An Ode to Climbing (and joy)

Recently, I have taken up the sport of bouldering. I’ve been thinking all week about what I’d like to write about for this Monday’s blog post and bouldering is just about the only thing I can think about these days. It is one of the greatest comforts and constants I have in my life now, in a time when many things are changing and a cross-country move this summer is looming in the background of everything.

In many ways, it feels like all roads have lead to bouldering. Sports and I have had a complicated relationship in the past. So, it took a while to get here.

I began playing (team) sports at a young age. First, I played soccer. Running up and down the field, breathless, always exhausted, praying for the coach to pull me. “Please, put me in time out. I just want to rest and hang out with my grandpa,” who came to almost every game. Next, was softball. I played softball for probably six years and was decent at the game until I hit puberty and became clumsy and self-conscious. I originally played shortstop and was a perfectly adequate batter. As I aged into a teenager, I was plopped into the outfield, right field, where balls would seldom fly. I was also the player for whom all the kids would groan when it was my time to bat. They knew, at bat, I often crumbled under the pressure of letting my team down. I played exactly one season of basketball. On this team, I arrived as a complete beginner to a team that had been playing for years. My teammates never passed the ball in a game, not once. For the whole season basketball seemed like just more endless running. Back and forth. Back and forth. Forever.

Sports in middle and high school looked akin to an endless void. I traded in those activities for drama and band and chorus. I had a strong disdain for any sport, really. In a lot of ways, I thought I would never play sports again of any kind. It wasn’t until college, ironically, when I was forced into taking physical education, that I practiced sports voluntarily. In college, I took classes in swimming in running and soon found myself running in 5k and 10k races, eventually completing a half-marathon and also dabbling in sprint triathlons.

I ran for several years after college before finding yoga and realizing that I actually hated running. Turns out I could get that elusive “runner’s high” from other more palatable activities. Now, yoga is hardly a sport. But, it did get me into my body in similar ways as sports intend to do and yoga was also the key that opened the door for me to try team sports again. Non-competitive sports like yoga and hiking helped me to feel strong, confident, and centered. So, when I was invited to play pickup games of sand volleyball with friends, I acquiesced and actually enjoyed myself.

I never considered I would get into climbing because of an intense fear of heights that I have carried since I was a small child. And yet, I fell instantly in love with it. I fell in love with the way it feels to have your whole body up against a wall, experiencing every muscle contract and work in unison to keep you from falling. With the fear of nearing the top, experiencing the room spin around you, heart thumping, mind racing and having no choice but to suck it up and find some way down. I fell in love with how, when you are in the gym surrounded by problems (bouldering routes are called problems), nothing else exists. It’s just you and your hands and feet and the wall. Your only job is to solve (send) the problems you are able to solve (and to save the ones you cannot until next time).

In a lot of ways, bouldering has become a metaphor for how I am striving to live my life. I desire to follow whatever lights me up inside: writing, climbing, spending time in nature. I spend a lot of time examining my fears about living a life I truly love. I realize I have no choice but to suck it up and find a way back to balance. I practice the art of knowing which problems are mine to solve. And I realize that sometimes things find you in the perfect time and it’s okay to get a little lost in that joy.