CYCLES

(Photo: Fresh off the MoPac with 20.4 miles under our belts and awesome helmet hair)

"Yeah, I get by with a little help from my friends."

Fighting a cold for most of the week, I decided to bail on my long-anticipated return to Shelf Road for what can only be described as a climbing and beer extravaganza. It was hard to let go of the dream, particularly after scoring a freakishly good deal on a sleeping bag earlier in the summer and amassing my own gear. My maternal instincts directed inward, I decided that the trip (however fun) would be too much. I didn't want to get sicker on the road, or experience sleeping in a tent with lows hovering in the 30s when I just didn't feel good. Whiny? Probably. But when you've got a comps portfolio to work on, a demanding teaching schedule, and three major projects looming above your head, it pays to be cautious. I can't afford to get so sick I have to delay deadlines.

By Friday night, I was feeling much better and decided to try to round up a group for a ride out to Eagle, Nebraska on the MoPac trail. Three of my friends joined me, and I think we couldn't have asked for a better day. WIth the high hovering at 65, with a crisp fall breeze to our backs (except one brutal stretch two miles outside of Eagle when the wind was angry and in our face), and with great joy, we tackled the trail.

Since moving in June, I've been a real bike commuter. I barrel down busy streets like a bike messenger wannabe. I wear my cycling clothes to handle weather and pack my work outfits in a saddle bag. It's easy for me to rack up 15 - 20 miles of riding each week as I work and play. On the weekends, I like to take on a long ride to clear out the cobwebs. I usually listen to music while mulling my week, thinking through difficulties of the heart, and just enjoying the simple act of moving and breathing.

Until this weekend, riding has always been a solitary, meditative act for me. On occasion, my son would join and we'd ride out on the MoPac so he could tell me stories. He moved to California a month ago, and I miss him. This, now that I think about it, is probably what urged me to ask my friends to go on a ride. It's all too easy for me to remain comfortably within my own insular existence, to do my own thing and go my own way. I'm glad I didn't do that this weekend.

I've been feeling a bit disappointed in the workings of my own body lately. My metabolism has slowed, making weight loss difficult. Turning forty, it turns out, is like hitting a caloric brick wall. Just this month, I added circuit training to my weekly routine three times each week to increase my activity while building muscle - muscles that will (Lord willing) burn fuel. When I woke Saturday, I tried to push this frustration from my mind. I was marginally successful.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't missing the Colorado crew and the climbing opportunity. Since my first trip to Shelf, I've wanted to go back just to prove I could top a rock route and enjoy the view. I also miss the Boulder gang very much - I think about them every day. Getting out with Lincoln friends helped to assuage my feelings of disappointment that I didn't go to Colorado. As we loaded bikes into the back of a truck, as we all joked and teased each other, it felt good to be with my Lincoln crew, to be together doing something outside of our bimonthly beer binges.

Out on the trail, riding the crushed gravel trail covered in fallen leaves, the scent of fall aroused my senses. I love the smoky, earthy tones of autumn, the crisp air, and the colors that seem to burst forth from tired trees and trail-side plants. As we rushed past thistles topped with cotton and farmers' fields turned to golden rest, it felt damn good to be alive. Though two-thirds of the route to Eagle is a steady uphill grade that burns the thighs, I was still grinning like a village idiot. As I pedaled, I found my thoughts wandering through my memories; through the years before I discovered just how fantastic my Trek I named Old Blue is, and how much fuller my life has been since I shambled into the bike store and laid down some cash.

Life on a bike, I think, takes me back as it brings me forward. That's why I like it. I'm at once the best parts of childhood and my grown-up life, wheels turning, spokes shining, pedals moving ... it's glorious, this biking thing.

After we descended upon the bustling main drag of Eagle, we stood in front of the One Eyed Dog bar and ate our snacks. I chomped down a Kashi bar and a navel orange. A friend ate some yogurt and an apple. We rehydrated then made the mad ten-mile rush back to the trail head. As I rode ahead, I felt the weeks of commuting had paid off. I wasn't overly tired. I didn't feel as though I wanted to give up, either. Instead, I felt very efficient and relaxed - cycling nirvana.



The day itself was full of laughter and smiles. We ate together at a local pizzeria, then headed to my house so the gang could meet Scooter, my 9-week old kitten and P'UP mascot. When everyone had gone and I was alone in my apartment with Scooter purring on my lap, I felt very lucky. Somehow, despite all my poor choices, I've ended up with good friends in two states. And though a part of me still wished I'd gone to climb in Colorado, it was the selfish part - the one who wants everything right away, in an instant. There will be other trips, other climbs. I miss those special people, but even as I do I know they would have been very proud of me had they seen the gang and I on the trail, living our lives, in and on cycles.

(S)Nailing It

My bathroom ceiling, under the weight of water seeping from the upstairs neighbor’s bathtub plumbing gave way on Monday. On Wednesday, I learned that no matter how much time I give myself for assessing and responding to students’ work it’s just not enough. By Friday, I figured out that students don’t always respond to teachers’ comments with the same care and concern teachers offered them.

In short, it’s been a long week.

I did, however, finally get back to the wall. Considering how long I’ve been away, I made a snail’s progress. Well, beginner’s progress all over again. It seems I’ve forgotten how to manage the first few moves of a route. By the time I make it past the bouldering line, I’m already lost in the disgust I felt fumbling first moves. This, I hate to admit, is evidence of flawed logic. I am my own worst enemy (as most of us are).

I used to think I was an optimist, one of those people who think of the glass as half-full. And that may be true when it comes to everything but two things: A half empty pint and a route. Though I knew both routes I pushed today were designed to teach specific skills, such as foot and hand matching and footwork, and though I could see the problems themselves as valuable, that did little to assuage my feelings of futility.

I didn’t get to come to the work completely focused on it. I was squeezing some climb time into an already over-packed schedule. Did I take that into consideration as I put feet and hands on that 5.8 first go? Nope. Did I take an inventory of my mind to make sure I was just thinking about climbing instead of all the crap I still had to do with my day? No sir. The fact I had to bail halfway through a 5.7+ so I could make it to a meeting didn’t help me one bit.

Instead, I did what so many do: I took what Buddhists term “beginner’s mind” – a frazzled conscious without a central focus – and tried to force myself to perform. To add to my imbalance, I hadn’t hydrated or eaten properly all day. So when I needed some “oomph” from my muscles, it wasn’t there. All I had put in my gullet by 3:30 p.m. was a Chocwalla bar and a container of organic Greek yogurt. That’s not even a rookie move. It’s just complete disregard for the sanctity of one’s physical needs. There was hardly enough nutritional power there to support activity more rigorous than a nap.

After climbing, I rushed to meet with an angry student who both lauded my intellect and cursed it at the same time (a common response I get from students unaccustomed to being challenged by both intelligence and confidence), I jumped on my bike and hauled ass in order to make it to yet another meeting. I carpooled to a department function, still feeling the sweat from the ride running in rivulets down my back. Though I talked and ate with colleagues, I can’t claim that I was fully present in those moments, either. I was still back at the wall, thinking about all I didn’t accomplish.

That’s what “beginner’s mind” is: a lack of presence in a present moment.

And it wasn’t until I sat down at home with a cup of tea, listening to myself breathe in the silence of my apartment, that I realized just how busy I had been all day. Shoulders tight, legs still burning from the day’s load, I realized I had forgotten to be mindful of, and thankful for, my breath, for the very life force that keeps me going. I had forgotten to protect, love, and honor my body by feeding it with care. Instead, I had jumped onto that treadmill of “accomplishment” and “tasks,” without thinking about anything more than ticking down a list of things I needed to do.

So now I’m wondering this: When did doing become more important than being?

I’ve been thinking about Thich Nhat Hanh and his call for us to be present in our bodies, to focus on mindfulness and breathing, on smiling and loving each moment. I’m wondering now, as I sit here in front of my computer, what would happen if I took the concept of mindfulness and applied it to climbing. “If an action is motivated by compassion and understanding,” Hanh says, “then that is good enough to be called a Buddhist action.” I’d argue, regardless of faith or religious affiliation, that if an action is motivated by compassion and understanding, then that is good enough to be called an act of love.

