Scratching the Big Itch
By Abbey Leroux
I stared out the window, squinting into the blinding light, and let myself cry. Only a couple of tears actually fell, but I felt the familiar brow-knit face-scrunching that accompanies a major sob lurking beneath the surface. All this over a seemingly inert mass of dirt and frozen water. A mountain. Instead of the typical girl crying over the heart-wrenching separation from her long-distance lover ("We’ll be together again before we know it” he says into her hair as she weeps in his gentle embrace), I am the girl gazing from the airplane window trying to keep it together over Mount Rainier.
I can’t explain what brash and brave force of nature churned within me the moment of our approach the day before in Mt. Rainier National Park. Something beyond my control and comprehension caused me to immediately declare “I wanna climb it. I’m going to climb it.” But knowing two of my best friends’ ears were at my disposal quickly made my statement, which may have seemed flippant to people who don’t know me as well, a Mission Statement.
"Really? You think you could?” Kristin asks skeptically.
"No, she will,” Sarah interjects. “When she says it, it’s gonna happen. I don’t know how, but that’s how it works with her.” Sarah’s faith in me gives me determination squared. Yes! I am that way, aren’t I? I explain to them the guide services that lead somewhat inexperienced people up the peak (or should I say towards the peak) on a regular basis. Experienced climbers head up without a guide. Something about this just doesn’t worry me. Sarah reads some statistics from the map provided at the rangers’ station. “Ten thousand climbers a year attempt to summit Mount Rainier. About half succeed.”
"Seems like something you might want to work up to” Kristin warns gently. “You know, gather some experience.”
"But you know” I say, knowing that the thought I’m about to verbalize for the first time will most likely appear to be utter nonsense, if not dangerous idiocy, “I feel like my lack of experience somehow bolsters me to achieve something like this even more. I just feel that I know I can do it.” I laughingly imagine this as a scene in a movie in which we hear my emphatic words lead to a slow scan over my obituary. Or perhaps it could appear in the “Letters to the Editor” section of Outdoor magazine, experienced alpinists bemoaning the state of the sport that allows such knuckleheads – a weak inexperienced girl! – to attempt ascents they are simply unprepared for. But above all this, I picture myself doing it. These jokes to myself are not the reality I truly imagine. What I picture are the steps and scenarios –the sensations of my lungs grasping at high-altitude air, the crunch of icy snow beneath crampons, bright blue sky and blinding white glimmering ice, clouds at eye level, gusts of frigid air against goggles, the hunch of my shoulders and deliberateness of my steps as I climb under the weight of my pack – and nowhere in my imaginings is there a chill of fear. It’s not that I think it will be easy, it’s just that I feel I can’t be stopped.
During the course of this conversation, some curious questions arise in me: How did I get this way? Am I a lunatic, or do I just happen to be blessed with the wild self-assurance every outdoors-person requires to achieve what most people deem impossible and/or suicidal? And wait a second now: How did I even come to consider myself an outdoors-person? A year ago I was living in the heart of New York City trying to figure out how to live as a full-time musician. Now I’m living in San Francisco, traveling the west coast at every opportunity, trying to seize adventure after adventure. I most assuredly do not have the experience one would need. But isn’t that what guides are for? I never said I wasn’t willing to learn.
I can’t even begin to answer these questions but I’m relieved I can at least begin to explain to myself what matters. I know for sure my body feels like a live-wire that will burn out if not tested, as does my mind to an even greater degree. If that combination, with a heaping helping of indomitable positivity isn’t a recipe for a successful adventure I don’t know what is.
At the heart of it my urges are very much akin to the urge of a dog to roll around in the grass of any and every rolling hillside it sees, and in this case to ecstatically plant my smiling face in every fresh pile of soft snow I am near. To know that this is what it’s about seems like an obvious yet overlooked and overshadowed secret of anybody who has ever had a blissful moment outside, away from homes and work and cars and supermarkets. An adventure for me is not about winning, summiting, or proving anything to anyone. I simply want to work myself hard in astounding places while I’m lucky enough to inhabit this beautiful world in this vibrant body and mind. Despite my inexperience, I’m not crazy for seeking out these opportunities. I don’t think I’m crazy for thinking I can get away with them. This heart-exploding joy I glimpse during a physically challenging excursion outdoors is what I deduce is stripped-down primal love. Love for everything and nothing in particular. My spirit just wants to get naked. I want to be a dog rolling in the grass. Its gaping snout deeply drawing in air. Its every itch getting scratched. And man, am I itching.
I read volumes about other adventurers’ experiences in the wild, and I start itching. I check the calendars for my local outdoor adventure club and I get itchy. I flip through a Patagonia catalogue just to rip out photos of places I promise myself I will go, itching itching itching. And as I gazed down upon Mt. Rainier, flying south away from it, not knowing how or when I’d return and in what capacity I thought I’d explode from the itch. Knowing I have to work on Monday morning, that I have rent to pay, and not enough money to get a car and gear yet… Those things in combination with the itch served to bring me to tears. Go ahead, cry and get it over with, I told myself. When the clench in my chest relaxed and I savored the last full view I had of the mountain, I decided I’m better off letting the lunatic Warrior Goddess bound back in to rescue and reclaim my thoughts. I wanna climb that. I grinned against the tears. I’m going to climb that.