VIV Moments

Hometown

Wyoming

Joie de VIVre

Climbing, traveling, adventuring and/or exploring with my husband Matt, dog and cat (the cat doesn't climb, though!); cooking, long solo runs, laughing, meditating, reading and writing

VIV Moment

Yesterday, I went for a run in the morning … it’s been cold here for at least a week now, and I mean cold, as in if the temperature goes above 30 degrees, that’s a warm day … but it’s still sunny lots of days, and the sun makes for nice running weather as long as the wind’s not too bad and I wear a bunch of clothes. After running, I started in on my big task of the day: preparing all of the dishes for the dinner feast I’d planned for the evening, for us and some great friends and neighbors of ours. Five hours later, I was just finishing up my preparations when the first guest knocked on the door.

To me, menus sound like poetry, so here are the verses to last night’s eating experience:

Crackers, three cheeses and nuts; spinach salad with Braeburn apple;
Roasted walnuts, and celery;
Fresh-baked, stone-ground wheat bread, served with butter and honey;
Broccoli and three-cheese casserole;
Pork and elk pot roast with white beans, cranberries and fresh sage;
Fresh-baked gingerbread Christmas cookies

On top of that, two of our guests brought some beer and wine, making it a complete celebration.

Another aspect that added spice to the evening was the age spread among our guests — it probably ranged from 25 to 75, or thereabouts. In fact, the oldest guest, who lives right down the street, was the person who had provided an essential component to the entire gathering: a table. In addition to my table-giving friend, our guests included another neighbor, much older than us, who is a riot and a fun person to hang out with, and three of our climbing friends.

Our older friends, who have both dealt with more than their fair share of bodily damage throughout their lives, still manage to be vital and alive despite the inconvenience of not functioning nearly so well as they did when they were young. And yet I see in these two old warriors the same type of fiercely independent and self-defined personas that I see in my younger friends as well as myself: They can’t help the wearing out of their vessels; this happens to everyone, and it is our future, too. I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t be part of our celebration of friendship, why folks of all ages shouldn’t be able to hang out comfortably together … our minds ain’t all that different, after all. Perhaps this is something that I learned long ago from climbing, when, at 17 and just starting to rock climb, I suddenly found that most of my new circle of friends were a decade or two older than me, but they didn’t ever treat me like a stupid kid. Why does our culture tend to separate people by ages? It’s kind of weird. Older people are just like you and me, only they probably know a hell of a lot more and possess way more wisdom about the ways of the world.

The presence of our climbing friends set my mind in motion, too, though on a totally different track, about something that’s just sort of a reality of living here in Wyoming, and that I tend not to even think twice about: They all hail from the other side of the mountains, meaning they had to drive over a snowy mountain pass to make it here. But as we were all discussing, living here we tend not to even really think about driving what would be considered huge distances in more congested areas in order to just hang out with one another for an evening or a day. Friendship and the promise of laughter and a fun time makes it worth the effort, and the driving is, frankly, beautiful, if not frightening sometimes. (As our friend Cliff noted, there were times on his drive last night where the snow was so bad he couldn’t see the road, but he was just like, “I’m goin’!”)

So as the folks from out of town rolled in, we sat down to eat, and it was just a beautiful sight for me to see: these wonderful people, young and old, interacting and laughing and being real with each other and just having a good time and sharing a meal together, with sparkling eyes and happy voices. After the older neighbors left, we hung out a little while longer, and then we all crashed out (no driving over the pass at midnight; that’s another reality of long-distance hanging out here: You often end up spending the night wherever you’ve gone for entertainment).

The next morning, I got up and lit the fire I’d set up the previous night to ignite first thing in the morning; the house was 58 degrees. I sat in front of the stove and soaked in the hot air blowing out at me while I drank my coffee and read my morning reading and meditated, and then everyone started rolling upstairs — by that time, the house was a comfortable 70 degrees. We assembled for waffles, bacon and delicious fruit brought by Aaron and Tracy that a neighbor of theirs had brought to them from California, as well as coffee for everyone else (I was saturated already). I giggled inside to watch my dog, Maple, position herself basically lying on Cliff’s feet; she was just so happy to see one of her very best buddies! She definitely has her favorites.

And then, to me, something sort of strange and unexpected but really great happened: the idea of going out and climbing in our gym (at this point, I’d been injured with some torn muscles for nearly two months and hadn’t climbed since October) for a little bit started getting tossed around. Everyone seemed game, so Matt went and kicked the heat on out there to let it heat up a little first. About 10 minutes later, we all headed out there. I wasn’t really sure what to expect … I’d hung off the pull-up bar after running yesterday, and I felt that I still couldn’t do a pull-up without doing some damage, but I thought, “Well, why not try it a little?”

