Thanksgiving - Part II: Climb On
If you’ve been following along, my last blog featured Part I of an “oddball things I’m thankful for” theme. My Part II oddball thing I’m thankful for? Rock Climbing.
Yep, rock climbing. I had moved back to Charlotte and was working at a place called Copes-Vulcan, which had a Peyton Place-Stepford Wives-Twilight Zone-Woodstock-Dukes of Hazzard vibe. This was the mid-eighties and “computers” were becoming a thing in manufacturing. We (yes, I know the pronoun is wrong, I’ll get to the “we” in a minute) worked in Production and Inventory Control and were in our early twenties, which meant when we were nursing a hangover or just wanted to goof off for a while, we grabbed a computer printout and a clip board and headed to the back racks of the stockroom via the shop. It was on one of those forays that I met Mike Bishop.
We worked in the same department, but I was a new hire and hadn’t really gotten to know anybody yet. I’ve always been a decent judge of people and that day, when I spotted Mike with computer report in hand, leaning bleary-eyed on one of the back casting racks out of sight of everybody, I sensed we’d have something in common. We did and became instant friends. A month or so later, just before Thanksgiving, he and I were hidin—I mean discussing production rates in the bar stock racks when he asked, “you ever been rappelling?”
“Nope,” I told him. “Jumped off the top of a two story house with an umbrella once, but that’s about it. You?”
“I went once in college. I’ve got this guy’s rope and thought I’d try it again. Wanna go the day after Thanksgiving?”
“You know what you’re doing?” I asked.
“What’s to know?” Mike shrugged. “Gravity sucks. We’ll figure out the rest.”
My kinda guy. As the cliché goes, the rest is history. The first time we went rappelling was the Friday after Thanksgiving. We got bored with rappelling after about two trips and started climbing. Climbing led to camping and backpacking and so much time in the mountains that for several years my sleeping bag, camp stove, and climbing gear stayed packed. I met some of the most… interesting people I’ve ever known through climbing, made great friends on the rock and around the campfire.
So why am I thankful for it, other than the obvious? You learn a lot about yourself when you’re climbing. There might be two or three of you on a climb, but you and only you can get yourself up the rock. You learn how to trust your judgement, your equipment, and your climbing partner.
Once, I was leading a pitch and came to the crux about fifteen or twenty feet above the belay. I was leading it on-site, meaning I’d not climbed the pitch before, and I freaked a little bit. Got stuck, couldn’t go up, couldn’t go down. I tried to calm my mind, tried to figure out the next couple of moves to a better stance. At one point, desperate, I looked down at the belay and saw Mike not paying me much attention. Instead, he was casually and methodically moving the belay a few feet to the right.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
Mike secured the belay then shrugged up at me. “I figure you’re fixing to fall and if I stayed there, you’re gonna hit me then we’re both done. On belay, climb on.”
He was right, so I did. I got to the next belay and when Mike got there, he was grinning. “Shit’s scary, ain’t it?” Yeah, good times, good times. And there are so, so many more times just like that one. I carry them all with me. Life throws plenty at you. It’s nothing personal, not usually, it’s just the way things are. When it does? Figure it out. Climb on.