So what would happen if I brought presence and love to climbing, to those difficulties of each problem, and to each moment I stepped or reached? What would happen if I breathed with each move, and smiled, as if the act of climbing were a meditation of its own?

I’ll let you know. I’m going to try that on Sunday. I’ll be sure to post a full account of my effort to love myself, even as I struggle, and to care more about being on a route than doing it. I might go at a snail's pace, but I just might stick to my routes, too.

WAKE UP, BEAUTIFUL!

(PHOTO: Stunned self portrait. "Bed head No. 3")


"Being affirming and self-accepting happens easily if we consciously practice refusing to embrace negative accounts of ourselves and our realities." - bell hooks


I've been doing a lot of work lately, work that has kept me far from the leisurely hours of morning writing. My dissertation work is in full swing now, and I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. As my brain cooks big thoughts, however, my morning bed head has been reflecting back to me the status of my inner mind. Every morning for the last month, I've risen with sloth-like grace, lumbered to the bathroom, and looked in the mirror. My hair has given me the first chuckle of the day every day for the last 30.

The photo above is my first self-startling attempt to capture the magic. The preview flash dazed, but I prevailed. Mornings are rougher than they once were, and I can't blame it on an active night life at the local pub. No, whatever is happening to my head on the pillow is a mystery to me. Of course, most of the things going on in my head are.

I took a break from climbing. I had to - I had reached the wall of my own inability to risk. I couldn't get up or over it. Instead, I would show up to the wall, give a few half-hearted attempts at projecting, and then ask to be lowered. I wish I could blame the difficulty of ascension on a lack of talent or the difficulty of the routes themselves. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on my mood, the problem came down to my being gutless. I've been afraid to let myself grow. The progress, or rather the possibility of progress, scared me spitless.

In my intellectual life, I take risks all the time. I'm not afraid of inquiry or the complexities that come from questioning all that seems "inarguably true." But in my lived life, I tend to cower. I tend to refuse possibilities or ignore the knock at opportunity's door. For the longest time, I attributed this to my socially awkward ways. Then, I decided my cowardly nature was due to a poor body image - I always have to negotiate (and renegotiate) my sense of physicality. For years, particularly the last ten, I thought being overweight was the reason for all of my problems.

I have, over the years, figured out a way to connect just about everything to my weight. I created an anvil to hoist upon my shoulders, something that could keep me down and miserable; something that could keep me isolated. And it wasn't until I had to take a step back from climbing that I could hear my inner critical voice and recognize it for what it really was: Batshit insanity.

So a month ago, I decided that it was time to take risks in order to regain an appreciation for my physical self. This was no small task. My first act of resistance was to reclaim an activity I often said I could or would never do: run. Thinking in terms of approaches to climbing areas, I thought running could help me to gain the endurance and strength to hike to a climbing route and not exhaust myself before I ever donned my harness. Thinking in terms of self-respect, I wondered if taking on running would help me to see something new about myself I couldn't see without it.

While researching training plans, I found the "Couch to 5k" program online and joined it. I've been working on interval training for a month and I'm making progress. It's a big deal to me, I think, to be able to run two minutes and walk three for a total of 30. When I started I could barely manage the thirty-second run. I also felt horribly self-conscious taking my place on the track or among the treadmills at the gym. But I did what the "experts" said I should, and I made sure I celebrated (through positive self-dialogue) even the smallest of accomplishments.

And then, when running started to feel good, I bought some shoes.



Three weeks ago, I added circuit training to my routine. I went to orientation, worked with the trainer to figure out my limitations, and then got down to the serious business of learning to let go of all that which diminishes my ability to love myself and to love my body. Some feminists claim the hours spent working out are part of the oppression of a patriarchal beauty aesthetic. Others would claim my body image struggle would be ended if I just "learned to love my big, beautiful body." Hell, they may be right. But(t), what happens if you like working out? What about self-respect gained through marveling all the strong, wonderful things a body can do?

As you can read, I'm nowhere near finished with my self-inventory. And I'm nowhere finished with climbing. I'll be back at the wall Tuesday. It's time. It's time to stop thinking I'm wasting others' time if I project a route. It's time to stop beating myself up for all the years I didn't take care of myself. It's time to stop worrying about what others think of my body and just let it live by doing the things that bring me joy and self-respect.

Existential navel gazing? Perhaps. A slogging through middle age vanity issues? Maybe. But since beginning P'UP a year ago, I've come a long way. I bike commute to work. I carpool to the grocery store. I've changed my eating habits radically in just twelve months, and enjoyed it. I put down the pack-a-day habit and took up running - or trying to run. I've had setbacks, like a broken heel. But I've also had personal victories, like my first outdoor climbing trip to Shelf Road.

But more than that, I've learned it's time to let go of my nightmare self-loathing and wake up, beautiful.

Crux(iFiction)

I've hit a physical, personal, and professional crux. That's right, I know I've been hangdoggin' on this blog. But I'll be writing this weekend .... and I've got a lot to tell you.

DROPPING JAWS

“You’re going to get so much action in this place!” Kate exclaimed as we moved yet another wave of boxes into my new apartment. Her enthusiasm and foresight, I suspect, were symptomatic of exhaustion.

“Ooh baby,” I said, “Welcome to my swingin’ bachelorette pad. You know, ‘ho’ + use equals house.”

And it’s jokes like that, I think, that serve as an inoculation to prevent social interaction with the opposite sex. I am as immune to dating as I am to small pox, mumps, measles, and polio. Good thing, I suppose, since all of these afflictions are kind of a bummer and can sometimes be fatal.

(I know - a good woman doesn’t make such jests. Let’s just call that last one part of a mounting body of evidence, shall we?)

Over the weekend, while at a bar to wish “bon voyage” to two climbing friends before their trip to Europe, a man crossed the room to join our group. He had that sharp, middle-management suck-up veneer and was a bit too man-tan for Nebraska. His clothes were too “crisp.” His haircut too groomed. He reminded me of the standard issue middle-aged man from Florida, someone who wears golf clothes all weekend while oogling younger women from behind mirrored aviator glasses.

This man we’ll call David (because that’s what he asked me to call him) made a lot of eye contact with me as I sat with my friends. As every Cosmo girl knows, men who look you in the eye for prolonged periods of time (longer than two seconds) and point their torsos in your direction are demonstrating classic attraction symptoms. The secret to wooing, the (s)experts claim, is giving good eye and where you point your chest.

His baby blues were saying something. The thing is, though, I wasn’t sure exactly what. Things were getting lost in translation. There seemed to be a note of urgency, like the hopeful glance a husband gives a wife when it’s definitely time to leave a dreadful party. But there also seemed to be a contemplative pause, which I attributed to either a minor stroke or his response to the waitress’ short skirt and tight tank top.

While I tried to decipher his eye code, I noticed his lips were moving. I focused. I squinted. It seemed he was asking me for directions and I, the ever polite Midwesternite, got up to help.

“So you’re lost?” I asked, setting my pint on the table.

David smiled. “Not anymore.”

He was indeed from out of town. He worked for an internationally known excavation equipment company. He seemed like a very nice man who loved his work – we talked about our shared enthusiasm for our careers. It was a grown-up and lively conversation. An hour later, he said he wanted to spend some time with me while he was in town. I gave him my number and we made plans for dinner the following night.

The exchange seemed natural (unlike his tan). I wasn’t nervous or uncomfortable. I didn’t invite him to my ho + use, either. David, a couple years my senior, seemed like the perpetual bachelor. But he was closer to my age than my ex, didn’t seem like a serial killer, and was genuine in his interest in having dinner with me.

Twenty-two hours later, dressed up and waiting for my phone to ring, my gut instinct foretold the unforgivable: I’d been stood up.

As I washed my face and readied for bed, I thought about all the good-natured pressure I’ve received to get “Out There and meet people.” Why do those who claim to love me foist this absurd notion in my direction? Don’t they remember how brutal the dating scene is? Have they forgotten how awful waiting for the phone to ring feels, or how deep rejection can seep into one’s bones? Don’t they remember the indignity of being stood up for dinner and having to eat the Plan B bowl of Top Ramen? Oh, the humanity! Oh, the horror! Oh, the sodium!

