Harley and Me (27 page)

Be. Here. Now.

I tell R I need to stay until the end of my scheduled time away. I have few plans for the next eight days. Some writing. An afternoon swim. A walk or two. Everything seems to be winding down and that's the hardest time for me. I'm good at the planning stage. I'm less good at seeing things through. But that's what I'm hoping to do now. To feel the water as it's on my skin, smell the fruity air near the pineapple plantation, enjoy the warmth of the breeze and try not to wish I were somewhere else. Because we all know the truth: The moment I get home, I'll start wishing I was back here again.

So I keep reminding myself of today's reality. The air temperature on the island of Mo'orea in French Polynesia is eighty-four degrees right at this moment. There's a slight breeze blowing. The water is eighty degrees . . .

Be. Here. Now.

• • •

He walks into the neighborhood coffee shop and introduces himself. There's an awkward hug and kiss and the medicine ball slam of truth slams my solar plexus. I have been so misguided. How could I think I might know someone I'd never met? The clumsy reality is like a bad smell, filling the space between us. There's nothing here. No spark, no frisson.
Nada.
I spent that last six weeks in paradise obsessing over this person who is not at all whom I'd made him out to be.

It's a good lesson. If I have a strong enough desire, I can make anything over into what I want it to be. I made R into someone he's not in order to match my own desires and needs, and he did the same with me. I constructed and assembled him from the smallest of details: photos, the sound of his voice, a few of his stories. But I didn't
know
him. I created him whole cloth, the perfect man. Only he isn't. And it's taking this unpleasant shock of recognition to see that. We both see it.

I'm back in smoggy L.A. with no wonderful man after all, having left behind paradise in a rush. Be. Here. Now. I'm no longer on Mo'orea with its crystal-clear water, but my life is about to unfold in a new and bigger way. I will put this man behind me. Reclaim my little rental space. Light a candle. Dance around in the dark. Relish being single. Become aware of my intrinsic wholeness. Feel the pulse of my being.

•
    
CHAPTER TWENTY
    
•

FAILING (AND FALLING) BETTER

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

—ANAIS NIN

It's 9:00
AM
on a frigid January morning in the town of Ouray, Colorado, population one thousand. Located ten miles northeast of Telluride (but a fifty-mile drive due to the severity of the landscape), Ouray is known as the “Switzerland of America” because of its setting at the narrow head of a valley, enclosed on three sides by steep, granite peaks. Dramatic mountains lurch up all around me, rising so fast from the valley floor I feel dizzy looking at them. The vistas seem even more intense through the spectral air. It's like Mo'orea, but for those who prefer snow. The cottages, shops, and steepled church are postcard-worthy, as are the people and dogs that briskly pass. Everyone has that burnished skin that comes from living in the cool clean air. I feel like I'm in a Patagonia catalog.

I should be drinking in this striking locale and all it has to offer. I should be soaking up its natural gorgeousness, breathing in the rugged magnificence of this planet and be filled with gratitude to be alive today.

But I'm not.

I'm sitting in a Subaru, trying to talk myself off a ledge. I have come to join in the Ouray Ice Festival, where participants take clinics in the finer points of ice-climbing, a sport that involves chopping and bashing up vertical frozen waterfalls. For the past half hour, a continuous stream of climbers has been walking past the car, anxious to get to the pitches to try out or improve their skills. They're all cinched into sturdy climbing harnesses, carabineers clanging from gear loops, helmets to protect precious brain matter. They carry their ice tools like gunslingers and clomp about in heavy boots fit with twelve-point crampons that sound like crushing pottery on the hard-pack snow.

Forty minutes ago, E, the man I've been dating, the very real man who is not a figment of my imagination nor made up from a rich tapestry of my wants and desires but a hands-on,
let's be in this together
kind of man, took off with a friend and their guide for an all-day backcountry climb. I am signed up for a novice ice-climbing class that starts at nine thirty and am trying to rally the nerve to put on my gear and step out of the car.

But it's warm inside the Subaru and cold and scary out there. The guys will be gone at least eight hours. There's no one to audit whether I go to the class or not. I could simply imply that I went and spend the next few hours scouring the adorable little town, drinking hot chocolate, petting the friendly dogs that seem everywhere, and try to stay warm.

Or I can gear up and go see what's what.

You would think that I've done enough crazy-ass stuff in the past few years that nothing I might undertake would really surprise me. That said, I'm still terrified of heights and until a few months ago would have sworn I'd never embrace any sport that involves heights and massive gravity consequences. Summits of any kind make me vertiginous, producing enough sweat to penetrate even multiple layers of clothing. My daughter, Hope, has been trying to lure me into skydiving with her for two years. But so far, no go. I can't get over the fright.

And yet, I am here.

E's unlike the other men I've dated in the two and a half years I've been single: the cop who lived on a sailboat, the surfer who built hotels, the college professor who was into photography. We clicked in a way that was new for me. Thus far, everything has been amazingly easy between us. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but I like the fact we share a love of outdoor sports and what others might term “extreme” activities. When I told a friend about him and how well things were going, explaining the backpacking, hiking, and trekking plans we were throwing around, she laughed. “He's just like you,” she said, “only on steroids.”

