Poor Decisions #1: The Places You Find Yourself

I’m a free climber. My purpose when climbing is to pick a point on a mountain and figure out how to reach it. There are no paths laid out for me; I find them. I love it because it consumes me. There’s no other option than to be completely focused on what I’m doing. If I slip, there’s nothing to catch me.

I don’t set out to climb sheer faces, or take the most difficult route. The entire goal is to see something I couldn’t before. Sometimes, a climb that looks virtually impossible becomes simple because of a crevice between boulders. Other times, I’ll start in on a climb and find myself lost, unable to make progress forward, staring back at the way I came and realizing I can’t even go back the way I came.

This time, the reason I couldn’t turn around had been entirely my fault. I had let the project I was working on get under my skin. The reason I started that climb was pure rage. And as anyone who’s felt pure fury will tell you, clarity of mind isn’t on the list of symptoms. I cleared a set of boulders through a gap between them, and immediately realized I couldn’t clear the gap to the next set of boulders. There was no way I could regain the foothold that let me kick off onto the top of the boulder. I was stuck. That’s when I took this picture:

It was in that moment that reality kicked in. I wasn’t thinking about work, or how frustrated I was. Emotions didn't have a lot of meaning anymore. I was stuck. I had a phone, but no service. I didn’t have a rope to tie off to anything, or anyplace to tie off to, for that matter. And on each side, a solid 20-foot drop, onto boulders. I could try it if I got desperate, but I’d twist an ankle if I was lucky. And if I was seriously hurt, it would be quite a while before someone found me. It simply wasn’t worth the risk. I sat and thought for quite a while, mostly cursing myself, wondering why I hadn’t noticed how hard I was working to get to that point. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that if I had to extend myself as far as I could to reach this point, that it would be virtually impossible to turn around?

As usual in Colorado, the view helped me calm down. I started taking more pictures. I halfheartedly looked for handholds I had missed. I thought about a kong-an I had been focused on. "My heart burns like fire but my eyes are as cold as dead ashes". I tried to reason with myself that, despite how defeated I felt, I had to see without emotion. And then it came to me. The trees!

It was going to hurt. A lot. But the trees at that altitude are incredibly sturdy. Even the smaller ones could take the impact. And while I might get cut up, I knew I could catch myself in the branches. I chose one about 10 feet away, downhill from me, and asked for a few favors from any deity that was listening.

With all the grace of a falling turkey, I smacked into that tree hard enough to make me dizzy. But I held on. It was like my entire being was focused on one goal: hold onto that tree. Cut up, and a little bruised, I climbed down the tree and collapsed. I started laughing. This entire experience, from the time I left my car to now, had been a bit under 2 hours. But I had gone from furious, to scared, to defeated, back to hopeful, straight through to ecstatic. There were no thoughts, just pure, exceptional happiness. It was surreal.

I could have ended it there, but I hadn't reached the point I set out for. A little tired, and probably against my better judgement, I kept climbing. And for my efforts, I was rewarded with one of my favorite pictures of all time:

I don't think this picture will mean to anyone else what it does to me. I haven't edited it, and I'm sure there were better ways to frame it. But it sits on my desk to this day, 3 years later, because it's my reminder that life is exactly as it is in the present moment. How you got there is irrelevant. The places you find yourself in the present are the places you find yourself.