I wish I could report the dastardly stand-up didn’t make me sad, that I lived up to my middle name and powered through my disappointment. But by the end of the night, I was curled into a pathetic mass of quivering inquiry. I often tell my students that life is process, that lessons await us everywhere. So I wondered what Life was trying to teach me, and then asked God to smite David’s golf swing.

It’s not that the guy had swept me off my feet or even that I had been hoping for more than dinner – I’m a realist. I’ve met myself. I know my gifts are often lethal blows to blossoming romance. What bothered me, what really had me against the cerebral ropes, is that I hadn’t gone out of my way to court this kind of experience. I hadn’t gone to the bar to find a hook-up. I wasn’t trolling for dudes. I wasn’t even wearing my good underwear. I’m chaste for fuck’s sake.

In fact, when I had left the house I was content with my life, perhaps even happy, and filling my hours with all kinds of normal, happy things. It’s only been since my move to the new place that I’ve been able to look the world in the eye again – my recovery from last fall's (and my truest) interest in love (and the rejection of it) has been slow.

I thought I was doing well, really making headway with my heart. Certain songs weren’t suffocating me with sudden, inescapable melancholia. I was able to hang out with my merry band of marrieds and cutely coupled without feeling like Uno Royale, their simple and single sidekick; a matronly mascot serving to remind them they were lucky to have someone. This seemed like progress.

Then David McManTan showed up, tossed me a few compliments like Chief Martin Brody tossing chum, and when I surfaced he scurried the poop deck. Though I recognized his cowardice, I also recognized something I’d been avoiding.




For months now, I’ve been working (and perhaps overworking) a poem …

A woman shows a man her treasure, a collection of cobalt sapphires, fiery rubies, glistening emeralds, and twinkling diamonds. “These are my gifts,” she says. “These I will share with you.”

Looking upon her generosity, all he feels is the weight of the stone.

As she explains how beauty is exacted by compression, he senses his own suffocation.

As she shares the facets of her interests, he’s blinded by the glare.

As he walks quietly into the dawn she stares at the gems waking with first light, their colors deepening in holy hues. Aching with joy, she calls to him, longing to show him the illumination.

But he is already too far away. Her voice stirs nothing but the birds in the trees.

She waits.

She sits with her gems so long she too feels their weight.

She sits looking at their glistening colors until she too becomes blind to their beauty.

Without vision, heavy with contemplation, she gathers her stones and buries them again – for real this time.

I know: It’s a total bummer poem. My point: Mr. McManTan popped up into my life just long enough to remind me that I had buried my gems. What a bastard. So now what? Hell if I know. Date an archeologist? Buy a shovel? Bite tourists until someone sends Richard Dreyfuss and the sheriff? Pray there are no sequels?

I suppose I’ll just do the only thing I can: Take it to the wall and sort it out later.

It's Been Awhile

Like a bran muffin in the geriatric maze of elderly bowels, I am moved.

The newest chapter of my life has officially begun, and I’m please to announce that I am snug and warmly pleased to call my new apartment home. The building is teaming with hipsters doing hipster things like listening to big band jazz first thing in the morning, or baking while wearing a secondhand, vintage apron. The ladies living upstairs wear floor-length caftans and scarves in their hair. The men sport those skinny-leg jeans, smart button down shirts, and aloof intellectual expressions. That’s right, I live among those my best friends mock (and I like it).

This is very different from my previous apartment, with the sounds of yelling toddlers echoing in the halls and the malodorous cocktail cloud of fish and gym socks hanging in the air. There was a hardness to that university space, a modernist severity that just didn’t suit my personality or purposes. I feel as if I’ve found a structure that fits.

I’ve been very busy in this new space. I now know how to properly hang and fit mini blinds. I now own my own ratchet screwdriver and wonder daily why I didn’t own one before. I’ve potted flowers and herbs in big pots on my deck. I’ve learned to ride my bike like an aggressive commuter – taking on traffic even while sandwiched between two metro buses because my city’s bike lanes are in the center of the street. Riding to and from work is my favorite part of the day, mostly because I feel like a cross between Lance Armstrong and Tina Turner: A damn fine cyclist with badass legs.

This assuages, to some degree, how my month-long break from climbing has made me feel as if I’m starting all over again. Between my conference travel and the wall’s closure for maintenance, I’ve lost some of my gains. Going back for the first time just a few days ago was tough – I had to make peace with limitations all over again. I found myself struggling to complete a 5.6 I had climbed many times before. I struggled at the overhang all over again. It wasn’t a good climbing day.

That being said, I am learning to be patient with my body and to appreciate its need of regular care and investment. I’ve been a nonsmoker for 60 days now – that’s 59 days longer than I ever thought I’d be – and I’m still setting training goals. I’m still working on recipes. And heck, I’m still waiting for the cable dude to hook up my Internet and TV to the rest of the world (Friday? Please, Technology Gods, can it be Friday?). It’s difficult to be witty and charming when clacking away in a fishbowl-style library computer area (thanks, creepy dudes for your unseemly behaviors involving your hands and nether regions that made officials restructure this study area to subdue your Grabby McFeely tendencies), so I’m looking forward to working from home.

Other developments:

A student has offered me a cat named Lebowski. I’m thinking about adopting the dude.

I’ve realized ice cream plays a crucial role in maintaining one’s emotional health.

I’m now even more convinced that BBC’s Top Gear is the greatest show on cable Monday nights.

I think I’ll end with that – mostly because my climbing partner for the day is waiting for me. I’ve got to get back at that 5.6 before I give up on this climbing gig completely.

WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

I haven't given up on P'UP or climbing. I'm in the middle of moving from a university grad student family housing apartment to my own hipster lady estrogen compound. I'll be back up and rockin' the wall next week. Please stay tuned!

BERRY BERRY GOOD FOR YOU

(PHOTO: E.f.R.'s Summer Berry Salad with balsamic vinegrette)


Berry season is a few weeks away for most of us in the Plains, but we can get these summer gems at our supermarkets at sweet prices. Before P'UP, this time of year would have been prime poundcake season, too. I'd be up to my elbows in Cool Whip. Now that I've been smoke-free for 39 days (THIRTY NINE DAYS), and now that I've come to better understand the "bliss zone" of my palette, I'm thinking this season is the start of something rather new (for me).

As I've mentioned before, using vinegars can help you to satisfy salt cravings without increasing your salt intake. Vinegars can also help to intensify certain flavors, particularly those with natural sugars. My favorite all-around vinegars (balsamic, rice, and raspberry) have proven to be rather satisfying when paired up in salads that contain fruits. This week, I made the above berry salad that contains red leaf lettuce, slivered almonds, blackberries, strawberries, and green onions. This is a nutritionally powerful and tasty salad. If you want to add an extra zing, consider adding feta crumbles or blue cheese crumbles. If you add these tart cheeses, consider using pecans instead of almonds, and add a teaspoon of honey to the dressing.

Basic Berry Salad

3 cups torn fresh red leaf lettuce or a mixture of spinach and lettuce
1 cup of sliced fresh strawberries
1/2 cup blackberries
1/4 cup slivered almonds
3 green onions, sliced lengthwise into "matches' (instead of rounds - it's a flavor balance thing).


Basic Balsamic Vinegrette:

1/4 cup good olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon dried Italian Seasoning (or use three tablespoons of chopped fresh oregano, basil, and thyme)
1 clove garlic, pressed
Salt and pepper to taste
(1 tsp. honey if using blue cheese in your salad)

Combine vinegar, garlic, herbs, salt and pepper in a glass or ceramic bowl (metal bowls will alter the taste of your dressing). Let "steep" for an hour or longer. Just before serving, whisk oil into the vinegar mixture thoroughly. Pour over salad.

This is a very affordable dressing alternative to store-bought, particularly if you have potted herbs at home like I do. I keep a kitchen garden on my apartment patio (that's another blog entry coming soon).

Good, happy eating!

THERE'S AN END (RIGHT BEFORE A BEGINNING)

I took this photo while biking the MoPac trail, not too far from Eagle, Nebraska. A storm rolled in on top of us, so my son and I sought shelter in a lean-to built by Boy Scout troop 49 to wait out the front. Watching the rain, feeling the miles as a dull ache in my legs, I stared at the horizon. My son, eating canned chicken with robust zeal, told me his own Scout stories while I considered the weight of my existence.

