My husband, Nick, just returned from a rock climbing excursion. Many good things accompanied his homecoming, out of which three particular items stand out. First, he returned in one piece, for which I am very thankful. Second, he – along with a dear friend/honorary-little-brother of ours who went with him – got to have an amazingly cool adventure completing multiple three-pitch climbs over the course of three exhausting and thrilling days. Awesome. And third, my husband returned with a renewed sense of wonder, perspective, and a reclaimed respect for the essential nature of true challenge – pushing oneself beyond preconceived possibilities, the bone-rattling experience of facing down one’s fears, and the sheer joy of real adventure. All very good things.
On the second day of their trip, the guys climbed a rock called Lover’s Leap, located just off Highway 50, near Strawberry. They climbed the East Wall route of the well-known East Wall, itself. A pretty challenging climb for them. Especially being that it was a three-pitch. That means traditional climbing…for roughly three rope lengths. The lead (Nick, in this case) had to anchor in and climb, placing safeties (different cams and hexes and nuts, with corresponding slings, etc.) as he went…and trusting that his placements would hold, if he should somehow fall…
Seriously, when he describes this stuff afterwards, my stomach does many, many somersaults.
There is definitely much to be said for the perspective gained from such experience. From pushing oneself beyond limitations – especially the mental and psychological ones – that have inhibited forward progress in the past. Moving beyond the fear…and out into that wide open space of capability.
I like this. A lot. Because fear can be paralyzing. Utterly debilitating. And it has to be conquered, if we want to accomplish the great things we’ve been gifted to do. Bottom line.
This afternoon, I watched (and filmed, rather shakily) as my husband spotted our son, and then our daughter, as they each – imagine two grinning three-and-a-half-year-olds wearing harnesses and all – climbed a fair bit up a homemade climbing wall that Nick has been constructing in our backyard. Essentially, it’s rather like a new take on a climbing tree. A gigantic oak with loads of grips placed at various heights and widths…to at least halfway up its trunk, so far! Pretty darn cool.
And for a mommy watching from the ground…pretty darn scary.
As I watched every movement, each and every placement of little hands and feet, I had quite a few of those must-not-listen-to-the-fear moments.
I want my kids to grow up being free to adventure to their hearts’ content, and I certainly don’t want to transfer any of those old anxious tendencies to them…so I’m trying very hard to just breathe, to trust…and to let them be as brave as they want. (Within reason, of course.)
So, inspired by my husband’s confidence and my children’s fearlessness, I did a bit of tree-wall-climbing, myself.
And I have to admit that it was not too bad…after I was back on solid ground and could breathe again, anyway. 😉
Don’t get me wrong. I mean, I loved climbing trees and jumping off rocks and all sorts of things like that when I was a kid, and I’ve enjoyed extreme sports like surfing, snowboarding, wake boarding, and mountain biking. But much of that has tapered off in its extremity in recent years. And I am actually going to be getting into sport climbing with Nick very soon…but the bulk of that will be in a gym, where the possible-injury-to-enjoyment ratio is not so worrisome for a thirty-…ahem…let’s just say, for someone who’s not exactly twenty-three anymore. 😉
But it is true that sometimes, all we need is one of those stretching experiences to put things into perspective. I’ve been a bit anxious lately about projects I need to catch up on, auditions and proposals I need to submit, and a dozen other important life issues that need to be tackled. And the silly things, too, like the fact that our house has not yet fully recovered from the whirlwind that has been the past few months, and is definitely not as clean and tidy as I would like.
But I can imagine the stark perspective shift that happens when you find yourself looking out over a mountain canyon from a little ledge halfway up the side of a four-hundred-foot cliff face, knowing that the only way back to the car, and home…is to keep going up. And I’m trying very hard to imagine what it’s like to breathe, swallow down that panic, place a foot in the next crack up, and climb.
So I’m going to get some forward momentum going right about now. Difficult character voices? Near-impossible accents? Cold-read auditions? No sweat. It’s loads less terrifying than scaling a rock face.
Bring it on, challenges. Life is too chalk full of possibility to let fear get in the way.