Apparently, Matt thought the same thing of his injury (strangely, he was injured the day after me in a mountain biking accident); and I have to say, Matt has been working his butt off at his physical therapy routine, stretching and doing strengthening exercises with the rubber-band thingy, surgical tubing, I think. Anyway, I started climbing, and though I definitely still have to protect my injury a bit (i.e., no left-hand leading dynos, no swinging out on the roof angle and letting my feet cut loose, no really hard pulls yet), it felt really, really, really good to just move around on the wall for about an hour. I just took it easy, grabbing jugs and using whatever footholds I could. Meanwhile, Matt managed to climb a few times, and though he said it really felt like he probably shouldn’t be climbing again yet, it gave him the confidence and uplifting feeling to know that he will indeed climb again … I even saw him do a couple of moves that none of us, the less-injured or not-injured, could probably ever do. That’s Matt!

Anyhow, I felt, more than anything, not pain (though there was a little of that) but rather, just a sense of weakness in my injured area, so when our guests called it quits, even though I still sort of wanted to climb, I made myself stop, too. That’s the smart thing; I got this injury from overdoing it and not being smart. It’s not just from a single event, it’s from never taking a lengthy break to allow my body to recuperate from the constant abuse of climbing.

After everyone left (much to Maple’s dismay; she curled into a ball and looked at them with big, woeful eyes while they said their goodbyes), I did my ab workout, stretched and then went for a run. I found myself jogging along, exhausted and fighting a bone-chilling wind, but with a big smile plastered on my face. Why? Climbing.

Even that small amount of unimpressive gym climbing left me feeling just amazing, just incredible, and even more sane and excited and alive than I’ve felt in a long time … when I went to Vegas, I was still too broken for climbing to really feel that way, that fluid and natural and just absolutely me feeling, back in my own skin and true to what I am. I don’t know, it’s like climbing is an expression of me and I am climbing when I climb, and from the inside, as the one experiencing my body as it moves, it feels like a natural and beautiful and flowing experience of just movement and being in the moment, and it’s not at all like running or hiking or biking or anything else I’ve ever done. I suppose I like playing pool because it’s rather consuming in the same way, but it lacks that raw muscle power combined with finesse; it’s more finesse and motor control, but you don’t need power in the same way to be a decent pool player. So yeah, climbing … such a great, great feeling. And it was the perfect reintroduction, climbing with a group of good friends to hang with and laugh with, all of us too lazy to go retrieve a CD from the house, so stuck listening to staticky, crappy country music on an AM station.

Running out there (where yesterday, prepare for an aside here, but yesterday, I was running and these cows were on both sides of the road, and they’d dropped a fence on either side so that the herd could flow from one side to the other, but some of the herd had moved away from this passage; anyhow, two cows started getting herded by Maple and me, and I was thinking to myself, “What are they going to do? They have nowhere to go but away from the herd … ” and I was feeling kind of bad about this, but then, much to my surprise, one of them jumped the barbed-wire fence, choosing a spot where it was maybe three-and-a-half feet tall and a downhill jump, and the other one followed … I didn’t even know cows could jump at all, and it looked pretty funny but was very impressive at the same time; it’s so cool how ordinary things can do such unexpected things and just wow you, if you watch your world) …

Anyway, running out there today, I was thinking about how ebullient I feel just from one hour of totally meaningless climbing (as if any climbing really has any sort of meaning), and I realized that I will climb for the rest of my life, until I can’t. And I will try to take a month off every year from now on not only to heal my wounded body, but also, to recapture the truth of why I climb and why I ever started climbing and what it is that I love so much about it: the movement, the movement, and the movement! There is no other activity I’ve ever done that even comes close to feeling like what climbing feels like; it is absolutely the most incredible and amazing experience to move up vertical terrain that way, like water, flowing, finding the path of least resistance and basically being like an anti-gravity waterfall.

So I didn’t make it for the whole two months off from climbing, and you know what? That’s just fine … I’ve learned to not be too attached to these sorts of structures and definitions; they’re just ideas, and it’s better to just let things unfurl as they will instead of clinging to parameters when they become irrelevant. Today’s climbing, after the evening of feasting and enjoying each other’s presence, was the perfect way for me to start climbing again. It was time. That’s not to say I’m going to go back at it full force, but I’ll be dabbling a bit here and there, testing the shoulder/armpit as I build it back up gradually.

Leave a Comment

Name

Email (will not be published)