As much as I write about life, all I really know is this: Beginnings only follow endings. I’m packing up my university apartment, ending a semester of teaching, and coming to terms with one of my kid’s decision to launch herself into a complicated life on her own. There’s a lot to do, a lot to keep me busy, and I’m feeling a bit too isolated. But this is the nature of endings; this is just how life works.

I did find an apartment, a beautiful 930 square foot craftsmen place with mahogany woodwork, double French-doors, and a refurbished galley kitchen perfect for me. Come June 1, I will live in a place less expensive but far more beautiful. I will live in my first apartment ever sought just for me. I didn’t have to choose it for its schools or neighborhood. I didn’t have to consider the number of bedrooms or the color of its carpet (kids are hell on carpeting).

Instead, I spent several days searching for the sort of place that felt like me. As an academic working with spatiality and cognition, issues of place/space intrigue me. I knew, for example, that wherever I lived I would experience some shifts in both my thinking and my self-perception so it was important to find someplace that felt at home even without furniture.

After four days, I found it. It felt so good there I didn’t want to leave. Maybe it was the French doors. Maybe it was the natural light and all the windows. Maybe it was all the greenery in the neighborhood, or the fact the landlord said, “Feel free to put plants on the balcony, to hang flowers.” Or maybe it was the fact that the kitchen was painted a beautiful shade of grey and had brand-new everything.

Whatever it was or is, I’m moving in a couple of weeks to an eight-unit brick apartment built in the 1920s that’s a short walk from my oldest daughter’s little yellow house, a grocery store, and the coolest little Mexican bakery I’ve ever seen. My familial-centered day-to-day existence is changing into a single lady life. As sad as I am about the ending, I am equally happy at the prospects of my beginning. I’m too far into the journey to turn back, and there’s some difficult stuff ahead.

I’ve wondered if I’m at the crux of my life itself …

I’ve channeled a lot of my feelings into climbing. This week, I topped out a 5.7+ with a tricky backward slant at the crux that I had been projecting, and then topped out a new 5.7 with an overhang. I’ve started working with the fingerboards, learning to “hang” because I can’t quite do a pull-up. In short, I’ve started to think of my own development as a climber instead of just being happy I could get UP at all. As one of my fellow climbers said to me, “You’ve not a noob anymore, Rogers.”

I certainly don’t feel like a noob. My oldest daughter is getting married in two weeks, and that alone can make you feel far from new. She and her fiancé are excited and happy as we plan our BBQ celebration, their trip to the courthouse for a secular wedding, and navigate their entry into the next phase of their lives. He’s 28 to her 22, but you’d never know it. They’re in love all over again, and just last month they discovered they would be parents before Christmas. They’re a couple of grinning dopes.

With moving and their marriage comes a whole lot of change. Some things will stay the same. I’ll still bike to work and back every day – no matter the weather this year. I will still shop at Open Harvest, stop in at Le Quartier - the French bakery - on my way back from Eagle on the MoPac, and take Sunday coffee at Indigo Bridge Books in the Haymarket. I’ll still go with the boys (my son and son-in-law) to the batting cages on the weekends to work out the psychological kinks. And I’ll still climb three days a week – thank goodness.

What I won’t be doing, which seems really foreign and nonsensical to me, is living with another’s needs positioned as equal to or even greater than, my own. And that, I have to admit, is an intimidating yet exciting proposition - sort of like that 5.8 on the north wall at our Rec that I have been eyeing the way a woman gives a man the once over in a crowded bar.

All I do know is that I'll be climbing to keep myself together.

NAAN SEQUITURS

(PHOTO: My homemade naan on a Sunday afternoon)

Apart from developing what Professor Emeritus John Ikerd terms, “a new food ethic,” and continuing my work to engage with the Slow Food movement, I’ve been thinking of my kitchen in a whole new way.

I’m thinking my kitchen could become my personal apothecary.

Until P'UP, I was sort of an automatron eater. Everything was on autopilot, and I didn't give food much thought beyond its caloric consequences. But now, I'm turning a keen eye to my own sense of science and satisfaction. Of course my lay science is no match for those professionals in the food industry, people who use chemistry to find the “bliss point” in the foods offered to the American market (and later the global market). This “bliss point,” David Kessler asserts as a researcher and the former head of the FDA, is an issue of addiction as serious as those associated with tobacco.

It was Kessler who helped to expose the chemical constructions and additions to tobacco products that made them, quite literally, irresistible to the brain. Kessler claims that ready-made foods, snacks, and cereals are chemically designed to trigger responses in consumers’ brains, tapping their reward centers while at the same time leaving them craving more.

In his latest book, The End of Overeating (2009), Kessler explores the ways chemistry influences consumption, and the food industry’s perfect culinary cocktail of “fat, sugar, and salt” that keeps people hungering for more.

“As more sugar is added,” Kessler notes, “food becomes more pleasurable until we reach the bliss point, after which it becomes to sweet and the pleasure drops off.” Kessler claims the same is true of fat and salt, and that the “optimal combination” food actually increases appetite instead of suppressing it by falling short of this natural indicator of appetite/taste satisfaction.

In his research with others at Yale University, Kessler discovered that overweight and obese people have significantly higher response activity in the reward centers of their brains. Certain combinations of sugar, fat, and salt can increase the amount of neurotransmitters in the pleasure centers of the brain. Kessler asserts that some foods are chemically engineered to fall just short of the “bliss point” that leads to satisfaction in order to keep consumers dissatisfied, craving and eating more.

Kessler, a lawyer and professor of pediatrics, epidemiology, and biostatistics, has a reputation as a whistle-blower. His work at the Food & Drug Administration (1990-97), and his tenure at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine involved outing practices and products that violated ethical and legal codes in society at large as well as industry. In 2007 he was dismissed from his post as dean and vice-chancellor for revealing that the dean’s office was operating in a perpetual deficit and would continue to do so. Eventually, UCSF had to publicly acknowledge that Kessler’s claims were indeed correct.

The guy seems to have the moxie to take on powerful institutions on both sides of the public and private enterprise divide, so I found myself captivated by his claims about overeating, the “bliss point,” and his research surrounding neurotransmission.



Because I’m working on a new food ethic that helps me to disconnect from corporate practices that are stripping the planet of natural resources and exploiting human lives for material gain, I decided that perhaps I had the power to do my own chemistry experiments in the kitchen. After slogging through nutrition books written by nutritionists and doctors, thumbing through health magazine articles about learning to substitute low-nutrition ingredients for high-nutrition ones, and after working with Weight Watchers premises, I feel I can testify to the following simple advice. To help rewire your taste buds (and perhaps your brain) to reach its “bliss point” in healthier ways while letting go of the salt, fat, and sugar addiction, I recommend:

1. Using vinegars (particularly rice wine vinegar) and lemon juice and soy sauce in place of or with a reduced amount of salt
2. Using natural sources like honey, coconut milk, fruit (fresh or dried), or raw sugar in place of sweeteners, processed sugars, and corn syrup
3. Increase the dietary fiber of your meals to help you feel full and to keep your body (and brain) satisfied
4. Use plant-based oils (olive, safflower, grape seed, peanut, sesame) instead of canola or corn oils, hydrogenated margarine, or butter because they contribute a flavor to foods that will naturally increase the pleasure of eating
5. Increase the spice complexity and potency of the foods you eat, including adding peppers and chiles because of the health benefits they bring to your circulatory system and metabolism

It’s not rocket science (okay, maybe it’s a little like rock science). What I’ve discovered is that many cuisines from other parts of the world, particularly the Far East, help you to make this transition. Indian and Thai recipes have helped me to rethink my own palette and to move from an overall dissatisfaction with healthier eating to a sense of profound satisfaction with it. Drawing from books such as The Healthy Low-Fat Indian Cookbook by Shehzad Husain and Manisha Kanani, Edward Espe Brown’s Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings, and the gazillion Weight Watchers recipes offered online, I’ve come to a whole new level of epicurean experimentation.

