. The image of someone setting up an anchor at that exposed point, while leaning over the top to work on the knots, left my stomach in knots. Probably not a good sign for a climber.

Whenever someone started getting ready to climb, I offered to belay, but each time someone else stepped up to the chore. They were friendly and jovial about turning me down, but after several offers, and watching several people climb, I realized they were right: I didn’t know enough yet. I was the novice. A raw beginner.

It was like being the toddler who asks to help with the dishes or any other chore. It usually leads to “no, dear, you go play now.” Then an adult takes over. It was humbling, refreshing, and an insight into childraising—a little late, but it’s never too late to understand something better.

After everyone else had climbed the wall, each one a bit differently, Mark asked if I wanted to try. I was eager to get on my first real Sierra Nevada rock wall. It started on a series of big blocks and then flowed upward on the sloping face. They’d all taken just a few minutes to climb it. I figured double that for me. Triple, maybe, if I got stuck somewhere.

I tied the rope in a figure eight to my harness, the way I always did at the gym. Mark checked it.

“Doubled back. Check. Attached at two points. Check. My ’biner’s locked. Check. Belay is on. Climb when ready.”

“Climbing,” I replied, using the standard formula.

“Climb on.”

The rock was icy cold as I pressed my bare hands against it. I couldn’t feel my fingers. Leaning in, I stepped up onto the first block. So far, so good. Another step, another block. Easy. A few more chunks of rock, some tipped forward, some cracked apart, all different sizes. I got about ten or twelve feet up, breathing fast, excited as a little kid. I was rock climbing! On real rock!

And then the blocks ended.

I stopped. Looked around. Nothing. No holds to grab, no blocks or cracks or fissures or anything else for my feet. Nothing.

“What did you hold, here?” I shouted down to Mark.

Everyone shouted up advice, none of which made any sense to me. I looked all around me, sliding my hands over the cold rock, but couldn’t find anything to hold or pull on.

How can you climb if there’s nothing to hold? It made no sense. And yet, I’d just watched all of them climb this stupid wall. That had no handholds on it.

I’m not sure how long I stood there, trying and thinking. I slapped or slid my hands all around me to find any little nub I could hold. Caressed the rock. My numb fingers searched above me, to both sides, reached behind me to explore the wall that stuck out next to this route. Everywhere. I tried to step up a little higher, leaned against the cold, hard granite, prayed for weightlessness. My foot slid back down. Tried again, slid again. Over and over. Finally, I settled back down onto the last block where I’d stopped.

More advice floated up from the ground, all of it equally meaningless to me. I couldn’t do anything they were telling me to do. I was a failure. A miserable, abject failure.

Frustration started to pool in my eyes.

I wasn’t prepared for this. I’d had no experience with major failure—except in my marriage. Even when I was smaller than everybody, all my cousins, my brother, everybody—even then, I’d always kept up. How could I not be able to get to the top of this puny, little curving rock? As a scrawny five-year-old girl, I’d climbed, no problem, to the very top of the Mile Rocks in Hazleton, Pennsylvania—huge compared with this! Enormous! Several stories high.

What was going on here?

Mark lowered me, slowly, and as I untied I tried to think it through objectively. The Mile Rocks were rough conglomerate. This little wall was smooth, featureless granite. The Mile Rocks had tons of features—bulges and ledges and gullies, striations to push your toes into, big knobs to hold onto—that made climbing just plain fun. This miserable, empty wall had nothing—but I couldn’t wait to try it again.

“Nice try, D!”

“Good effort.”

“Well done.”

Well done? Their cheers and comments made me think they understood how far outside of my comfort zone this day had pushed me. I knew I’d try this route again. Maybe not today. Today was about learning, about getting ready. They knew that I had learned what real rock is like, and some of the frustration of not being able to conquer it. I’d have to learn to cope with that.

Even more, though, than figuring out the wall, I’d learned I needed these people in my life. Unaware and ignorant, I’d hungered for friendship all my life, only realizing it after more than a decade with Charlie. That hunger was relentless. None of my new climbing friends had any idea how important they were.

In northern California, in my life as wife and mother, tour guide, teacher, musician—I had longed to make connections with people. Lasting connections. But I lived with someone who acknowledged no one. Needed no one. Not even me.

Battling that became my life. Instead of connecting with other people, I had spent my days trying to figure out what was going wrong at home, and whether I could do anything about it.

Home, with Charlie, had been a desert. I’d survived it, like the desert flowers survive from year to year, buried, dormant, waiting for lifesaving rain. And when it finally comes, the resulting super bloom is breathtaking. These new friends were my long-awaited rain.

Wounds needed to heal before I could begin using that part of me again, the emotional part. It still lay buried in that desert, waiting for the life-giving rain of friendship.

Most of my climbing friends were married and young—I was usually the odd one out, the oldest in any group, except for Mark—but still, little by little, they brought water to the desert of my life and began to patch the monumental hole in my existence with the cement of joviality, the warmth of common desires and goals, the love of friendship freely given.

I would learn this climbing stuff. That, I knew. The skills I’d need to get up this wall, and all the others I wanted to climb, were within my reach.

And now, with my new climbing tribe, friendship was, too. I’d work as hard as I needed to, on both.