After the storm

The sea spreads out before me, placid and blue, the wake of a solitary boat reflecting sparkles of sunlight. The very tops of the trees are barely stirring. The level of calm is incredible, considering that up until last night, there’d been strong maestrale winds for over a week, leaving us weary of the continual noise and violence. This rental house in Cala Gonone, while spacious and newly renovated inside, was not meant to be lived in during the winter. This is a summer town. Most places are still shuttered up, waiting for their beach-loving summer occupants to arrive.  Our house has no heat other than a large, inefficient fireplace and a portable heater, and none of the doors or windows have weather stripping. They are just simple wood-on-wood casements, held roughly closed with a metal latch, and they have rattled and banged relentlessly, all day and night, for the past week. Yesterday, the winds even managed to flip over the plastic table on the balcony. We’ve not had a decent sleep for many days now, and this prolonged sleep deprivation is slowly eroding my capacity to deal with any sort of adversity. I marvel at parents of small children: how to they manage to function on so little sleep?

Yesterday morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed and decided to try climbing in the Millennium Cave again, thinking that it might be the only sheltered place to go. At the parking area, I battled to close the car door, the wind threatening to tear it from its hinges. Ulysse and I exchanged a look of exasperation: he was even more fed-up than I. As we started walking toward the cave, strong gusts sent me staggering sideways. Eying the drop below the road, I moved away from the edge.

After a short walk, we rounded a bend and found ourselves in the lee of a small mountain. The sense of relief was immediate. The sun was shining, and suddenly, life was okay again. The rest of the approach was warm and pleasant, and perhaps because of that, I forgot my fatigue and decided to again attempt a climb I’d tried for the first time two days before.  It shared an anchor with another route, so we warmed up on the easier climb, and left the rope in place for me to top-rope the harder one. However, even on top rope, the route felt so much harder than it had last time. I was just plain tired. The lack of sleep slowed my mind, frayed my nerves, and prevented my body from rebuilding itself adequately. I was also finding it hard to stir up the motivation to exert myself. I contemplated just reading in my hammock between belaying Ulysse on whatever climbs he wished to do.

Ulysse, on the other hand, seemed to be in fine form, despite the lack of sleep. He calmly placed the quickdraws on his project, rehearsing the difficult sections until his movement resembled a powerful dance. I was pretty sure that he’d be able to climb it cleanly on the next attempt. He returned to the ground looking cheerful and optimistic.

I dragged myself back over to my climb for the first lead attempt. I didn’t feel like doing it, but I’d left the draws on the route, and someone had to get them. I told myself that if I didn’t fall, I would indeed hang up the hammock and climb no more that day. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t had made this pact with myself.

During times of intense or prolonged physical exertion, I seem capable of experiencing a week’s worth of emotion in an hour, and not only was this climb at my limit, but my state of mind was already fragile. Halfway up was a section that was hard for me, but that I’d always gotten through before. This time, I just didn’t have the strength or will to muster the power. I held on for a while, dancing my feet around, trying to find an easier way, feeling the strength ebbing quickly from my arms. Finally, I asked Ulysse to take up the slack so I could rest, forfeiting my hammock reward. A few more drops of frustration were added to the already full bucket of emotion inside me. It overflowed. Suddenly, the frustration, doubt, and disappointment were not just about that day and that climb, but were magnified through the lens of my life into something much more profound and enduring. I half yelled, half screamed out these feelings, hurling curses into the cave only to hear them echoed back at me. For a few moments, I felt almost inhuman. As that subsided, I felt ashamed at my loss of control, the tantrum worthy of a three-year-old. 

I collected myself and worked out the moves, realizing that I’d been overlooking a hold that made the section easier. I continued on to the crux at the top, planning to clip the rope through the last draw on the climb before attempting the difficult, delicate moves. However, as I reached the last good hold before the crux, I could not figure out how to reach draw, and my strength was ebbing once again. I would have to try to get through the crux and clip afterwards, which was not what I’d expected, and it made me nervous. Halfway through the hard section, I fell, dropping a heart-stopping 30 feet or so. The climb was overhanging, so it was not dangerous, but the unexpected fall was too much for my fragile mental state. I hung there, heart pounding, sobbing (again like a three-year-old), awash with fear and failure. Poor Ulysse must’ve thought that I’d lost my marbles, and I guess perhaps I had, going from yelling lunatic to blubbering ragdoll within moments. Oh, how I wished I’d stayed in bed.