(PHOTO: My homemade naan, raita, aloo potatoes, and shrimp balti)

There are spices in my cupboard that were, until recently, unfamiliar to me: cardamom pods, curry leaves, garam masala, fenugreek, black mustard, saffron, tamarind, and turmeric. I’ve got fresh ginger bulbs and garlic heads in a big bowl in my refrigerator. I’ve learned to make a tart, satisfying cheese from plain yogurt. I can now taste the difference between different types of chiles to understand what each could or would bring to a recipe. Before this experiment, I always just tasted the heat. I’m no longer buying salad dressings – I just make my own. And my refrigerator is becoming cold storage for my low-cost, high-taste experiments instead of a showcase for ready-made engineered foods.

In the process, I’ve learned which spices aid in digestion, promote regularity, or minimize gas. I’ve learned which spices turn up the heat in the body’s metabolic furnace, and which foods help the body to feel/sense an adequate source of potential energy. Not every recipe has been a success, but the ones that have worked well have been amazing (like those featured in the photographs here). I hope you'll consider taking on some experiments of your own, that you too will find a new food ethic that will connect you to yourself and those who help you bring your food to the table. But don't get carried away. This should never be work. As Edward Espe Brown directs, just "please enjoy your food." You know, really live instead of cruising on autopilot.

(Dis)Shelved: Part I

(PHOTO: The view from camp)


“You’re going to catch a colder.” – Jonathan Safran Foer

First night:

Ten hours on the road later, I was freezing my ass off in a tent on the cusp of a limestone cliff. I had already taken a photo of the ridge across the canyon - the one that looks like it has a stone penis tip. I had already eaten a great meal, drank a few good bears, and pitched a tent with help from new friends. I had already questioned my sanity for taking on such an endeavor with so little camping experience.

I had already lost my pants.

But not in a good way.

Headlamp beaming from my forehead, I rifled through my bag, trying to find my base layers. I was shaking, laughing, and feeling as if it were going to be a long, long night. I had definitely caught a colder.

Eventually, after some not-so-minor acrobatics, I had two pairs of pants on, a hat on my head, gloves on my hands, and a cozy mummy bag zipped up around me. As I laid my head down on a tiny travel pillow, as I watched the tent walls breathe in and out with the chilled night air, I asked myself, “What in the hell am I doing here?”

And just as I dozed off, I heard a voice.

“Living.”

I faded into a deep mountain sleep, and forgot all about my valley worries.

(Dis)Shelved: Part II

As I reached my group of friends at the North Bank, every muscle in my body ached. My head, though, was giving me the most trouble. Having already experienced so much just in the journey to that moment, I was unable to sift through my thoughts in order to make room for new things. Tyler was wearing one of my Rheterica t-shirts, and announced that it was well received among the gang. Janice and Lizz were ready to get their climb on. And there I was, suffering from mind melt.

(PHOTO: My first outdoor climb: "Focus and go up" by Janice)

I couldn’t get my act together. I tried. So I approached my first climb already knowing my head wasn’t there with me – I had left it somewhere on the hike. So I wasn’t able to process the encouragement, to let love fill me, or to even channel it to help me ascend. I climbed my first on-rock route feeling as if I were outside of my own body. As I reached a difficult crux, I knew I was in trouble. It’s not smart to climb when your head isn’t in the present moment – it’s just not safe. So I cut my losses, part of me feeling as if I had failed, part of me clinging to the victory of getting on the rock at all.

(PHOTO: Lizz celebrating her 30th by topping out a lead)

But I was full, of life, of love, of hope. Full with comfortable quiet, I watched and listened. I wrote more poetry vandalism on the walls of my heart – bold, declarative, and in my own colors. I didn’t need to climb today, I thought. I didn’t need anything except Whitman, maybe.

There was never any more inception than there is now, 

Nor any more youth or age than there is now, 

And will never be any more perfection than there is now, 

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now

A long time ago, when I worked for a church, I learned two things that have stuck with me since. The first is the concept of the “prayer closet” – your own private space in which to experience spiritual connections and pray. The second, was a lesson about the baptism of the heart itself, when once is washed clean not by the water offered up in iconic representations of baptismal religious practice, but by Grace itself.

(PHOTO: Amy, relaxing at North Wall)

(PHOTO: Eli in "over ...oh-oh-oh-overdrive")

Sitting among my friends, I felt awash in both grace and love. Withdrawn in my silence, I was resting in my own prayer closet. I realized, while sitting down after handing over my first climb in gratitude, that I had somehow found my path. Buddhist writer and activist Thich Nhat Hanh writes of this kind of power, this connection to spirit and Self in his book, The Art of Power (2007):

If you have some experience that this path leads in a good direction, you will have faith in your path. You are very happy that you have a path, and thus you being to have power. This power will not destroy you or the people around you. In fact, it gives you strength and energy that other people can feel. When you have faith, your eyes are bright and your steps are confident. This is power. You can generate this kind of power every moment of your daily life. It will bring you a lot of happiness (16).

(PHOTO: Ron, doing a "sweet belay" for Tommy and Tyler, soaking up the day)

Just the night before, my friend Dana Marie had told me that she had noticed what she termed a transformation. “When I met you, you were so nervous, so timid. Now I see you and it’s like you’ve changed everything. It’s really cool to see you so happy, so bright and alive.”

We were walking a path back from the outhouse, and I was smoking my last cigarette. And I knew it was my last one because I had found my path. In just a few hours at Shelf Road, I had come to see that I wanted to spend the rest of my life loving and being among my friends, and that smoking was going to separate me from them, from my family. Just the thought of losing those I love too soon made my heart ache. And that was it. And in the three days since, I haven’t craved a thing.

Except a grilled ribeye steak, but that’s a different addiction.



(PHOTO: "Hot Climbing Momma Kate O with Baby D)

Sitting on a rock with friends, watching a new mommy love her baby, made me think of my own babies back home. My next trip to Shelf will be their trip to Shelf, too. I was thinking about all the years between their birth and their adult lives, wondering if they remembered all the mom smiles I offered them, if they understood my quiet way, and if they know how much I love them, even though they no longer wear ducky pajamas. The greatest part about maternal love is the way its waves ripple out to others, reach deep into the chest and touch one's soul. Watching new mommy love is proof life is gloriously good, and sitting on that rock I wanted to reach out and hug my kids. I wanted them there with me to see the bright visions my eyes held at that moment. I wanted them to know there was nothing I regretted about our life together, nothing more I could want but their respect and love as grown adults.

And it was this moment, watching a baby, remembering my own, when I realized something in my life had changed.

When I got home last night, as I showed photos from the trip to Laura, she was expressing great interest in my discoveries. Since I began P'UP, she hasn't wanted to climb with me. She hasn't wanted to climb at all. Given all the reasons we came to climbing in the first place, this worried me. As a mom, I wondered if I had killed her teenage enthusiasm for the sport by trying it too. I wondered if we were losing touch, our common understanding of the difficulties of being a family. I wondered if I was losing her to the momentum of her own life, her own journey. And I grieved this apparent loss in my own way, in quiet hours with my journal.

(PHOTO: Adam doing what he loves)

It was Adam who brought climbing into our lives, his way of showing support for a new and difficult part of my family's journey together. In fact, if it weren't for Adam, none of the Boulder friends I have now would be friends at all. He's been more than generous, and I doubt he'll ever really understand how much this has brought to our lives. "Did Adam climb well?" Laura asked.

"Duh," I said.

"And Tyler climbed?"

"Yup."

"Those Scheers are badasses," she said. "I love them."

As she sat on my bed, her feet dangling, she smiled at me. "Hey, I'm going to bed," she said, then got up to leave. As she reached my bedroom door, she looked over her shoulder at me.

"I want to climb with you tomorrow," she said.

And I wanted to cry. The path was definitely right. I had faith again.

(Dis)Shelved: Part III

(Photo: Clarita @ www.morguefile.com)

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone’s heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone’s heart would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don’t really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn’t have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war. – Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

As I marched up the trail to Cactus Cliffs, as my heart pushed blood through my body, I heard my mortal drum line. The beat of me, the thump, thump, thump of all the years and broken promises, of victories and defeats, of heartbreak and expansion – all of it melding and mangling a crescendo of unspeakable beauty.

I struggled to ascend the approach routes to the climbing areas. It was difficult going at times, particularly because I was alone. In the morning, I had missed the other noobs’ departure, and tagged along with a very enthusiastic group of people I didn’t know. I could have followed dear friends to their climbing spot, but I decided that for my first outdoor trip I needed some time to deal with myself, with my heart.

