In reality . . . well, as soon as we walked into the climbing gym and I saw the walls and the footholds and showoffs climbing without a net, I got a little freaked out. And by freaked I mean like “do I want to sign this form saying I’m responsible for breaking my neck” freaked. And then I got a little hyperventilaty in the locker room. I mean, rock climbing?! What the fuzzy, moldy hell was I thinking? I’m never going to be able to do this. I’m going to look like an idiot.
(Yeah . . . that’s what it was, really. Fear of looking like an idiot outweighed [and always will, frankly] any fear of heights or anything that could, under extreme circumstances, possibly kill me. If I thought for just one second that I would be able to, in fact, scurry up that wall like a monkey, instead of freezing after stepping up on the first plastic rock unsure of where to go next and all freaked out at being 6 inches off the ground . . . well, such are my priorities.)
Looking back I feel silly, and even then I felt a little silly. I kept talking myself down saying “OK, the floors are padded, you’ve got a harness-like thingy, and someone has your back. You’re on ropes. You’re not freeform climbing. Calm the fuck down, you idiot,” etc. And then I had another minor meltdown while Rachael was explaining stuff to me. I am a visual, hands-on learner. Someone telling me something is far less effective than showing me, having me do it. Having me do something that I’m already afraid of is the best way for me to get over that fear. And once we got that part worked out, once Rachael had me go through the various steps of tying in while I was doing it, that’s when I started to calm down a bit. And when she told me to take the end of the rope and double back over the knot I’d just made, and I said, “Oh, like duplicate stitch” and she beamed at me, I knew, somewhere inside, that I would be ok.
Before I could test that theory, I had to pass my belay test, which meant making sure I was tied in correctly, that I hadn’t done something that could result in, you know, someone falling and breaking her neck. Rachael mentioned how panicky I was and the guy testing me said something I’m sure he’s said many times to many people all in the effort to be helpful and calming — some stuff about death and statistics. I can’t remember exactly what he said, what he threw out in comparison to rock climbing, as in “more people die from this than they do in rock climbing.” For some reason I want to make it “plane crashes,” but only because I think that’s morbidly funny. Anyway, I passed my test, the guy was impressed with my duplicate stitch analogy, and I was ready to start climbing.
Rock walls are divided into various paths, and each path is graded on difficulty. Low numbers are easier than higher numbers. Rachael and Lala and Bethany were all up on the 5.10s, 5.11s (these paths also had names, all of them Jean-Claude Van Damme movies: Timecop, Lionheart, Double Impact). I opted to start with the 5.2. The kiddie wall. Which had no other name. And even then, though I was prepared to use my muscles, braced myself for the strain in my thighs, calves, and upper arms, I was wholly unprepared for how the actual wall would feel, the cold unyielding cement, the roughness of the plastic footholds and grips. I was unprepared for how the ropes would pull my leg supports in, how extraordinarily uncomfortable that would feel.
I got maybe 3 feet off the ground on my first climb. I didn’t feel bad about that, either. Though as I said, I need to be perfect at something right away or I don’t want to do it anymore, I knew that rock climbing was something unlike anything I’d ever done before and I needed to a) cut myself some slack (pun!) and b) allow myself a steep learning curve (another pun!). A tiny little climb, just to get the feel for it, that’s what I needed.
This is not me
The other thing I wasn’t prepared for was the adrenaline rush after a climb, even one that short. My legs were all jimmied after that, so I opted to switch roles and belay for someone else.
See, this is what I like about rock climbing. It’s a two-person activity, and both parts require power and stamina. And I should note that, although the belayer stays on the ground, the job created a good deal of anxiety in me as well, because the belayer is basically in charge of making sure the climber doesn’t (say it with me) fall and break her neck.
Even so, I took to belaying far more readily than I did climbing, and that I am sure has everything to do with the fact that belayers stay on the ground. All I needed to do was pay attention to the person climbing, and learn a little bit of the shorthand that the group uses. And even that wasn’t essential, as long as communication was clear. I didn’t have to say “take” or whatever — I could just say what I wanted to do, and they knew that as a newbie they needed to say “I’m coming down now” in order for me to give them the slack they needed to do so. I liked belaying. It gave me the rush of climbing without actually climbing.
I climbed a couple times after that, once more on the same 5.2 wall and once on a decidedly more ambitious 5.6, each time more determined to get just a little bit further up the wall than I had on my previous climbs. And both times I could feel my mind harden with resolve, try and trick my body and my fear that I’d done it once and therefore it was like I’d done it a thousand times. (Note: going three feet up a fake rock wall does not mean you can scale it on your next try.) Apparently my brain needed to try and psych out the rest of me and make me think I could do it. I roped myself in, did the routine exchange with my belayer (to make sure that she’s paying attention and is ready to lock me in or let me down when I need either), and went a little too fast up the plastic rocks that I’d gone up earlier. I think my body did this to try and reassure my brain that yes, I knew what I was doing, but . . . then I got to where I’d left off and had no idea what to do next.
What I didn’t know at the time was that this was perfectly normal, that people go up walls to a certain point and then stop, look about, figure out where they’re going next, which hold they can grab. Few people do this with a full plan ahead of time unless they’ve done the wall over and over again and could climb it in their sleep. (I would imagine.) But I would get to a certain point and feel a tiny bit of panic creep back in because I didn’t know where to go next. In theory I did, in theory I knew that I needed to grab onto a plastic thing with one of my hands, put one foot on another plastic thing, push up and shift and steady myself in whatever new position I found myself in. In my head I was already doing this, but getting my body to respond wasn’t easy. The foot I needed to move started to worry that it would slip as soon as I started to shift the rest of my body up and over, and that eighth-note of worry traveled through the rest of my body and took some time to overcome.
Rarely do I plan before I act or make decisions. I’m much more prone to act impulsively, shoot before asking questions, jump headfirst into something before looking to see where I’ll land. I hardly think I’m going to change, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to — I can deal with fallout, and sometimes (as with the decision to move to New York) I score big. But rock climbing took that away from me, and in retrospect that’s not a bad thing. It’s simply not possible to climb impulsively; you need to stop and look around and take stock and weigh your options. You need to make sure you’re going to find purchase. I wasn’t expecting to engage in an activity that would affect me this way, physically and mentally (and, dare I say, emotionally), but now I get why Rachael and Lala and Bethany are hooked. Would I go again? Absolutely. Call me.
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