In My Hands

The author, hanging on

Admit it: sometimes it’s easier to let go.

Easier like the time you went climbing in the gym some months ago and all of your muscles were strained against gravity, fingers jammed inside the miniscule holds. There were perhaps 30 feet of drop beneath your climbing shoes, 12 more feet to go until you topped out, one manic explosion of strength needed to latch onto the holds up above your head — an explosion channeled vertically, precisely and without hesitation.

But you hesitated.

Every second you hung, a little bit more of the strength sapped from of your forearms. A slow ooze of lactic acid crept into your legs that robbed you of the spring you would need to execute the one tremendous move.

You thought about the line latched to your harness. The auto-belay would not seize you in the air the way that a climbing partner would; it would drop you slowly, delicately like a spider on a strand of gossamer.

If you let go then, you would have that sweet release. You wouldn’t have to know that your body had failed you before you even finished the motion. Nor would you have that tentative contact of your fingers on the next holds, followed by the second of weightlessness as you fell away from the wall. Y

ou could go back to your apartment, kill some time on the Internet and make sure to get to bed on time to be ready for a morning at the office.

And what if you actually made the move? Well congratulations. You would cling pathetically to tiny holds, a little higher on the wall now, with new ways to screw it up, lose your grip and fall.

Try the move or drop now? Quite the dilemma. And there you were hanging on with all the strength you had, just thinking about it.

Now I am several hundred miles from the climbing gym, at the bottom of a big-ass orange cliff just outside of Moab, Utah. This place is called Wall Street, but the people here are more likely to trade climbing stories than stocks. At our backs, the mighty Colorado River winds southward; at our front there is a nifty 5-9 climbing route that Andrew has just sport climbed.

Now it is my turn to go up, pop the quick-draws off the bolts and get clip into the chains at the top of the route where I would untie and set up my own belay to get back down.

I would like to note that this will be the hardest rated route that I have ever tried. I am already prepared to have my muscles fail and to drop.

Before I start the route, I become aware of something buzzing around my ears.

A wasp! Well isn’t that just dandy?

“Ugh! I’m allergic to bees!” I look behind me to where a young woman and a man have just pulled up in a battered VW bus. Great. Now there are witnesses. I already know I’m a sucky climber. Does everyone else have to know it too?

The wasp is having a fine time now, cutting tight loops around my head. In the next moment he lands on my forehead.

“Git outa here you sonofabitch,” I hiss between clenched teeth.

I know I’m supposed to stay completely still, but all I can think about is those tiny claws working their way across my face. I hold on for a second, then flip out, flailing my arms at the tormentor.

He buzzes away and I am safe for the moment.

OK. Breathe. Refocus.

I look at the rock in front of me for the tiny crevices I will need to hoist my weight.

Climbing is finger torture, I think. What’s so awful about doing a pitch where there are easy handholds? I’m sure could still get a decent arm and leg workout without having to hang my weight off of millimeters of rock.

“Climbing!” I shout.

I try hard to make it look like I know what the hell I am doing, feeling the spectators’ eyes on my back. With awkward jerking movements, I work my way up the tiny ledges along the wall until I am at the toughest part of the route.

 Here is the move. I scrunch myself down and thrust forward to seize a narrow wedge of stone.

Oh shit.

My fingertips lose their grip and I swing off the wall.

I drop for an instant and then yank to a stop. Andrew has halted the rope through his belay device so that it’s doubtful that I’ve lost more than a couple of centimeters worth of progress.

Refocus.

I don’t want the other climbers to see me give up and go down. Maybe I can convince myself that I really want the top this time.

I know that if I make it all the way, I will have to clip in with the nylon daisy chain attached to my waist. Then I will have to untie the rope from my harness and set up the belay. After I decide I’ve put all the rope in the right places, then it will be my responsibility to lower myself via the belay device.

This should be a small thing, but it makes me uneasy. If I screw something up, there will be no one to get me. It falls on my shoulders to make sure I got everything set up safely and don’t drop off the wall. And I’m the guy who regularly loses his car keys and forgets what day it is.

The funny thing is that I have no problem trusting myself with far more complicated things that would splatter me just as bad if they went wrong. I trust the brakes on my car to stop me from careening into an intersection or down a mountainside. By that same token, I will happily get into an elevator without worrying about what would happen if the cable snapped or eat food from the store that is hopefully not filled with pathogens and deadly chemicals.

Why is it so easy to defer responsibility and trust others, but so much scarier to put that trust into my own hands? Perhaps death itself isn’t as frightening to me as the idea of bringing it about by my own folly. Easier to sit back in the passenger seat at take off and think, “Well at least it won’t be my fault if the plane blows up.”

Now, I have that choice again. If I find that I can’t handle the next move on the pitch, Andrew will have to belay me off the rock and get me down safe. If instead, I find that I can climb past the segment and get up to the chains, I will be the one lowering myself.

“C’mon man, you can do it!” I hear from behind me.

The spectators are still watching the show. I don’t feel like going down yet.  I put my hands back on the rock and ready myself for the move.

My legs spring upward and then I make the grab. Every inch of my body is pressed into the rock, my fingertips sting with the pressure of my grip. I cannot hold this for long, so I start moving, shimmying my right leg up the stone. I find traction and hoist my way up to a solid hold.

My heart is surging in my chest. I can see the chains hanging off the rock above me and now I’m sure I can finish the route. This fact is exciting, but it makes me uneasy also because I know that I will have to belay myself back the way I came from.

I hoist myself from hold to hold until I arrive at the chains along the rock ledge. They are simple loops of metal bolted into the side of the rock, a solid hold if there ever was one.

Moving quickly, I unclip the ends of the daisy chain from my harness and attach myself to the bolts at the top of the chains. At this point, I should be able to lean back comfortably without having to place any of my weight on the rope. Somehow I can’t let myself do this. The nylon looks flimsy and insubstantial. There’s a long drop beneath me.

Remember the steps, I think as waves of adrenaline course through my veins. Intellectually, I know that everything is fine, but I feel the seeds of a deep instinctual fear within and a profound discomfort with the height. If those seeds of fear germinate, I will be hopeless.

I think of the lines that the Bene Gesserit mystics use in “Dune:” “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration…”

There is that buzz again. The wasp has come back for another pass.

“Jeezis Christ!”

I hold myself completely still as the little bastard wheels around me. He’s having the time of his life.

I try to block out the distraction and focus on the task at hand. My legs are already straining against the impractical situation that I am putting them in. Through a colossal effort of will, I force myself to untie the rope at my waist.

“Slack!” I shout down.

I begin to pull the rope up, feeding it through the chains and sending the working end down the other side to the bottom. The idea is to have the two ends of rope feed through the delay device and then reach the bottom, that would allow Andrew to take up the Fireman’s Belay and catch my fall if my own grip slipped for some reason.

Christ, my rappel looks fucked up now.

 Is it fucked up, or am I just psyching myself out?

There are two loops going through. That’s right. I unclip the daisy chain and start to lower. No, it definitely feels wrong!

I hoist myself back up and re-clip to the bolts then fumble to put the rope back through the belay device. It looks the same as what I had before. Should I trust this? It must be right.

It looks different than it should, I think.

I’m psyching myself out.

Just go for it.

Now I’m lowering and I’m committed.

It feels nice going back down through the air. My belay isn’t fucked up after all. A little bit of the fear that I had about setting up the rappel has dissipated but I know I will want to go back through the steps, so that I can do this thing through muscle memory and not worry about drawing a blank. I want to know that I won’t let fear override rational thought.

My feet touch the ground and I breathe out.