As I hiked to the rhythm of my own heartbeat, I thought of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself":

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume, 

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you


I could hear my friends’ laughter echoing, bouncing against the canyon walls. This comforted me as I plodded a beaten path and pondered the lives that had pounded down the dirt before my feet followed. I wondered what their hearts sounded like, what they thought about while making their way. When I stopped to rest, I simply listened. Breezes stirred my thoughts. The sun warmed my face. Life pulsed through me, the lightheaded journey girl, as I negotiated altitude and my physicality.

At the cliffs, I met a group of “old timers” who were climbing and hiking together as part of a yoga trip. They were celebrating retirement, and they offered me coffee from a Thermos. We talked about getting older and how life on rock seems bigger, more, and far more grounded than anyone outside of the climbing community would guess.

(PHOTO: The view from Cactus Cliffs where I sat and pondered life for awhile)

After that encouraging conversation, I stopped at a spot to take a photo of our campsite across the canyon. I couldn’t believe that I had made it that far, that I was ensconced within a pocket of rocks, looking over a gorge with a red dirt road slicing through it. Six months ago, I would never have tried to venture out this way, to see where my feet would or could carry me if I just followed the sound of my own drum. I took a moment to let my tears fall. It was a good, restorative cry.

Following the path back down the canyon, I encountered a woman sitting with two small children. Her husband was setting up a climbing route, and we talked of getting older, of writing, and her first year of college at UNL. We marveled at how small the world really was, and how Karma brought two strangers to an intersection of familiarity. She had seen my friends as they had passed through, and mentioned seeing one with a baby.

“I saw her and thought I had wasted my early year as a mother,” she said. “I saw that hot climbing momma and thought, man, I need to live my life differently.”

We exchanged contact information and talked about writing. We said we’d start a writing group for climbing women. I hope we do. I waved goodbye and pressed on, hoping to find my friends whose voices I could hear louder now, but whose bodies I couldn’t locate on the cliffs. Tired and wondering where to go next, I decided it was time to return to the campsite.

I hiked the road back to camp, unable to recognize my own song, but still thinking of Whitman:

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the 
earth much? 

Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? 

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

I reckon’d the path, the earth, the meaning of my life. I took time to stop and look up, to listen and to feel. The breeze that caressed my skin seemed familiar, loving and kind. Pine memories of trips with my father came back to me as I looked at limestone cliffs, pondered all they contained, from geodes to history, and the stories of his gem hunts he would have told me had he been there.

As I walked, I heard the first line of a new poem. I stopped to write it down in my Moleskin book. I then stooped to put a rock in my pocket and wished my dad could see me then, standing outdoors, hiking on my own, while conjuring Whitman's poetry.

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of 
all poems, 

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions 
of suns left,) 

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look 
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in 
books, 
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, 

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

As I hiked, I thought of the chasm that once separated my father and I. When I was a kid he didn’t understand that when my head filled with new thoughts and the silence roosted in my bones, it didn’t mean I was absent or pouting. He often misinterpreted my quiet way as a withdrawal from him, a separation. Dad was always delivering new ideas, new experiences, to me out of love. He never understood, then, that my silence was reverence for the very things he offered. I think he understands that now, or at least sees the fingerprints he left in my memories. I think he finds comfort in that now as he watches me grow.

(PHOTO: Dad, in his workshop, explaining his latest invention to me)

Hiking up the road, I wondered if there were others in my life unable to read the poetry that is my silence, the reaching in and loving that is my quietude. Sometimes I am closest to a heart when I stand furthest from it, when I seem withdrawn I’m actually cleaving to the fiercest earthbound love there is. I used to think of this as a failure on my part, some sort of fear of intimacy. What I know now, after a long cry among Cactus Cliffs, is that it’s a love unbreakable, the true north of my compass.

I encountered two of my dearest friends as I approached camp, and decided to follow them to the others among the North Bank. We waited for others to join us then started on our way. Sometimes, the only way to find your up is to go back down again.

After a full day of hiking and climbing, after feasting on a glorious buffet of visions, we returned to camp. We cooked. We ate. We laughed. Gathered around a fire, we sat together, our heartbeats pulsing in synchronized joy. I looked upon them for a very long time, trying to memorize their faces warm and the color of fire. Beneath a chandelier sky, stars burning through the black, I wasn't the only one seeping into silence. Bright eyes cast to the fire, they sat like dingledodies, fists worn from rock, and became poetry.

And I loved them for it, in my own quiet way, sitting off in my own mind.

I woke early my last day at Shelf, long before the sun tore from the ridge and warmed us. I packed up, and marveled the spiders that had sought warmth beneath my tent. I bagged up, loaded the car, and took one last walk to campsite 5 where most of my Boulder friends were just waking. We exchanged morning greetings and farewell hugs. They have become family to me, and after I turned to walk away, as I plodded down a red dirt path, I choked back the bitterness of goodbye. Every time I leave them, I feel wrenched away from love. Only the love awaiting me at home makes me strong enough to endure the separation from those fine people making their lives near the Flat Irons. Only the faintest promise of seeing them again makes it possible to go, and that is just one reason to love them even more.

On MY Shelf: Volumes and Issues

With my first outdoor climbing experience just hours away, I'm feeling a bit out of sorts. I am now the owner of a 2-3 person tent, a snake bite kit (my dad insisted), a camping cup, technical clothing, loose chalk, and something my son declared essential: a "hobo tool."

(PHOTO: N.U.G.U.N.)

This may seem perfectly normal for those classified as "real" or experienced outdoorsy types, but I haven't instigated a camping trip since Def Leppard was topping the charts with songs about pouring sugar and rockets. My last camping trip was with a husband - and that trip was miserable for a variety of reasons far beyond the company, biting overnight lows, and freak snowstorm in July. Now that I think about it, all the photos from that trip were taken with a film SLR - Kodak hadn't yet released its first digital camera to the public yet.

The majority of my current climbing friends were still in diapers, I think. Maybe a few of them were eating solid foods, getting ready for kindergarten, or just discovering their wanks, with a smattering of high achievers accomplishing all three milestones, but that hardly makes me feel better. In fact, I'm feeling rather old at the moment, perhaps too hold to be jumping into a car and embarking on a climbing road trip.

One of the recurring themes to P'UP, an undercurrent I don't always explore, is one of permission. I find myself often pondering if I'm allowed to make these changes, allowed to embark on such a journey, yet unable to name exactly who it is in charge. As a pro-woman writer and sometimes feminist, this just pisses me off. As an academic, I find it interesting that in the absence of authority (like that ex-husband), I create an imaginary gatekeeper.

What the hell is that all about?

Well, as someone who just figured out how to separate her fork and knife, use the corkscrew, and then lock them all together again, I can only assert this fundamental truth: I'm a nattering nabob of negativity. I traffic shame and guilt like a Columbian cartel moves narcotics. As Glenn Frey sings, "it's a losing proposition/but one you can't refuse" - yeah - on occasion I get the Smuggler's Blues, but mostly I just wander about feeling as if I'm knee-deep in nickel bag of self-loathing.

And yeah, it's skunky.

All the same, I feel as though I'm on the cusp of the abyss, something I've avoided most of my life until now.



Though this project has been about learning to climb, it has become so much more. As I've learned the top ropes, I've also learned a lot about living - the living I wasn't doing. I've spent far too much of my life being afraid; afraid to disappoint, afraid to fail, and afraid of the consequences of my own decisions. So I existed on auto-pilot, turning over my right to self-define and make decisions over to others. Climbing has taught me to knock that off, to let that go. You can't climb well without owning up to your physical and mental limitations. You can't climb well if you're not fully present in the task at hands (and feet).

And damnit, P'UP has made me want to climb well. It's not enough to get up. You have to BE up, too. So as I learn about climbing, I also learn about myself. I discover things I didn't know I lost, or things I never realized I already had. Like today, when I showed up at the wall for one last practice session and had to work with a belay I don't know well. I discovered that my lack of knowing promoted an uncertainty - unrecognized consciously at first - that resulted in timid moves and anxiety I haven't felt since my first climb.

