I could never do that.
I’m not smart enough. I’m not
strong enough. She’d never go out with a
guy like me. That college degree is too
much work. They won’t hire me for a job
like that. I can do this, but I can’t do
that. I see it in myself. I see it with my students in the
classroom. We all have tapes we run,
expectations for ourselves and others. We
can make or break our lives based on these messages.
Of course, sometimes these messages are spot on. If I’m a hundred pounds overweight and live
in my grandmother’s basement, spending all of my waking hours playing World of
Warcraft, then, yeah, it’s not bloody likely that superhot super model is going
to go out with me. If I’ve been leading
a sedentary life and expect to jump on a bike one day and hammer out a hundred
hilly miles, then, yeah, I’ll likely crash and burn very early in that century
ride. A realistic knowledge of one’s
abilities is essential. The “I can’t do
that” message in these cases is perfectly warranted—at least in the short
term. It is downright silly to adhere to
the platitude that we can do anything if
we just put our minds to it. Sorry to
break this to you, folks, but everyone can’t
do everything, regardless of how hard we work, how much we want or think we
deserve it. In that way, life really
isn’t fair. The world cares nothing for our
longing. And it doesn’t care how hard we
try.
So Joe Blotto in the basement with his X-Box isn’t going out
with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit
model, but he can drop his game controller, start eating veggies instead of
Cheetos, and get his big butt off the couch.
Maybe he can know the touch of a woman before he steps into a
super-sized grave. The message Joe
repeats to himself that he can’t get a date is the belief system we need to
understand. This is the type of thinking
that limits our lives and starves the soul.
I, too, play these tapes. I ran
up against one unexpectedly yesterday on a little climb in the high desert of
the eastern Sierras.
I’ve never been a great climber—nor do I expect to break
into the ranks of the elite anytime soon.
I’ve worked hard at it, improved, but injuries off and on, and nearly
fifty three laps around the sun mean that Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold have
nothing to worry about. I’ve recently
been upping my game a little, working out, pushing myself in ways I haven’t
since I was a younger man, but still I have some ideas about my limits, so I
pick my fights where I’m pretty sure I’ve got a chance. And so it was on a blustery February day when
my wife, Jodi, and I stepped up to Alabama Dome and the impressively named
“Blockade Runner,” a 5.10c face climb in the Alabama Hills, a fantastic Dr.
Seuss playground of weathered cliffs and boulders in the shadow of Mt. Whitney. Hardly thirty minutes before I’d been talking
to another climber about this route.
He’d done it “four or five years ago” and couldn’t give me any
information. “That’s okay,” I said.
“That route is at my limit, and I don’t think I’m ready for it. I want to go for the on-sight. I’ll wait until I’m ready.”
Belief system firmly in place, I gazed up at the wall. We didn’t have the guide book and thought at
first we’d do the easier buttress to the right, a route we had climbed
before. Still, there was Blockade Runner
calling from the steep face above.
Without the guide, I dismissed the blank looking route to the left as
too difficult. To the right, however, before
the buttress, were some promising looking flakes and edges, a line of bolts. Yeah, this is it. Maybe?
I stared up the wall and stared down my earlier self-limiting
statement. Why not? I might take a fall, but Jodi could catch
me. I trusted her implicitly. I looked over at Jodi and asked, “Do you mind
if I try this?” I felt a lump of fear in
my gut, the wall in vertical shadow looming over me. “If you want to,” she replied, giving me no
escape route. All right then,
chump. Lace up and have at it.
Making the first moves on a challenging climb is much like
stepping into the cage with a fearsome opponent. Will he ground and pound, or will I get the
upper hand? I had to stuff my
uncertainty as best I could and get to work.
I chalked my fingers, grabbed rough edges, and moved up, savoring for an
instant that moment when gravity and muscle and will settle into the conflict,
the outcome in this case deeply uncertain.
It was a 10c, after all. I don’t climb at this level very much, do I?
Right away my heart rate spiked as I moved from edge to
edge, a side pull, a long reach, a crimp and high step. The moves were going down, one by one, and I
felt physically in control. Emotionally
I was coiled too tight, over gripping.
