(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.