Though I completed two routes without incident, I couldn't approach my projects - a 5.8, 5.7+, and a new 5.7 hung earlier this week - with the same degree of reluctant confidence I experience when working with my two favorite belays and friends. What this signified to me was that I have been working on building intimacy and trust within my friendships through climbing - and that realization made me grin like a dope.

I don't think I will ever, in one paragraph or even one post, fully articulate everything my abusive partners stole from me or what I gave away. I can only point to these discoveries day by day, post by post, and write toward some sense of self-actualization and appreciation. Since leaving my marriage and embarking on my new life, I've struggled to trust, to take people as they present themselves, and to allow myself the same opportunity. It's difficult to trust yourself after a decision to love someone turns out to be the worst decision you could make, the most unhealthy thing for you and your children. I know that I lost my sense of self-trust and that climbing is helping me to reclaim it.

I think I may be the quintessential late bloomer, but that's okay. I'd rather re-learn these lessons now, so I can rewrite the scripts that limit both my sense of living and my self-confidence. Though I still feel old, and though I still feel out of place sometimes, I think even this is a process worth exploring. Like a tough climb, life is a project, too. Even in my mom jeans.

ON MY SHELF: PART ONE

In the final days of preparation for my first outdoor climbing trip, I’m spending my time thinking about things I’d never thought I care about. Today, I stood in the outdoor section at a local store, wondering if I needed to buy a snakebite kit. And I’m not talking about Tabasco, tequila, and whiskey in a shot glass. In the end, I decided not to buy the kit – I’ll take my chances – but there’s a part of me that wants one. It’s an Indiana Jones sort of thing, proof you’re one of those people who goes out seeking adventure, but not actually seeking snakes.



I did get batteries for my headlamp, round up a tent, and put together the sort of wilderness first aid kit worthy of a Boy Scout merit badge. It’s not the sort of kit that anticipates major injuries, but it’s pretty spiffy. Scrapes, splinters, bug bites, hangovers, allergies, sunburn, and inflammation don’t stand a chance against yours truly.

I’ve assembled a wardrobe I think will suffice for a weekend trip, layers of wicking inner and outer layers, a technical coat and intermediate fleece, and some not-so-fashionable headgear. I’m borrowing a sleeping bag and pad this trip, but both are on my list of “someday” purchases. Because this trip is a “car camping” sort of excursion, I’m not worrying about a backpack. That too, I think, will have to wait until the fall when they go on sale.

My nutritional needs for the trip are proving more difficult to anticipate and prepare for, but I’m working on it. I’ve got a recipe for breakfast/energy bars in the works, one that is low-fat but high in protein and carbohydrates to aid in muscle recovery after a day of climbing and mucking about. Nuts and legumes are on the list, too, as well as fresh fruit and vegetables. Unlike most, I can’t use camping as an excuse to munch down on the hotdogs (the international mystery meat) and s’mores.

When I was a kid, my dad used to take us camping just so he could cook fancy, interesting fare. I remember driving up above Estes Park one summer, just so he could cook us beef fillets and sautéed mushrooms, asparagus tips with lemon-butter, and grilled tomatoes. We went to bed that night with full bellies, listening to the creek and evening bugs, our lungs full of fine mountain air. That night stands out as one of the best I had as a kid.

Dad was the sort of camping guy who got up early, started the fire, put a speckled pot of coffee on the grate, and cooked breakfast. Bacon and eggs, I think, will always remind me of those trips with him. There’s a part of me that wants to attempt his culinary role this trip, to be the one who cooks pounds of bacon while sipping coffee so strong the grounds stick in your teeth, but I’m resisting that temptation.

I already know, however, that no matter how awesome my energy bars turn out to be, they won’t compare to crisp bacon and flapjacks on a chilly camping morning.

(Photo: My son and my dad, with their dirt experiments)

During the difficult years, when I was a teenager, I lost interest in camping or anything else my dad liked. And for whatever reason, I never took up camping again until now. I’ve been thinking about that today as I’ve prepared for my trip to Shelf. Dad and his wife will be camping that weekend, too, somewhere near the Wyoming and Colorado border. That seems fitting, in some ways.

Sorting out my gear today, laying out my stuff on the livingroom floor, I thought about how much my kids missed out on when they were little. We couldn’t do things that our controller/father figure found upsetting, and anything he couldn’t control upset him. So we didn’t pile into a car and head out for adventure. That would have lead to work (on his part), mess (on theirs), and fun (he was allergic).

We didn’t do much of anything, actually. No sports (he never wanted to sacrifice Saturday mornings to kids’ soccer games). No vacations (though we did drive to Wyoming once –for a funeral). He preferred to watch life pass us all by on television. The road trips came later, after the divorce, when I was shuttling kids back and forth from summer visitations.

That’s when we learned how much fun we could have on the road. It would be years and years later until Jack Kerouac would teach us why.

And maybe this is just a mom thing, but there’s a part of me that feels guilty as I pack up. P’UP has been teaching me a lot about myself, and this week I’m learning that the past is never past us – it lingers. The kids are grown, and none of them want to go with me. I shouldn’t feel guilty at all. Yet I do.

All the same, I’m excited and feeling free to pursue my own goals. After years of maternal sacrifices, that alone presents a myriad of emotional booby traps to navigate. And there’s something else I’ve realized. My own academic use of “inquiry notebooks,” the little black books I carry around, scribble in, throw quotes and poetry into are related in some ways to the notebook of the senior Dr. Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

I watched that film with my dad years ago, and I remember being intrigued by the notebook in it, the one they use to unlock all the secrets to their journey.



Looking at my growing collection of notebooks, I’m wondering what, if any, journeys my kids will find unlocked years from now. I think of the books I’ve made and given away, and wonder if they will someday lead to a metaphorical quest for a covenant or challis. In some ways, this very blog is like one of those notebooks …

"History is never past" … it lingers. It’s in the pages of my books, the ink, the midnight thoughts and ponderings. As I prepare for my next adventure, I wonder what kind of history will unfold, what kind of stories will reveal themselves. Which is, I suppose, why the trip is worth taking even before it has begun.

CLIMBING AND PEDAGOGY

The Physics of Rock Climbing from Christian Fracchia on Vimeo.

Last semester, while teaching a "Writing and Communities" course, I offered extra credit to students who ventured out and tried to join or experience a community far outside their comfort zones. I held up the climbing community at UNL as an example, and four of my students joined me for their first climbing experience at the Rec. One student spent another two weeks exploring climbing as a sport, and wrote her final project on what it was like to join the group.

I've come to use climbing as a metaphor for writing. I use it to teach patience, experimentation, process, and the use of tools. Drawing connections between the climbing hardware and the "rules of writing," including the dreaded grammar and spelling, helped students to see both as utilitarian devices instead of skills one was either "good" or "bad" at using. I also used the metaphor of a climber with a belay as an example of academic writing, when one scales an idea with the safety of others down below. In the case of scholarly work, thinking of citable sources as those keeping one safe or supporting one's climb, is a useful device. One can't just write one's ideas -one must always "join a larger academic conversation." No one gets to "free solo" a research paper.

But the most useful metaphorical use of climbing has been in the area of process and its focus. Teaching students to think one move at a time is important when working with inquiry, and I've found that climbing provides an embodied example that moves students from the abstract to the physical. Next semester, I'm hoping to be able to bring my entire class to the wall at least once in a semester. We'll see.

In the above video, two physics instructors use climbing to teach their introductory course. Apart from wondering if climbing attracts a disproportional amount of math geeks to its folds, I'm wondering who else uses climbing to teach bigger, more important lessons that will matter to students outside of the classroom.

I know Outward Bound uses climbing in some of its courses, and I know places like the Joshua Tree Rock Climbing School offer curricula for one-day clinics to four-day camps. But to use climbing and the outdoors as a basis for in-class curricula, well, that's a little harder to find. And it's too bad, if you ask me.

In the No Child Left Behind era, students are getting much time or money for field trips, particularly the kind of trips that take students out into the real world to experience self-focused challenges. Standardization of education, which is what high-stakes tests like those required by NCLB foster, means students' scores are comparative and leave little room for an emphasis on self-assessment and improvement.

