Fine Line
By Alison Osius
From the Rock & Ice Tuesday Email Blast
I hurt my finger on Derek’s problem this spring. Then lately I got sick, I don’t know with what—it must have been swine-bird-Hong-Kong flu, ebola. It hung on for two enervating weeks.
So I wasn’t so sure when I went up Defenseless Betty, but with a toprope on it, what the heck.
I love that climb. A long 12a up an overlap and steep groove on a soaring wall at Rifle, it is consistently difficult all the way up. It also is, for me, the perfect gauge. If in reasonable shape, I am solid on it. I have done it many, many times. Unfit, I can fall anywhere and everywhere on the route.
Whenever I haven’t been climbing—whether for weeks or months—I think of resuming as a three-day process. The first day your muscles feel, overall, twangy, sustaining a fine shake. The climbing moves feel hesitant and separate. By day two, you are already much better. The twang subsides, you relax, and even feel a little flow. By day three, you’re OK. Not strong, but having fun. You have momentum again, and eagerness—wanting to try this or that climb, instead of being abashed.
My friend Hugh Herr used to call it “old muscles.” He meant that in the nicest way: When you’ve been climbing a long time, he’d say, it doesn’t take long to get it back. Something, anyway. Enough.
The best story is that of Jerry Moffatt, who blew out his elbows, underwent surgery, and then emerged from his long layoff to go bouldering with some other leading Brit climbers, Ben Moon and Ben Masterson, and was aghast to find he could not even do single moves they were linking. Poor Jerry, they thought. It must be terrible to be so shit.
“And two weeks later he was back burning us off!” (You can also find the incident in the memoir Revelations.)
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So last weekend was my second day out, or second day in some weeks. At day’s end, I hopped on the Betty, secretly hoping to eke it out, but I’d say I pretty much fell everywhere, because even at the places where I didn’t, I almost did. Anyway, I dropped off the crux a couple of times. Then remembered some beta and proceeded, but, now thrashed, hung again above.
As I dangled morosely, a movement just below startled me. Someone I knew, a friend actually, emerged leftwards around the corner into the groove 10 feet below on the same route.
He laughed and said words to the effect of, "Sorry, Alison, I didn't think you'd still be here."
Well, I am. So get your ass out of here.
He ducked back around to a rest. I bestirred myself and heaved grumpily to the chains.
But, really, when we flop, who cares but us?
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So I climbed a few more days, and then last week went away on vacation. Took my kids to see my family in Maryland, and then we journeyed with a dear friend, whom I have known since we were 14 and I was new at a school, to the Delaware shore. My friend has been quite sick and I had written asking to see her.
I had taken the week off work, she got the week off from chemo, and we all, plus a few more, stayed at another friend’s grandly funky old beach house. We talked on the sand in beautiful breezy weather, and ate peach pie. The thin calluses rolled off my fingertips in itchy strips, and I didn’t care a bit.
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I returned home on Friday, went climbing with another longtime friend on Sunday. It was a nice day, Tracy and I laughed a lot, and I got on another climb I try to do every year, figuring it was probably hopeless, but interested just because I really love that route. At the crux I realized I was still OK, and thought, “Why don’t you just do it?” and then clipped the anchors, ridiculously pleased. Which is silly. The line between doing and not doing is so fine. It is almost luck sometimes, or so I have always thought.
Lago Nansen, amongst the Andes Mountains in Argentina. (NASA/JSC) # [Google map]