Granite Mirror Gazing
By Abbey Leroux
“James!” I yell as loud as I can, hoping the wind will be on my side for once and carry my voice upward. I wait as its howling response assaults my ears and pushes my body to the side. “James!” I call again.
“Yeah, hold on!”
Okay. Faintly through the rush of wind in my ears, I can hear my own panting breath. I glance down at my cramped toes, checking to see it my footing looks as stable as it feels.
Stable is an overstatement, to be sure. The sight of the tip-toes of my green climbing shoes pressing down on two slivers of granite, while a little less than a thousand feet of space dominates the view between my feet, does not inspire as much confidence as I would have liked.
I don’t know where to move next. The constant barrage of wind, growing in intensity the further up I go, only adds to my hesitation. I decide to relish the feeling of relative stability I have in this position and be patient until my boyfriend’s head appears again over the ledge thirty feet above me.
Despite the strength of the wind pushing into my face, and despite my determination to calm down for this moment, I still cannot manage to inhale a mere lungful of air. At twelve-thousand feet above sea-level such a breath isn’t easy to come by, especially during physical exertion. I am also feeling some unfamiliar twinges of fear, but I’d rather not think on it. Ah! There he is. James’ helmeted head comes back into view.
“What do I do?!” I shout.
“What?!” He shouts back.
I release one of my precious four points of contact with this massive slab of granite and use my right hand to pose my question. I point above me to the right, and then to the left. James points to my left, and his head disappears behind the ledge again. Left it is.
Now I’m going to make these moves, and I will do it alone because that’s how climbing is and that is one thing I utterly love about it. The rock in front of me is a better mirror than any piece of polished glass. This is my body, full of gravity, and this is the rock, impartial yet helpful. Solid enough to break myself against or to pull myself to the sky. Make the move, and then the next. Breathe. Don’t fall.
Spectators of rock climbing often ask, “What are you thinking?!” The truth is: Not much. Sometimes I have to remind myself to breathe evenly. I completely forget about any scrapes, bruises, raw finger skin, or cramps. That way of feeling just isn’t there anymore. I am definitely not thinking about what’s for dinner. The only thoughts that flow without fail are, “Where am I going to put my hand next? Where am I going to put my foot? What’s the next move that will pull me up this bit of rock?”
On this particular climb – my highest, longest, and scariest – these thoughts are magnified. It’s like I just had a dose of Alderol. I can’t think of anything else even if I try.
That said, at every belay, (four on this climb), I am given a moment to “sit” and “rest.” Honestly, placing my full body weight into my harnessed hips a few hundred feet above the trees, hanging from three bits of metal wedged into a crack in the rock isn’t my preferred way to relax. If I’m going to be up on a rock I’d rather be climbing because hanging on that anchor only gives me a moment to ponder what the hell I’m doing there in the first place.
Even now that question is difficult to answer. This climb was a first for me in many ways, one of which is that it wasn’t outright enjoyable. To enjoy something about it I had to search. I had to shoulder out of the way any discomfort, cold, and anxiety just to keep moving upward.
The familiar and strange mix of thrill and serenity I usually feel about eighty feet up on a rock was not immediately available for comment. “Hello? Are you there, Joy? It’s me, Abbey.” Never before had I wanted so badly to just reach the top, and once I reached the top I’d never so badly wanted to get back down.
One morning a few weeks before, James and I had taken a pre-breakfast stroll to the summit one of San Francisco’s many small pointed parks. As we reached the quaint rocky summit of the park I asked him what he thought and felt as he reached the summit of the many mountain peaks and cliffs he has climbed. He let out a sigh before saying as emphatically as I’ve ever heard him say anything: “I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.”
As we drove home from Yosemite in the twilight, I began to understand what had previously offended my romantic climbing sensibilities: You feel your best about the climb on your way home.
Rock climbing is not necessarily fun. It is scary. It feels epically disastrous when you make a mistake as simple as forgetting a headlamp during an intended day climb. I’ve been lucky enough and new enough to the activity to have heard – not experienced – plenty of hair-raising tales. It seems the bigger the climb the bigger any fear and anxiety become.
But today after work, when I hopped off the bus today and started walking home, I savored a few luscious lungsful of oxygenated sea-level air. I got a twinge of a familiar feeling. The words scrolling in my mind, to my mild and delighted surprise were, “I can do anything.”
Maybe it’s because in a mere hour-and-a-half climb, step by step, I had become as big as a monumental cliff face, proud of what I saw in that thousand-foot mirror.