Climbing, as a sport, offers the ability to self-test within a community of others who are putting themselves through tough lessons of patience, skill, and mental agility. In my experience with P'UP, I've learned amazing lessons:

1. Progress is an accumulation of smaller, incremental steps toward a larger goal

2. Success is not defined by the end result - finishing the climb - but often measured in a single move, particularly when struggling to master a new set of skills

3. Projecting a route is a physical manifestation of inquiry itself. When one attempts but doesn't necessarily solve, a problem on the first attempt there is much to be learned. On-sighting, killing a route at first go, doesn't teach a new lesson. It only indicates that previous learning has occurred

4. Limits are temporary obstacles that provide opportunities to learn more about yourself and your purposes

5. As Robert Frost writes, "The only way over is through." This is particularly true of the crux of a climb, or any problem worth solving.

6. One shouldn't get too wrapped up in the numbers. A 5.6 can push you around, no matter how many other "higher" or "tougher" routes you've successfully climbed. All problems are contextual.

These seem like pretty important discoveries to me. I'd love to teach in a world that didn't relegate teaching and learning to something that only happens in the constructed walls of a classroom. And maybe someday, I'll get to be one of those professors who can take students out into the real world, harness them in, and show them what they can do.

UNDER MY SKIN

(Photo: Still from "Stone Cold")

There’s a down side to Project Up, a dirty little secret I’ve been keeping. In the interest of full disclosure, and with a nod to the patriarchal notion of confession being good for the soul, I’ve decided to come clean.

With all the uplifting news, the epicurean adventure, and the steady progress as a climber and a human being, there’s been a dark reality following me. Like a shadow hemmed to the soles of my feet, it lurks behind me everywhere I go. And it’s a truth too horrifying to look at, like the Medusa demon of chthonic female monsters capable of turning even the bravest into stone.

Like all freaks of nature, they’re proof one should never encourage incestual relations, prima facie evidence that inbreeding, even among the gods, is never a good idea. Among women it’s a truth so horrifying we’ll spend millions of dollars each year on arming against it, as we build an arsenal of creams, serums, and surgical interventions.

That’s right. I’m talking about stretch marks. And I’ve got ‘em. IN MY ARMPITS.

(Photo: "Matisse Circle" of The Full Body Project by Leonard Nimoy - yeah - the Spock guy)


One of the cool parts of being a Chubs McBigPants is that your face won't wrinkle. It’s easy to maintain youthful-looking facial beauty when you can feel your face stretch every time you blink. Trust me. However, rapid weight gain causes a great deal of stress on skin from the neck down. Sometimes, the stress goes unnoticed – not everyone develops stretch marks at the same rate, and not everyone develops the telltale signs of redness and swelling. So for some people, it’s only after they lose weight that they begin to see the exterior damage done to their bodies.

New stretch marks are often deep in color, and usually red or even purple. They are, technically, scars. When the elastic fibers in the middle layer of the skin, the dermis, break down stretch marks appear. Since collagen (more specifically, “collagen VII) holds the dermis layer together, the best “cure” for these dermatological injustices is really a matter of prevention. Vitamins A, C, and D are critical building blocks for collagen and should be consumed through sensible eating (citrus fruits, vegetables like broccoli, and dairy products) with some “help” from a vitamin supplement. Keeping properly hydrated all day, instead of just during workouts, is also believed to help protect your skin, too.

There are about 20 types of collagen (proteins) in the human body, incidentally, and they do amazing things to your soft tissues, ligaments, tendons, and even your lungs. Bones benefit from collagen I, so those concerned with preventing osteoporosis should care about vitamin A, C, and D levels even if their skin is “flawless.” The womb, stomach, heart membranes, and your eyes – all of these need healthy levels of collagen in its various types to function properly.

As far as collagen VII and your skin go, nutrition is more important than superficial treatment. Though topical creams and lotions containing A, C, and D vitamins are believed to be helpful in keeping the skin supple, they are by no means as powerful as good eating habits.

Unfortunately, one often doesn’t see evidence of dermis layer damage until its too late. And for some of us, the scars don’t appear until after the burden on the skin is removed. That’s what has happened to me. Old marks I couldn’t see before are now visible. For me, even faded stretch marks are rather painful to look at because the skin itself is clearly looser, and evidence that firming up isn’t going to happen as quickly as I’d like it to – if at all.

For a lot of people working on healthier lifestyles, this evidence isn’t easy to look at or accept. It can make one feel defeated, especially if one had any hope of feeling more aesthetically beautiful, or comfortable in one’s own skin, even when naked. The most common surgery post weight loss is the tummy tuck done to remove excess skin after prolonged periods of obesity. Surgeons literally pull, cut, and sew back together the dermis layer to remove the excess, and the surgery itself costs between $6000 and $20,000.



Surgeries to remove excess skin from the arms and legs, however, leave mighty scars and are recommended only to those who have been morbidly obese, have skin rashes, infections, or problems due to friction and moisture problems, and are deemed unlikely to regain weight by a responsible surgeon. Recovery time for all of these surgeries is considerable, and there are substantial surgical risks. And if you ask me, they're horrifying.

Yet the struggle to be fit, to take care of yourself, can feel all the more defeating once weight begins to fall off. Looking in the mirror naked, gazing at your stomach and seeing what appears to be a frowning, one-eyed bulldog staring back at you, doesn’t do a lot for one’s self esteem. My own bellybutton seems to be perpetually disappointed and depressed – it’s like a downturned mouth. And there’s a part of me fearing that after all is said and done, after I’ve reached my weight-loss and fitness goals, I’ll look like I’m wearing a skin suit that’s two or three sizes too big.

I know this could, on some level, seem like a vain, superficial concern. But beauty really isn’t skin deep. It goes far deeper into the psyche than one would hope. Feelings of acceptance, purpose, future, and hope are often located within one’s body image and self-perception. The best thing I can think of to assuage my fear is to keep climbing, and follow this up with a healthy dose of patience with my physical self.

I’ve been projecting a couple of 5.7 routes, fiddling with the first three problems of a 5.8, and getting my butt kicked by a 5.7+ that has a slight overhang. I’m getting better at the footwork required to get up and over that damn thing, but I’m discovering that keeping good arm position as I do that work is burning up my upper body. I’m not pulling myself up, mind you, just trying to maintain the right amount of upper body tension to encourage progression of my foot positions.

I know I’m making progress. Some things are getting easier, for both my body and my mind. However, I’ve reached a difficult place as a climber, when the mind is willing but the flesh is weak. Though I have on-sight victories of every 5.6 set at the Rec in the last six weeks, I’m (sometimes quite literally) beating the hell out of myself on 5.7 routes the better climbers – my heroes - use for warm-ups.

As Kermit the Frog sings, “It ain’t easy being green.” And I’m very much so. I’m six months into what I hope is a life-long relationship with climbing, something I try to remind myself every time I feel beaten by the wall. I so desperately want to transition to the next level, to feel as though I’m making my way and holding my own. I’ve got “Newbie Fatigue” big time, when the newness and excitement for the sport can no longer eclipse its difficulties.

This isn’t about earning other climbers’ respect, either. I get a lot of support from the climbing community to which I belong. Admittedly, some of it is awkward like the standard comment, “I wish my mom would try climbing” and my personal favorite, “Your like our own Biggest Loser.” But even the awkward comments are encouraging, earnest, and sincere so I’m lucky, actually, to have people in my life who are as excited about my project as I am.

But as I’ve reached a few fitness goals, I’ve also reached the crux of my dermatological shame and a major hiccup in self-perception. Though I am more confident and comfortable with myself, and though I celebrate my climbing victories with great joy, there are times when I feel I’ve completely stepped outside myself. Who is this woman? Who am I now that I’ve decided to take better care of myself and try new things? Who am I when I’m hanging above the ground, resting my arms before giving a problem another go?

I don’t always recognize her, this woman I’m becoming. I suspect this is what really gets under my skin about those stretch marks – they’re inarguable evidence that big changes are going on in my life. They’re also evidence of just how far I let myself go, a truth I can’t deny. This isn’t existential navel-gazing, either. I can’t look my navel – it’s angry.

I suppose, if I aim my critical eyes at myself, I’m just burdened by the weight of process, and feeling a bit overwhelmed by change. At least I know this journey is a one-way trip. There’s no going back, even if my body leaves its own map, the scars that show where I’ve been.