Apples of Blood

In this life, danger lurks at every turn. You think you are safe, swinging that nine-iron, trying to get a few rounds in before the thunderstorm, and wham, catastrophe strikes. You can't let up, because that's when life will beat you down.

Sadly, I had forgotten that little truism. It was a lazy day last Thursday, a day when I decided to celebrate the end of my semester by spending the day on the couch, relaxing and getting ready for the weekend's climbing plans. I walked into the kitchen to cut an apple up for a snack. I love apples and peanut butter. I love scooping huge mounds of peanut butter onto my pre-cut apple pieces. Anyway, I went in to cut up an apple, and wham, lightning struck.

There, sitting next to my my tidy apple slices, was the end of my thumb. It took a while to register what had happened, that that lifeless piece of flesh had actually come from me and had not in some way been attached to the apple. The mind does funny things in that moment before the pain starts. It's like the mind knows that a cascade of searing pain is on the way, but it wants to amuse itself with a funny, irrational thought before all thought ceases. My thought, at that moment, was that I could have protein with my carb-heavy meal, which would thereby make the snack more "Zone." Then the wave hit.

The blood was astounding. You know how the doctor will prick your finger to get a little drop of blood for a test? Well, this was like my finger was pricked with a 12 gauge straw. The blood gushed. I held my hand over the sink as the blood poured out of the end of my thumb. It began to look as if the Manson Family had previously rented our apartment and had set up shop in the kitchen. Kayte came out of the office and began to tend the finger.

Her first concern, understandably, was to stanch the flow. She put a band-aid on the end and that just made the blood shoot out the sides of the fabric. She determined that despite my histrionics, I had not, in fact, "cut off my thumb." Yes, I did have a sizable flesh wound, but people have survived far worse. She made clear that you cannot, in fact, "bleed out from the tip of your thumb." She then wrapped a bit of gauze around it and went back to work.

It began to become clear to me that my weekend climbing plans were slowly dripping away, like blood from a...okay, I'll spare you the pun. Basically, my chances of climbing were shot. I still went out, though, with my thumb wrapped in a bee-hive of bandaging. I learned that doing a few easy routes was a bad idea, as blood began to seep through the bee hive making it look like the bees were experiencing some sort of horrendous genocide. I spent a lot of time belaying and telling the above story over and over and over.

So, you can never be too safe. Remember that when you think you are making yourself a nice, semi-healthy snack. Those apples could really be blood apples. Really.

Tornado

I woke up sweating. Tornado. The covers were disheveled, wrapped around my right leg. My mouth was dry. Had I been gasping? I’m not quite sure, but I did hear that word, clear as day: Tornado.

It was Suzanne’s voice, just her voice. Do they have tornadoes down in Atlanta? I got out of bed and turned on the Weather Channel. No, it was going to be a clear, warm day down there. Maybe it was metaphorical. Maybe it meant something bad, perhaps a “windstorm of danger” or something like that.

I never really thought about Suzanne’s voice. It’s pretty. But then again, could it possibly be otherwise? I have a beautiful younger sister. I grew accustomed to my high school friends’ seemingly innocuous questions: “Yeah, we could drive around town for a while . . . hey, do you think Suzanne wants to come with?”

I noticed that. I noticed the lingering stares from my friends. I noticed the slight lowering of decibel level in the cafeteria when Suzanne walked from the lunch line, tray in hand, (she and I always joked that the trays looked like barf, with the colored splotches mixed in with the grayish plastic), and took her place at the table. While in college she dated a Green Bay Packer football player. He had a million dollar signing bonus, but she ended up moving on because “he just wasn’t very smart.”

To this I would respond in that most brotherly of terms, that term that says so much with so few syllables: Duh.

We would fight. Not as older, ostensibly mature high school kids, but as awkward, gangly, uncomfortable in our own skin, middle schoolers. I would chase her around the house. Once she ran for the basement, and suddenly my foot kicked out and she was falling, down the stairs, knocking bottles of cleaning supplies off the shelf along the edge of the stairs. She landed on the concrete with a bloody nose. I remember a faint twinge of remorse, of sadness. I also remember looking at a stool she had turned into a kind of mock-stove, to be used in her mock-kitchen, with stuffed animals filling in for her mock-family. On this bench cum stove she labeled the shut off switch “oof.” That was during the divorce.

She was not beautiful then. At eight years old, she had red glasses, and these glasses were her trademark. She did not make her own decisions, as her glasses were bought for her, her trademark given to her by parents who wanted to insert a specific identity into that existential blank. Looking back now, her hair was a disaster. I enjoy reminding her of her hair back then, the short front and the long back. She had a boyish, hamster-like face. Her hair seemed to accentuate the confusion and represent a sort of mullet-by-default.