I collected my wits once again and hauled myself back up to the shallow, human-sized fissure before the crux and wedged myself in. I was an emotional mess. I did not want to be in that beautiful cave anymore, let alone on that climb. I certainly did not want to try that scary move again—it felt like too much to ask of myself. I debated whether to just give up and be lowered to the ground. But as my heartrate began to slow, some wiser, calmer voice began to make itself heard over the negative chatter. It reminded me that I’d end up feeling worse about myself if I didn’t finish, and that this time I knew what to expect so I’d just have to commit to trying the crux and taking another 30-foot fall if I didn’t make it. 

I took many deep breaths and left the comfort of the indentation I’d stuffed myself into. My mind was surprisingly clear and calm, nothing much left after purging so much emotion moments before. I found a better way to do the crux, clipping the draw from a fairly secure stance partway through. And shortly afterward, I was at the anchor and it was over. Ulysse began to lower me before I could clean the gear off the anchor, but I asked him to stop. Did I really need to do the route again? Maybe I’d had enough for that day. Should I just clean it and come back another time, hopefully in a better state of mind? Again, some wiser part of me seemed to know that it would feel like a cop-out if I gave up then. I left the draws in place.

While I felt like the walking wounded, Ulysse tackled his climb like a champion. He strode up to the base with eagerness and confidence. He moved through the bottom half of the climb with smooth determination, punctuated by his characteristic, Ondra-like yells on hard moves. And then came a yell of surprise when the small tufa from which he was launching himself broke. He and the tufa went flying down, I went flying up, tugged by the rope that connected us.

“Well. I just made that a whole lot harder,” he said ruefully. But it didn’t seem to bother him. He just got back on the rock and worked out a way to get through that section without the tufa. 

Then it was my turn again. I was exhausted, my hands were tender and slightly swollen from gripping the rough rock, my right bicep and shoulder hurt, and I’d just tweaked something in my back when Ulysse fell. I was a wreck. All I hoped was to just make it to the top of the route by any means possible so that I didn’t have to ask Ulysse to retrieve my draws. Gentle soul that he is, he’d have done it without hesitation, but that’s not the point. I tied into the rope and Ulysse put his hands on my shoulders, leaning forward and looking into my eyes like he was speaking to a child. 

“Just remember to have fun,” he commanded.

“Oh,” I said, “is that what we’re supposed to be doing?”

Up I went. I paused to rest before tackling the section where I’d asked for a take last time, my mind racing ahead to the new moves that I’d just figured out. I started to climb again and promptly messed up the hand sequence before I even got to the hardest part! All I could do was laugh inwardly at the ridiculousness. I almost asked for a take but stubbornly managed to down-climb to regroup at the rest spot. I then climbed cleanly through the part I’d just messed up, reaching the fissure before the crux, but I was not climbing well. There I flopped, panting, my right bicep aching. 

“Take all the time you need to recover!” Ulysse called up to me encouragingly.

“Okay, but then you might not see me again today.”

As I waited for my breathing to return to normal, I started to wonder if I might actually get the climb clean, but that was immediately followed by the worry that I’d mess up the crux. I needed to put these thoughts of the future out of my mind—they were not helpful. Just focus on one move at a time, one foot in front of the other. 

And so I did, until, with rising jubilation, I pulled through the last few holds to stand on the ledge at the top of the route, from which one can easily clip the anchor. There is an amazing photo of Margot Hayes, just after she topped out on La Rambla, joy and disbelief written vividly on her face. I wondered if my expression weren’t a little like that. My achievement was nothing compared to hers, but I’d fought hard for it that day. I clipped the anchor and Ulysse let out a whoop of joy. I felt a bit disoriented, like I was coming out of a dream, with no sense of how much time I’d spent on that route and only a blurred memory of my actions. I recalled screwing up in the middle…

“Did I get it clean?” I asked shakily.

“Yes, silly!” Ulysse shouted, laughing. 

I don’t know what it is going to take to make these lessons stick: to doubt myself less, to approach challenges with curiosity and not expectation, to be okay with failing, to not equate my worth as a person with my performance on any given day. Climbing teaches me these things over and over, and yet I still haven’t really absorbed them. I guess I had better keep climbing until I do.

It turned out that Ulysse also sent his project, missing tufa and all. Two grumpy, wind-weary climbers had entered the cave in the morning, tried their best, and emerged joyful and exhausted in the evening. As we rounded the last bend of the hour-long hike back to the car, we were blasted with the merciless wind once more, but this time, we just looked at each other, shook our heads, and smiled.

I don’t have pictures from the day at the cave, but here are a few cool shots from Jurassic Park:

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