Waiting for the World to End

Goodbye little si.  See you in two weeks.

 

Riding the coattails of victory I suddenly felt a need to rest.  Albeit forced rest, I could have kept climbing but figured it was probably wise to take a step back and revisit the soreness that had manifested itself over the last month in the middle knuckle on my middle finger of my left hand.  I had climbed all day Sunday, the day after my Flatliner victory, and crimped rather hard without pain, BUT, how long could I sustain this?  And do I want to keep climbing with a sore finger?  Hell no, I decided.  I’m tired of constantly patching leaks, administering temporary welds, and placing band-aids on increasingly gaping wounds.  It was time to take a breather and reel it all in.  Although, I didn’t want to.  I don’t think anybody given the choice would want to.  And even though it is a seemingly easy decision, for fanatical climbers this comes down to bartering life for time and death for another day. 

The guardian of the bay.

Shilshole bay with Rainier in the background

Leaning with it.

 

Prostration to your body’s own mortality is humbling when riding upon the wings of the belief that you are somehow a demi-god immune to the peevish creaks and groans of the fragile humanness none of us will end up escaping.  But there it is.  And in this regard it forced me to accept an invitation to go sailing instead of hanging from a hangboard; struggling up a rocky trail instead of sprinting up a warm up; calming the spikes of forced-rest-induced malaise by swinging  a pick to loosen up the dark rich dry earth beneath me.  As I have slowly reduced my life to a planar existence revolving around one sun in a stark and foreboding universe that may have the casual explosion of a star here and there, I realized it was up to me to pull myself from the shadowy depths of obscurity.  Floating in space and detached from the world, from the life giving conquests of physical and mental warfare.  But these battles rage all around us and we don’t see them because we are simply the center of our own universe. 

A Crowley tug pushing a US Navy barge.

Capt. Brent, my roommate.

God bless America.

It’s funny then, to feel out of place and not important anymore.  The potent sting of ineptitude is also a gift, however we have to be ready to receive it as such or it may turn into a true Trojan horse.  Putting yourself at odds with the world is a better way to understand your place within it. 

 

All of this just to convey the fact that I want to crimp really hard again and laugh like a child being tickled by the parental tendrils of fading light that wake us all from our dreams and steal us away to the comfort of understanding.  Or just crimp really hard again, that would be good to.