Tornado. But it was just her voice. Not her image. I haven’t seen her since Christmas. We talk though, on the phone. We talk about our parents, both divorced now, a second time for each. That’s three divorces between us, we say.

I would drive her to school. She wrecked her car on the first weekend of having her license. “I was only going fifteen.”

“But, you flipped the car.”

“Still, I was only going fifteen.”

So, every morning, we would take my rusty white Escort to school. On this day, the country road we lived on was covered with a dubious layer of either snow or ice, depending on subtle atmospheric conditions that I do not really understand. I took a corner too fast. Or, more accurately, I intended to take the corner too fast. I intended to let the rear end swing out just a little, to release my pent up seventeen year old’s energy or aggression or whatever in the momentary feeling of freedom, of gliding, of careening. I meant also to scare my sister.

I heard a thump.

Suzanne had slammed her right hand against the door, probably in an effort to hold on to something. She sat rigid, her legs held an inch off the seat. She looked at me, crying. There was no happiness at all in her face, just tears. Her face was all sad. I realized at that moment that there would be no more sliding. I would drive to school slowly, deliberately. I put my old Bob Marley tape in the tape deck. We would be safe on the way to school.

There are no tornadoes in Atlanta. There are other things, though. And there is just a voice, disembodied, identified by caller ID with a strange area code, and with a voice that is absolutely not strange. Not strange at all. We talk about our dog Margalo, about the time when we put pants on her, and about the time when Margalo ran into the screen door. She was embarrassed. You could tell.

In the winter, we would go outside and Margalo would sneak up and snatch the mittens right off our hands. We would run after her, laughing, tripping, sliding in the snow, Margalo’s stumpy tail wagging. Sometimes, Margalo would even take the hat off my head.

One time, Margalo clamped onto Suzanne’s scarf. The scarf cinched and Margalo dragged Suzanne across the field. I remember looking out our big picture window, seeing Suzanne on the ground, hands waving, Margalo making jerking, backward pulling motions. The scarf cinched so hard that it broke the blood vessels in Suzanne’s neck. It was black and blue for days.

I sat next to Suzanne on the couch. “You can have the remote Suzanne. You can watch whatever you want.” She smiled an awkward, six year old’s smile. It looked strange because she had been crying. Mom clanked pots and pans in the kitchen. Dad was not home. When I thought about it, interspersed with thoughts of school and of burning things and climbing trees, I thought that something didn’t seem right. Mom and Dad didn’t talk to each other much. Neither Suzanne nor I had ever heard the word divorce, but it was looming, tracking our direction. It can send a toothpick through a telephone pole. I looked at Suzanne’s swollen, bruised neck. She almost died.

These days, Suzanne and I talk on the phone about once a week. We talk about her job at Bloomingdales, though I call it Bloomingtons. We talk about memories, some remembered, some half forgotten, some patently made-up. They swirl around in our conversation, pick up others, gain speed, and soon I am not in New Hampshire and Suzanne is not in Atlanta, but we are somewhere else entirely. Somewhere that doesn’t now, and never did, exist.

Snow banks

I have been taking stock of my life lately. I don't know if it this New Hampshire winter, the six-foot-tall snow banks in front of the cottage, and the my general state of inactivity, but things just seem a bit daunting. Whereas my existential funk had a certain cache when I was in college, today it seem less interesting and more sad.

In the movie The Weatherman, Nicholas Cage's character says, "All of the people I could be, they got fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to only one -- and that's who I am. The weather man." I wish I would have said those words, aside from the weatherman part. I could say that the idea of being an astronaut slowly faded away, as did the ideas of being a lawyer, a race car driver, a marathon runner, and a member of a think tank. All that's left is me, right now, at this moment, here at my computer, looking out at the snow banks and hoping for the spring.

This is not to say that my life is in a bad position. It certainly isn't. I have a whole lot to be thankful for. Yet, I feel that there is a whole lot behind me now, a whole lot that has faded in the rearview mirror. And I feel like some of those images that slowly fade away are very important images: the tree on top of El Cap, dimly lit from my headlamp, the knobs on Lotus Flower Tower, the way my mom and my sister look when they are laughing in the kitchen of our house in Wisconsin, my walk from Siurana, through the Spanish countryside, to pick up groceries four miles away. These are the big moments.

I often think that I am defined by the big moments--those moments of exaltation and success. It is more likely, however, that I'm defined my those innumerable times that offer no big moment for remembering. Like yesterday. What did I do yesterday? Nothing really; I just went through my normal routine. Who is to say that the thousands of yesterdays don't equal a significant sum that is applied to my current existential bank account? Who is to say that the day I topped out El Cap represents more capitol than those thousands of forgettable days? The yesterdays of my life. Maybe the yesterdays define me more, make me who I am now. Maybe I have no choice but to be me, at this moment, sitting at my computer and looking at, though not really seeing, the snow banks in front of the cottage.

