Climbing

Every scar, every bruise, every finger split and callus becomes a memento; a souvenir of each route conquered or problem solved. They act as constant, nagging reminders of the routes unsent and problems unsolved. Your eyes catch a glimpse of these markings spastically scattered on your body and you smile happily, or furrow your eyebrows in frustration, at the memory.

Climbing doesn’t make sense. Humans don’t need to climb, and never did for survival. When you decide to climb recreationally, you are deciding to do something that goes against your human nature. Unlike other physical activities, climbing cannot be improved by training hard every day. Climbing requires days off, and once you engage in the slightly abusive relationship with the sport, you begin to realize the difficulty associated with the necessary time away from it. Restraining yourself from climbing makes you crave it even more and require that a good friend hold your hand (metaphorically or otherwise) and tell you things will be okay.

Now that climbing has taken my life by storm and morphed it into something completely different, I cannot even comprehend how I lived without it. I think of the ways in which it challenges my mind and body and realize the growth that I have gone through as a result of these challenges.

Not a day has passed since my first day climbing that I haven’t thought about it. Walls made of rock whether in houses, restaurants or other forms of architecture make my blood boil with desire to climb them. Bricks transform from building materials to under clings and pinches. Stones in ancient ruins morph into side pulls and crimps.

Climbing is my joy and my passion. It is the thing that pulls me out of bed on days when I want to do nothing but lie in it and mope. It is my cure for sadness and the only thing that both lifts me up and, ironically, grounds me. I cannot think of any better reason to have ditched my well-manicured hands and cast off every bottle of nail polish. There is no better reason to relinquish a keen sense of touch for thick and cherished calluses. My feet no longer have a chance at appearing ladylike after hours of being wedged into climbing shoes. I would never trade what climbing does to my skin, because when I look down at every scar, every bruise, every finger split and callus I smile happily at the memory.