Not my hands, via Dustan
As I type this everything aches. My fingers, veterans of this keyboard, are reluctant - raw, tender. Bright red and dried out from hours of testing my grip. The gentle soreness of my shoulders and core that comes from having spent hours scrambling up and falling off of the infrastructure of a climbing gym. It’s the good kind of hurt.
Somehow, though, I’m ok with it. I’m alright because I told myself that there was a point in time I sought out this feeling, I thrived on it. Now if I could just remember when, and why.
Maybe it is the looming re-write of the never ending, umpteenthed drafted, million-timed outlined project that may forever just be known as “The Boy Scout Book.” All of the meditations, the remembering of finite details, the pouring over old journals from the era that makes me slightly nostalgic. What did I like about this? What thrill did I get out of a good climb that made me want to get back into the hobby seven years later? I’m still trying to place a sore finger on it, but I think it has something to do with trust.
I’ve been thinking about trust a lot lately. Thanks to being raised in a culture of popular culture, synthetic news, and social media I find myself doing ten minutes of research on just about everything I read or hear about. I find I get nervous around police – who society used to trust to serve and protect, I can’t even fathom any of the Republican nominees being trusted with the burden of running the all of America. I can’t trust most of the food I find at the grocery store or the products for sale in just about any retail establishment.
Hell, I can’t even trust that your hands are clean when we first meet and you reach for that handshake.
The new one, lately, is a trust in my own abilities. Working freelance can do that to you. There is no one around to really pass work off to or affirm that what you’ve just completed is anywhere near the ballpark of what is expected.
I think about trust and it brings up a lot of mixed feelings about my Scouting days. I saw a lot of weird stuff happen, saw sides of a lot of people they probably wouldn’t want shown. However, first and foremost, a Scout is Trustworthy. The more positive experiences revolve around the development and discovery of this trust in others and showing that I was capable of it myself. While working at Philmont I spent an inseparable and irreplaceable week with my Training Crew, TC-13, and to this day I’m pretty sure I’d give any of them a place to crash if they happened to show up on my doorstep. Mind you, I haven’t seen or heard from most of TC-13 in almost a decade.
There is a trust in oneself that comes with the physical exhaustion of the outdoors. Hauling 50 pounds of gear through somewhere you’ve never been, not entirely sure what the next turn in the trail might bring. But you press on, one blistered and aching foot in front of the other, even if you arent’ entirely sure you can move on. Until that following wintery ou find yourself looking at maps, tracing routes with your fingers, saying “I have no idea what is here, but I know myself well enough that I can go there and be just fine. Hell, I might even enjoy it.”
The recent climbing has been re-learning that. Relearning how to trust. As an introvert I have a difficult time trusting, especially new people. Building a relationship, no matter how menial it may be, can take years and it can be undone in just a few sentences. All of this is quite possibly what I find so endearing about climbing.
Climbing is like that. Climbing can be a lot of things, but I feel it is mostly about trust.
Trust in the equipment, in the idea that someone took their careful time in the design and manufacturing of everything: the harness, the belay, the ropes.
Trust in people you don’t know at all – I have done a few afternoons of climbing at Rock’n & Jam’n up in Thorton, Colorado (note: the only reason I will ever go to Thorton – blegh). Several of their routes are top-rope. This means I have to rely on the rope being in good condition. I also have to trust that other climbers know enough about ropes to know when it should probably be retired.
Trust in those I do know – I’ve been climbing with Matt, who I met by random happenstance a few weeks ago at a bar here in town. Twitter happens. Now Matt has served as my belay for our few climbing sessions. This means, should I fall (and I do, a lot) I’ll have to trust that Matt is paying attention enough to catch the rope before I turn into a mess. Likewise, Matt expects just as much from me.
Trust in me – You favor what you can get the best grasp on – the holds I can wrap my whole fist around. Sometimes, though, these holds aren’t available. Sometimes the challenge is forced upon me and all that is above me are skinny grips, some barely a quarter inch wide, that I have to use to get to higher. I can’t wrap my whole hand around it. Testing it, it barely feels like my fingertips can grasp it.
But what choice do I have? Of all places to test out how much I trust my own abilities, this is it. Assuming, of course, Matt is paying attention to my inevitable fall.
And at each summit I’m lowered again. Each time I prove that I can do that much. And the next climb, while inevitably different, will be the same – a transference of skills and the trust that comes with knowing that someone else was able to do this, so why can’t you?
