IN LOVE AND UNASHAMED

If I had to describe how climbing makes me feel, I couldn't do so without music. As I finish up my work for the day and head off to the climbing wall, I often hear Aretha Franklin. I know this isn't normal, but thankfully there isn't a cure. Everything I have come to feel about climbing is reflected in her song, "Natural Woman."



"When my soul was in the lost and found, you came along to claim it," pretty much sums it up. And now that I have such a feeling of intense love and respect for something I do, I pity the next love interest who comes along. A man, it seems, will have to at the very least, make me feel as good about him as I do climbing.

Yeah, I know it's a tall order. And yes, it may even be ridiculous, all things considered. That being said, I think it's good to (finally) have standards. I want a man in my life who can challenge me, present opportunities to reach beyond my own limits, and be there to celebrate with me my achievements. And I want someone who will welcome the opportunity for me to do the same for him. I've been told far too often that I'm "intimidating." Now that I've been investing in climbing, and the climbing community has been investing in me, I'm thinking my personality might be a 5.11 - intimidating, but totally worth the struggle.

Before climbing, I always thought of myself as a self-sufficient woman. And that may have been true, but I wasn't a self-loving woman. Climbing has helped me to see my body as more than a container. It's a miracle, really. Having any part of my physique firm up at forty seems like a Biblical sort of thing, like Moses coming down the mountain with the Ten Commandments or Jesus hosting a fish and bread potluck for the multitudes. It's as if climbing helped me to "get sanctified," to find something outside of myself that hones and perfects what's inside.

"We're all sensitive people, with so much to give" as Marvin Gaye sings. Understand me, Sugar, this is prophetic shizznit.



If you climb, then you know what I'm talkin' about. I'm not even good yet. I have yet to climb real rock. And yet ... here I am, feeling as if I'm about to burst. And I can't decide if it's climbing that has done this directly, or if it has simply helped me to bring out all the best parts of myself I'd been hiding away. I suppose, really, it doesn't matter.

What does matter, I think, is that I have found a way to experience love, real love. I walk with pep in my step, and I smile far more often than I frown. I've come to appreciate people in new ways, their vulnerability and imperfections. And I've come to appreciate myself, my clown nature and alleged immaturity, as a facet of my passion for life. No other sport has opened so many doors into my soul, and I'm no longer thinking of myself as a dated artifact. I'm alive, dammit. Let the archeologists have my bones another day. For now, I choose to fully live and love.

You don't have to hold on so tight to your construction of self that you become permanently affixed to a perspective or position. Climbing has helped me to value the fall, and this reminds me of a song by South:



Feed me something
We'll go back to the start
Take pride of place
Understand our reasons
A photograph taken at the time when
Confidence won't up and leave

So loosen your hold
Though you might be frightened
Release or be caught
If this be the right thing
Unable by thought
To look what the tide brings in
Look what the tide brings in

Feed me something
We'll go back to the start
Take pride of place
Understand our reasons
A photograph taken at the time when
Confidence won't up and leave

So loosen your hold
Though you might be frightened
Release or be caught
If this be the right thing
Unable by thought
To look what the tide brings in
Look what the tide brings in

So loosen your hold
Though you might be frightened
Release or be caught
If this be the right thing
Unable by thought
To look what the tide brings in


Climbing feeds me something, makes me feel found, and man, all I can say is, "Let's get it on." Get on that rock. Get on that route. Climb up with all you've got. You'll meet yourself there, a self you never knew before.