Stupid Wisdom

I always massage a broken heart with danger. Once in college, I memorialised a girlfriend's abrupt adieu by riding my bike a hundred miles, up the side of Mt. Rainier and back, in a single day.

It helped. I don't know why.

Not long after that I fell in love again, and not long after that, got bounced again. Days later found me high on a sheer rock face, alone, with little experience or equipment.

I almost didn't survive that one.

That September morning remains vivid, these many years later. A scent of sun-baked basalt and cool alpine breeze, the memory of grey stone driving into my gut like a lithic fist, and once again I'm crimped over the ledge, cheek pressed against the Olympics. Below, the toes of my hiking boots are wedged against a shallow nub on an otherwise featureless wall, while above I'm literally clinging by my fingerprint ridges to the shelf. Suspended between worlds, I am simultaneously of one piece with the mountain, and apart.

Backing down is not an option; toeholds are few, and I can't see to find them. I can't climb up for the same reason. So I cling, and ponder. Indian summer makes my palms sweat, and that makes them slip, in tiny jerks that send electric jolts through my body. Yet I'm strangely detached, as if it's happening to someone else.

I suck a lungful of air, and my expanding chest deducts another quarter-inch from my account.

The fall, fifty feet to jagged rocks, will surely kill me. I could channel my strength into a desperate upward surge, but my boots might slip and their weight drag me to my death. On the other hand, if I deliberate much longer, the problem will solve itself.

Calmly, I choose to panic.

Knotting the muscles in my legs, I shove off hard, back arched, arms thrust forward like an Olympic swimmer. My face slams into the outcrop, but my fingertips find a crevice. I jam my knuckles into it, lips numb and swelling, head throbbing, and dangle. My boots kick briefly in the void, then find a ripple of their own. Chin clenched against the ledge, I cling and gasp, and wait for the nausea to pass. A rivulet of blood trickles down the rock and into my tee shirt collar. But I'm well-belayed now, hanging by my own skeleton. A heavy heel flung over the rim, and I throw my arse into the job to flop myself onto the deck like a halibut.

For a long time I just laid in the hot grit, trembling, one arm tossed over my eyes. At length, choking on blood now flowing backward, I rose to half lotus, clamped a bandana over my nose, and panted through my mouth. Golden morning whispered the dry grass in the cracks. A Steller's jay screamed in the treetops below, neon blue amongst the needles. Far below that a forested valley stretched pristine to the edge of the world.

The bleeding stopped eventually, and some time later, the singing in my spine. I swallowed cold water and laid back again.

That day I decided I'd got what I came for. Since then, my heartache remedies trend to solitary journeys through remote places.

Still dangerous. But not stupid.



(Adapted from Rough Around the Edges: A Journey Around Washington's Borderlands, copyright RK Henderson. Photo of a guy doing it right courtesy of Jakub Botwicz and Wikimedia Commons.)