I really don’t have a “bucket list.” Sometimes I get a wild idea that there is something I want to try to do soon, but it just comes to me, I either do it or don’t and I move on.
When I turned 40, I decided that every year from that point on, I wanted to do something I have never done before. That year I started by riding in a helicopter. In the time since I did that, I have seen too many action movies with helicopter crashes and watched too many news reports to ever have the desire to ride one again. I did it that one time, I’m good!
Each year I have either come up with something to do or life just hands me a new challenge. I figured that this year my one new thing would be watching my only child get married, so I really wasn’t thinking of coming up with anything else.
For some reason, a few months ago, I saw someone on TV rock climbing and thought that of all of the adventurous stuff that I am totally unwilling to do, I might actually be willing to try rock climbing. I foolishly mentioned to my husband Tim that I might be willing to try rock climbing some day and then I went on with my life.
This past week, Tim and I had to go out of town for work for a couple of days. While we were pretty busy during the days that we were gone, we managed to have some nice dinners together in the evening. One night while strolling along to dinner we passed a place with a zipline and a rock wall.
Tim suggested I climb the wall since we were there and I had expressed a desire to try it. I pointed out that first off, I was in a dress and that secondly I had had a glass of wine. I feel that one glass of wine was enough alcohol to make doing something daring even more risky, but not enough alcohol to make me forget I am fairly modest and had on a dress!
After dinner we strolled back by the wall and I asked the attendant what time they opened in the morning and what time they closed at night. That was all. I asked a simple question.
The next day, when we had a lunch break, I suddenly found myself being driven back to the area with the rock wall. I wasn’t sure that I was appropriately dressed or that I even really wanted to do this, but here I was, headed that way.
When we got there, I walked up to the counter to a girl who was not as energetic or flirty as the young man I had questioned the night before. When I inquired about the wall, she looked me up and down and said, “For you?” I said yes, remembering that I had also asked the young man the night before if they had any age limits and he had assured me that I was eligible and would have fun.
The bored girl handed me a laminated sheet to read that told me all of the ways I could die doing the activities they offered. I will say they all seemed to pertain to the zipline, which I can assure you I had absolutely no desire to try. I signed the waiver, paid the girl the fee and walked over to the wall with her.
She had me hold a harness to my waist and she began to strap me in. She then realized I was the first victim, I mean customer, of the day. The tether that I would be hooked to was not pulled down and she needed help to make that happen. She called her manager on a radio and we waited.
As we stood in the heat, I looked up to the top of the wall. It was taller than some I had seen and as I gazed up at the wall and the sun, I was about to tell her that she could keep the money but I was out. She saw me looking up and said, “It’s real hard. I can’t do it. It’s just too difficult.”
I looked at her, thinking she had read my mind. If this young girl who worked here couldn’t do it and thought it too difficult, what chance did I have? I looked at Tim who was across the walkway getting his phone ready to take pictures.
About that time, the manager showed up and the girl ran up the stairs behind the wall to get the rope untied so that the muscular manager could pull down the tether. She had told me that she wasn’t strong enough to pull that down alone either. The whole endeavor seemed too much for this strong young woman and I feared it was too much for me as well.
Eventually, after I had doubted everything in my life that had led me to this moment, had gotten hot and sweaty in my harness, realized my Chuck Taylors were probably not the right footgear and waved pitifully to Tim, I was hooked to the tether and let loose to climb.
There were three sections of the wall, one that was easiest, one medium and one hardest. The attendant and the manager said that the easiest was actually the hardest, the medium was actually the easiest and the hardest was actually in the middle. Thoroughly confused which portion to choose, I took the one farthest from me that they felt was the simplest.
The places to step were slick and I scrambled up a bit only to look back and realize I was maybe a foot off the ground. I decided that just like in life, the best thing I could do was not look back or ahead, just deal with where I was right then. Looking at the very next step rather than way up or down kept me plugging along as the sweat dripped off of my face.
The wall was in 3-4 foot tall sections and my goal was to get past the top of the second section. At that point I could say I had done it and move on with my life unmaimed. About the time I got to the top of that second section, I heard unfamiliar voices yelling “Go on! You can do it!!”
