When I was a rather little girl, playing alone in my neighborhood, I liked to sharpen sticks. I sat on the sloping concrete ledge behind our fence, by the garage, and grated them against the rough concrete, turning them to shape a point. I would make several in different lengths, imagining I was a blacksmith forging tools, or that I was whittling them each for a purpose.
An enormous tree grew back there, and around its base there were always many shoots or suckers of a woody sort of bush -- shoots that grew tall and long with few branches coming off. I would break one off, five or six feet in length, and strip what leaves and branchlets there were. It made a long whip, one that whistled as I swung around my head; a switch of it would smart, all right. I would carefully peel away the bark from the end, leaving a green tip, and imagine that this final step transformed it into a trusty weapon to have by my side. I would stalk around the neighborhood, sometimes using the switch to snap leaves off of overhead branches, imagining I was the possessor of a collection of weathered tools selected and shaped by my own hand, a craftsman, an expert, a MacGyver, ready to solve any problem with the few versatile items in my kit.
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Every once in a while some toolkit reminds me of that longing. A set of chisels. A box of watercolors. A fly fisherman glimpsed at the edge of the lake with his trays of lures and pliers open and visible. Though I don't work wood, or paint, or fish. I felt a little bit of it when I was in organic chemistry lab, pipetting, clamping, titrating, distilling; sadly it was not my calling, and neither was the scanning electron microscope I encountered in graduate school.
Some time ago I was chopping an onion in my kitchen and realized that without knowing it I had, in fact, surrounded myself with such a toolkit: saucepans and paring knives and zesters and strainers. I can do quite a lot with that, and I had never appreciated it.
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This is a rather long way of getting to the point that, although rock climbing is my husband's hobby, and I never gave it a thought for the years that I was certain my bad writst prevented me from taking it up, I've always been attracted to... the rack.
Mark has teased me since we got here in Chamonix that if I felt that I did not fit in well enough, he could lend me a harness and a bunch of quickdraws and carabiners and other bits of metal to dangle from the harness, and possibly an ice tool or two for good measure, and I could walk around clanking like all the other cool people.
What he doesn't know (until he reads this) is how terribly jealous I am of people who have such a collection and know how to use it. And really it is just because of the collection. I want it like my four-year-old wants a pirate's chest of gold coins. I would not know what to do with it if I had it. I just want to run my fingers through it and maybe stalk around a little bit.
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But! I did get to try rock climbing this week. The whole family went out to Les Gaillands and for the very first time I put on a harness and a helmet and roped up and put my hands and feet on rock and left the ground behind.
The guide was my belayer. I started up. It isn't actually very hard (well this stuff wasn't) to climb.
There are lots of handholds here, plenty of places to step and grab, and it isn't perfectly vertical. I thought it would feel taxing to the strength; but it doesn't, no more than climbing a ladder. Actually, what it reminded me of most of all was climbing at a playground. You climb a ladder because you have to fix the gutters or hang a picture or something. Why was I climbing the rock? Not to work.
To find out if I liked it and could do it. To see what Mark and the kids see when they do this. To get a physical understanding of the meaning of the words Mark uses when he comes home and tells me how his climbing day went.
You just... go up.
Occasionally there were little surprises. (Besides how pleasant and easy it was to climb this particular face.) A little lizard scampered over the rock near the bottom. Higher up, there were tufts of soft-looking grass growing on ledges, and I put my hand on one -- "Ow! This grass is pointy! It's hurting me!"
Laughter floated up. "You found the angry grass," said Jeff the guide.
Occasionally I turned to look down. It was a long way, but I did know that the rope would keep me from falling, so I wasn't afraid. Not with my head anyway. I enjoyed the lovely view.
(this is from the ground, but it is what I was looking at from up high)
The tough part came when it was time to be lowered down. It isn't actually scary, I think. I knew I was safe. But it is hard to make your body do what has to be done: put your feet against the wall, push gently away, lean.... way... back. Trust the rope not just with mind but with body.
(me, beginning to trust the rope. note death grip.)
Once on the ground I wanted to try again and again. There was something of the roller-coaster exhiliaration in it. You trick your body into thinking you are in some kind of danger, but you are really not, so you are free to feel the rush. I climbed four times and went a little higher each time.
And I watched my kids climbing, and my oldest child practicing belaying the other children. I was generally aware that this is the sort of thing that is supposed to strike fear in a mother's heart, as she is also supposed to be saddened over her children getting big and striking off on their own.
But I am not such a great-hearted mother, so instead I was nothing but excited and pleased to see them striking upward so confidently, and supporting each others' weight on the way.
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Ooh I like the idea of tool kits. I remember that kind of play as a child. My imagination was always about the self-sufficiency of the effective forager. In my mind I knew where all the plants grew and how to harvest them and what to do with them. Come to think of it, I'm finally learning how to identify plants instead of just dreaming about it. It seemed like such a foreign space, but I think I'd just never been introduced to the right tools-- the kinds of books that let you identify trees and shrubs. Even the wildflower books that we did have felt mysterious as i didn't really understand the vocabulary of the botanist. It was like hunting for words in a dictionary without understanding alphabetization.
I was surprised. I guess I'd assumed you'd done at least some climbing. But I'd forgotten about the hurt wrist. That makes sense. How nice to finally get to do it!
Posted by: Melanie B | 24 September 2014 at 12:29 AM