The best day of climbing is often preceded by a day of rest; the best days of writing are often the same, which leaves a day devoted to horrendous reality in which we now find ourselves, and what I’ve found so far is equally ugly and equally invigorating.
I could spend my time passively watching ants cross my threshold or other facets of nature invading my home, but climbing is where I function, dancing with a motionless partner, bleeding noisily through my waxen fingertips.
Shedding my Suck Creek-soaked skin onto a mossen ledge, I stand unadorned at a skin-lashening V5 slab onsighted by Daniel. I try three times until my skin-tight what’s-left-of-me becomes not-so-skin-tight. Daniel named the problem Racecar Undies.
Twice more I fell into the creek after this, soaking my backpack’s interior when I smashed a reused glass bottle. Nick stranded himself on a rock in the middle of Middle Creek. We took pictures. Hunter was there, too. Nice guy.
Another day, we reached Middle Earth, abandoned a mile and a half uphill through neck-high edamame-like grasses. A hike through deadly iced snowfall in March, across the mountain, across the bridge to Terabithia, into Mt. Doom to ascend roofs with Gollum. Poisonberries exploded on my lacerated legs, beneath my glasses, when my forefoot sank to the upper thigh. Hauling in a man sized crash pad on my back, I am too exhausted to pull myself past the second or third move. Hunter climbs without shoes while Daniel evens the landscape for a landing zone another day.