Forty feet up, I stepped into the base of a shallow, widely spread
dihedral and found, miraculously, a no-hands rest. Comfortably stemmed between toe holds, I let
the blood circulate through my swollen forearms and fought to calm my pounding
heart. I glanced down the nearly
vertical wall at the rope snaking through the carabiners and into Jodi’s
attentive hands. For cryin’ out loud,
Scotty. Chill, man, calm down. You’re doing great. In my mind I went back to the sessions on
the slack line, times when I’d nearly lost it, managed at last to turn around
and struggled to stay on, the adrenaline working to unhinge my focus. Stuff
the adrenaline. Breathe. Focus.
Breathe. You’ve got this. I was ready to move again.
I studied the slanting line above me, the bulge where there
appeared to be—maybe—a blocky hold above.
Some chalked edges looked promising further out right, but the bolt was
directly above the block. Which way to
go? As I pulled up into the bulge, sunk
my fingers into a positive edge on the left, the pump clock started
ticking. I clipped the nearest bolt,
stepped up again, worked an undercling and somehow grabbed the block, most of
my weight at once firmly on my hands. I was
now, for better or worse, committed to this hold. Like a bad marriage that you know is probably
doomed, I held on and hoped things would get better. Counseling, romantic getaways, you’ll try
anything to stave off disaster. I looked
at both my hands and knew I had to keep moving, but how? Up high, a right-facing edge looked to offer
safe passage. If I could latch it with
my right hand, I might lean hard to the left and somehow lever up to get my
foot onto the block. Once there, I’d
have it—I hoped. Arms burning, I made
the reach.
Crap! I can’t
do this. It’s too hard. Bullshit.
Go down swinging.
I dropped back down to the block, painfully aware that I
hadn’t much time left. Gravity pulled,
will waned, the rock was winning. I gave
a mighty heave, threw what wattage I had left into my right hand, and
contracted every muscle in my core to lift my stupid carcass another couple of
feet up the wall. Slowly…slowly…my right
foot came up high, toed the block, found it, and with a desperate heave I pushed
back against gravity and stood up like the foolish biped I pretended to
be. I let out a victory yell. Tabernacle choirs filled the air, trumpets
sounded, Prohibition was repealed again, pot was legal and free everywhere, lonely guys living in basements
got dates with hot chicks, and everyone scored Powerball victories.
“I got it, Jodi. I
got it!” I yelled down. Oh, the
happiness of it all. I scanned the rock
above. It wasn’t a giveaway, but I could
do it. Shake out, Scotty. Don’t screw
this up. You’ve got it. Moments
later, I was clipping the anchor, triumphant.
Back on the ground, my happiness was even greater as I
watched Jodi almost flash the route as well.
Move by move, she powered through, only hanging once, and found a way to
work around the dreaded block move by climbing further up the corner and
stepping back left. I was amazed. At sixty-two when most women were settling in
for a slack, placid slide to decrepitude, Jodi was fighting like an Amazon,
even if she was only five-three. I
lowered her back to the ledge, beaming.
We’d done a 10c! Having earned
our beer for the day, the February shadows reaching long across the sage and
granite sands, we packed our gear and worked down through the boulders to the
truck.
Back at the trailer, Lone Pine Peak and Mt. Whitney piercing
the late afternoon sky, I pulled the guide book from the truck cab and studied
it. Let’s
see, Alabama Dome. Ah, there it is. The route we did was…there. Uh, no. What? We were supposed to be on Blockade Runner,
5.10c, but that was the route further left, the one I’d dismissed as too
hard. No, we’d done Dihedral Dance, the
route to the right, 5.11a—two grades
harder. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d climbed at that
standard on a roped climb. Only once, over
ten years before, had I led a climb so hard and not fallen. I don’t climb that hard. That’s
the message. That’s how I don’t
roll. But there it was. There was no mistaking the route. A photo of the first ascensionist, Raleigh Collins, showed him gripping the notorious block hold, a quick draw clenched in
his teeth as he fought the crux. I’d
been there. I knew that hold. No, by an accident of ignorance, I’d thrown
myself at a climb much harder than I’d intended, harder than I thought I could
climb, and yet, and yet…I had succeeded. Viva the stupid!
I suppose, as Nietzsche feared, we are doomed to repeat our
histories, a relentless Groundhog Day recurrence of the same mistakes over and
over, fueled by lame reruns of our personal beliefs. Even so, I’ll try to remember that February
dance in the dihedral, that time when—through silly ignorance— I went beyond
what I thought I could do. I’ll strive
to remember—again—that sometimes the
old tapes and the worn out messages need to be left behind.
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