After the Wedding

Again, it has been a long time since I have written. I've been quite busy. I got married last week.

For a long time, I thought of marriage to be this vague, theoretic concept. Sort of like algebra. I thought, sure, it will affect my life someday, but don't ask me to explain what it looks like or how it works. It was just smoke and mirrors to me.

Well, all of that changed in the months leading up to the wedding. This concept, which previously was so ephemeral, became very very real. Marriage took the form of Kayte saying, "Honey, please remember to get your haircut tomorrow." Or, "What do you think of this dress for the rehearsal dinner?" Evidently, my reflexive shrug (what, she thinks I could have an opinion on a dress?) precipitated a flurry of stress (on her part) and confusion (on my part) as she instantly packed the dress up and shipped it off to be returned for a model that didn't bring about the reflexive shrug. When she showed me the new one, I went to my happy place and smiled. All was right with the dress.

It was months of this. As I dozed happily in the bed on weekend mornings, Kayte would be up at her computer, with her mom on the phone, saying things like "We can't put the place cards on the table until AFTER the plates arrive." I became very comfortable in my happy place, which was much simpler than the world of charger plates (?), guest lists, first dances (don't even get me started), and the dreaded vows. We wrote our own, mine on hotel stationary the night before the big day and Kayte's on nicely-printed paper that matched the programs.

My last-minute, cobbled-together vows are not to suggest that I wasn't invested in the process. I loved the idea of joining with the most wonderful woman I have ever met, who is smart, beautiful, and also happens to be a fantastic climber. I also loved the idea of friends from all aspects of my life in the same room with my family. And honestly, the wedding went off perfectly, at least in my eyes, though there could have been some unforeseen snafu with the charger plates clashing with the place cards. Maybe the program had a misprint. If so, I was blissfully unaware of such things.

I remember wanting to get another plate of food at the reception. It was good food, and as is always the case with good food, I wanted more. Somehow, though I got distracted. I remember doing the heralded "leg-dance" on the dance floor. To my knowledge, this dance had not been seen by the general public since one night at a bar in Oshkosh, WI, in 2001. I remember looking across the room at Kayte in all of her radiant bride-glow, the stress subsided, replaced by enjoyment, and from the looks of it, a slight twinge of satisfaction. It was a great wedding. It really was.

Now I have time to do all of those things that were so easily placed in the "after the wedding" column of my life. I can get out to Rumney and climb more. I'm able to write this blog. I can focus a bit more on my health, and less on things such as tuxes for my guys. That, by the way, was my only responsibility and I nailed it. So, this begins the after-the-wedding segment of my life, and it's a wonderful place to be. It's a quiet, calm, simple place, and it's next to my beautiful bride.

Independence Pass

The summer is drawing to a close. I haven't written in a while because I have been living in a tent, climbing during the days and generally living the simple life of life on the road. Climb all day, eat dinner, go to bed at 9pm and wake up the next morning at 7am and repeat, that is until it's time to go into town and get groceries, do laundry and, for the love of God, take a shower.

This summer has been different from previous summers, however. Whereas last summer I was super excited to go to Rifle, to test myself in the arena, to climb hard, talk about climbing hard, and climb hard a little more. Last summer I did exactly that and I came back completely tired, but with a few memorable hard climbs under my belt. It was exactly what I wanted.

This summer, I thought I wanted the same thing. I got to Rifle, ready to throw myself at a hard route and I thought I was willing to climb on for the whole summer. Maybe sending, maybe not, I told myself I didn't care. I just wanted to climb. At least that's what I told myself.

I got to the cliffs and found myself unmotivated. It is a very strange feeling to desire something completely and then when on the cusp of attaining it, to feel nothing. No, that's not correct; I didn't feel nothing. I felt indifferent. I just didn't care. When I tried a route, I didn't care if I sent or not. When I listened to the people talk about climbing, as they invariably do at Rifle, I didn't care about what they were saying. Okay, Simply Read may be the hardest 13d in the canyon, nay, the world, but you know I just don't really care.

Let me embark on a brief interlude here: We camped at a the same campsite at Rifle this year as we had last year. Every morning, both this year and last, I would sip my coffee and sit at the picnic table. My bleary-eyed scan of the campground would always stop at the hill across the way. The hill had a faint trail heading, where? I don't know. I would always wonder where that trail headed. What did it look like at the top of the hill, at the end of the trail. Yet, for some reason (pre-coffee laziness?), I never took that trail. I sat, morning after morning, at the table and wondered where the trail went. I did this for going on two years. I always wondered, but never looked.