I looked behind me and there was a group of people cheering me on. Oh no! I was just about to quit and now I had middle aged cheerleaders that I felt responsible to. How could I quit and let these people I didn’t know down?
I looked ahead for the next “rock” to move to. The only one I saw was turned the wrong way and the young attendant yelled up for me to grab it and lean away from it in order to use my weight to keep ahold.
Let me stop here to say that moving from spot to spot was the second hardest thing about all of this for me. To let go and hold on with only one hand while your feet are sliding off of their rocks and you are moving your other hand to another rock took mind control as much as arm strength. How often do we resist moving on when we know we have to let go of what we are holding on to so tightly? Sometimes we are holding on out of familiarity or fear of what the next step might cause. But we can not climb up any further if we don’t let go.
Bracing myself each time I decided my next step, trying to get as steady as possible and then pulling on the one rock I was holding while quickly changing my hand to the new spot all while hoisting my body up with my legs, made each step a scary victory.
When I reached the top of the third section of wall, I looked down. That was a mistake. I saw how high I was and I felt a small panic well up inside of my chest. I could not see another rock to move to, but looking down I realized I could not let go and let the tether take me to the ground. Going higher was frightening and as I clung to the wall, I realized how hot I was and how tired my arms were.
I took a step back down, trying out the idea of climbing back down. One step told that I couldn’t make that happen. The cheering behind me seemed to disappear, I guess either the observers had gotten bored watching an old woman cling to the wall, not moving or I just couldn’t hear them any more as the blood pounded in my head.
I yelled down to the girl that if I gave up, what did I need to do. She said just grab the line with both hands and it would bring me down. And suddenly I found the hardest part of all of this. Letting go.
If I quit, I was a failure. If I went any farther up, well, I didn’t know how to go any farther up. But to just let go and let the weight of my body drag the line down with me attached at the end? Well, that was humiliating and terrifying. What if I hit the wall, what if it just dropped me, what if, what if, what if?
Again, I saw the correlation between climbing this wall and life. What do you do when you feel you don’t know how to go on? When you don’t see the next step? When your eyes are filled with sweat and your shoes are slipping? How long can you stay in one place without making a choice and moving somewhere even if it’s back to where you started? And how can you just let go and trust that the line with hold you and let you down safely?
And hitting into the wall on the way down?? Well, that seemed inevitable. Looking back, I realized that I repelled down cliffs as a teenager with my father and if I had not been so scared I would have remembered how to use my legs and feet to stay away from the wall. Again, as in life, hind sight is 20/20!
Clinging to the wall, trying to make my decision seemed to last forever. I finally decided to quit and come down. I held my breath, pushed away and held on with both hands for dear life. I came down rapidly but with control and at the very bottom slammed my shoulder into the wall. It could have been worse.
The girl told me I had bought three tries, did I want to try again. I kindly said no. I had tried, I had failed, time to move on.
Later on, in thinking about it all, I realized that I should have tried the other two sections. Maybe I would have found one easier than the other. Maybe I would have remembered my repelling from 50 years ago and been a little more graceful coming down.
Then again, I knew that going any higher would have scared me, but a worse failure might bother me more. It wasn’t worth the risk. I am just not an adventurer. You move on.
I decided that having gotten about half way up was fine and that I could say I had tried it even if I had failed. It would be my one new thing for the year. And then it hit me- for whatever reason, I didn’t feel like a failure. I felt like an adventurer. After all, those people down there yelling up at me didn’t sign up and try it. I might have tried and not made it to the top, but I tried and got half way. I know what it feels like, I know what to expect now, I know what to look for, what to wear, what to work towards.
I don’t know that I will ever try again. I never say never. But the one new thing for this year isn’t that I will watch my son get married, although that is exciting. And it isn’t that I attempted to climb a rock wall that I feel sure will grow in height as the days go by and I tell this story. It is that for the first time in my life, I didn’t finish something, I didn’t hit the goal or accomplish the objective and yet for some reason I don’t feel that I failed. I actually feel that I tried, I put aside my fear and my self-consciousness and just climbed.
And although I didn’t see the view from the top, I saw it from higher up than I would have if I had just stayed on the ground.
