This is my first day back at the
climbing gym in many months. The ritual
is so familiar, a comfort really: dress down to t-shirt, loose jeans, and bare
feet. Get climbing shoes and chalk bag
out of my day pack, find a quiet place, stretch out. Then chalk up, lace on the shoes and start
reading routes. Once I set hands and
feet to the wall, I am instantly entranced.
Even on “easy” routes, I have to shift my center of balance and use my
core to make the holds work. The
intricacy and the physicality of it are completing absorbing.
From the moment my foot leaves the floor
until the moment it touches down again, I am completely in the flow of balance
and sequence. One route has a huge lumpy place in the wall, the only hold
available. To make it work, I must shift
my center just so, palm the rounded shape and trust friction to keep me
on. These holds never feel like they’re
going to work. I just have to make peace
with that feeling of “I’m about to fall off.”
When it works, and I ascend, it feels like flying.
I climb until I can’t even close my
hands around the holds anymore. Outside,
the thought stream begins to come back, but it is not as insistent, or as
convincing, as before. I’m reminded that
anything that puts me in the flow is not just a break from the thought
stream. Each time I enter the flow, it
changes me, and I take a little bit of it with me, back to the everyday world.