So back to my Rifle funk. And it was a funk. I slept later and later every morning. I began to avoid people and make excuses for yet another rest day. After some serious deliberation with Kayte, we left. We went to Independence Pass, outside of Aspen, ostensibly for just a few days to get away from the arena. We still haven't left. The climbing and the ambiance at the Pass was so fantastic, that it is going on a month and we are just now thinking of leaving.

Before writing this blog, Rifle was the farthest thing from my mind. Talk of this 13c being harder than that 13d was eclipsed with the low rustle of the deer that come right into our campsite. Screams on redpoint burns were replaced by my wheezing lungs while hiking up the trail. It's at 11,00 feet, you know. And the Aspens, the trees of Ansel Adams' famous photos surround us up there. And the climbing is stellar, steep, technical, amazing, and with no one to tell me the right beta for the move or that so and so did the route is six tries before he decided to leave for the trade show. For me, up in the mountains, the incessant chatter of those canyon-voices have been replaced by a still mind and a renewed sense if inspiration. And what's at the top of the trail across the way? I don't know. I'm never going back.

You Can't Go Home Again

I have been told that if there is one book you read in your 20s, it should be "You Can't Go Home Again," by Thomas Wolfe. Nevermind that you should read more than one book in ten years. Anyway, the protagonist in Wolfe's novel, George Webber, has just written a successful novel in which his hometown gossip is used for fodder. Webber expects a hero's welcome, but as more and more people read the book, he experiences the opposite from his townspeople: anger, guilt, shame. He becomes an outcast in his own home town because, in effect, he left and became successful.

Maybe some of you know where I'm going with this. I'm not going to claim success, however, and I wouldn't go so far as to label myself an outcast now that I have returned home for the summer. There a lot of differences between Webber and me, yet I admit that I empathise with him. Having moved to New Hampshire, started on a burgeoning career (I'll try to overlook the distinct lack of monetary success for purposes of this comparison), and become a slightly more accomplished climber, I thought that returning home would be a sort of triumphant homecoming, with a parade, and floats, and parents who have to hoist their kids to shoulder height in order for them to see. At the very least, I thought things would be different, because, well, I'm so different.

I have come home to realize that things are exactly the same. The climbs that were difficult before are still difficult. The climbers at Devil's Lake who didn't know me before still don't know me. My life and my accomplishments still have had little influence on the aging in-crowd of Devil's Lake locals. They still sit in the parkinglot and talk about the same stories. I still have to pay for chalk at the local climbing shop. Things are pretty much the same. Though as far as Webber's concerned I have it pretty well. I have not yet been shunned. Misunderstood, yes; shunned, no. I don't have that pesky Great Depression looming over my head so I've got that going for me.

At any rate, I still have a core group of friends, a wonderful family, and the same climbs on which I have tested myself for going on fifteen years now. I should count myself lucky for that. There's always the chance that we can schedule the parade for next year.

Summer

It is a beautiful morning and I am sitting outside on the deck while trying into my computer. Behind me is my mom’s house, situated in the Baraboo Hills. About ten miles directly in front of me, Devil’s Lake sits nestled among large bluffs. I can close my eyes and picture the bluffs, the subtle features of the talus, the cliffs above, the trail underfoot.

This, by my current estimation, is home. I built this house. Mom, Grandpa, and I did over the course of about three years. We did everything. I began my life path at Devil’s Lake, first by running around it while on the cross country team, and later by climbing on the cliffs. This area is as much me as my middle name, perhaps more so.

I’ll climb this afternoon. I’ll drive to the cliff on roads I have driven countless times, with the music loud. I’ll drive past Steinke Basin, the site of so many quick 5 mile runs, the pace steadily quickening in order to stay abreast of the swarm of mosquitoes and black flies. Then there was the time when I tried to ski it. I am about as graceful on cross country skis as a moose is in a shopping mall. That little escapade ended with stitches in my left knee.

It’s pretty hot right now for 11 in the morning, though my tan is progressing nicely. I used to say that my mental state is in direct correlation to my tan—the more tan, the happier. Despite initial appearances, this isn’t a vain self-image thing. This is about what the tan represents. It means that I have been spending ample time outside on nice sunny days.

It feels like summer, the slightly acrid smell of burning flesh. The sweat beginning to form on my forehead. The promise of climbing this afternoon, that is, after the cliffs go into the shade. The thought of climbing in Rifle next month, of loading the car and heading farther west, past the humidity. This is summer to me, and my most happy time to be alive.