Two months ago he got me to try rock-climbing. We went to Point Dume in Malibu where a ninety-foot cliff rises vertically from the beach. We'd climbed its sloping backside to its top and there clipped in fat locking carabineers that created bomb-poof anchors for the climbing rope. As part of standard safety practice, he tied me into the anchor bolts as he worked. The air was barely warm and the ocean breeze took a bite, but the day was gorgeous. The afternoon sun was starting to lower over the ocean and a wedding party was setting up on the beach below. A photographer snapped pictures of the bride against the rugged rocks and ocean. Peeking over the edge, I hoped I wouldn't become a wedding crasher. I purposefully didn't think about the climbing I was going to attempt once the anchors were locked off and the rope was played out. There was no sense wasting all that energy on anxiety when I was going to need whatever strength I might rally to actually climb.

But as I sat there watching seagulls and pelicans sail on the air currents, I made up my mind about a few things. First, I decided that unless necessary, I was simply not going to look down when I climbed. Whenever I look down from a height and see how far I could fall or catalog all the ways I might hurt myself, that's when I freak out. I would just concentrate on moving up the rock face, one step at a time. Kind of like the way I've been navigating this relationship with E: not questioning what's happening, not thinking about what I stand to lose or how badly I might get my heart broken. I'm just trying to
enjoy the minute-by-minute experience as it unfolds, knowing that everything has its season and nothing lasts forever. Learning, as I have, to just take things one moment at a time.

Second, if the rock-climbing becomes too scary or if I decide it's something I'm not comfortable with, I am going to speak up and stop. I no longer wish to participate in the “tap-dance for daddy” I've been doing all my life to impress men. No more. This will be
my
climb, if I do it at all, and E will have to accept me either way on my terms.

Back on the beach, I pull on a climbing harness for the first time in my life. Each leg goes through a loop of webbing that connects to the waist belt and the belay loop, the point at which a fist-size knot connects the rope to E, who will stay on the beach, maintaining tension on the rope to make sure I'm safe. If I take a fall or slip, his job will be to arrest the fall. He will do this by a technique called belaying—playing out the rope through a friction device on his harness as he watches me climb, prepared to brake my fall if I come off the rock.

My life will literally be in his hands.

I tighten my helmet and E has me repeat the set of verbal commands we'll use to make sure we are always on the same page. I quickly realize that the rope is not just a safety apparatus but an organic thing that transmits subtle messages between climber and belayer.

Behind me, the wedding guests have begun to seat themselves, the ceremony about to start. My feet are squeezed into climbing “slippers,” soled with sticky rubber that, I assume, will cling to even the smallest nub or pocket in the rock. It's a matter of trust. The shoes will adhere to the rock and hold me, but only if I believe they will.

I place my first foot and stand up, pawing the rock for a handhold. Then I panic and grab for the rope, grateful for this tiny grasp of security. But the rope is there only to catch me if I fall, E reminds me, not for me to climb. I need to let it go and keep my hands and feet on the rock face itself.

I find an edge to place my foot and push upward again. The tiniest bit at a time, I'm doing it. One foot, then the other. An arm reaches,
fingers feel for a thin crack. My foot searches the surface for an indent, finds one. I rise.

I'm so busy focusing on what I'm doing, I don't feel scared. E calls out directions: “To your left. Move your foot to your left.” I do as instructed, and like a magic door opening, a placement appears. I move up farther and feel a thunderbolt of excitement. For this moment, I am strong and capable. I'm doing something I never dreamed I could do.

I step up to a thin slab and reach. The ascent is far from effortless, still there's no fear involved. But then, about thirty feet off the ground, my arms start to tire and my quads shake. I can't find the next foot placement. I'm stuck and I don't know what to do. I'm certain there's no way I can go farther.

“Just a couple of inches to either side,” E calls. “Just move and you'll see a way.”

I don't want to let go of this thin grip I've already got. Though it's tenuous, I can't let go even if it means I move up to something more secure. He keeps urging me to take a step. Tentatively, my fingers begin to scour the granite. The ocean is beating right below me but it's nothing compared to the pounding of my heart.

Don't. Look. Down.

When I don't find anything of substance to grab hold of, I reach out with one foot feeling for a flake or a grainy pocket. I keep replaying in my head the first rule of climbing, to keep three points of contact with the rock at all times. But I'm ready to give up. I believe I've reached my limit.

And then it appears, a tiny notch for my right foot. I push forward, moving up, and up some more.

Don't. Look. Down.

Like motorcycling. Like scuba diving. Like outrigger canoeing. Like entering a new relationship. Like learning a new language or writing a book or painting a landscape or writing some music. Don't. Look. Down. Keep climbing. Hold tight to that wonderful rock that beckons.

I keep ascending, continuing to amazing myself. My arms and legs shudder from the exertion and the surges of adrenaline. But this is how we learn. We can't be an expert the first time out. By the time I've climbed to our agreed high point, I'm spent. Instead of pretending I'm stronger than I am, I claim my limits, calling out to E. “That's it for today. I'm ready to come down.”

He acknowledges and tells me to sit back in the harness so he can lower me, something I've never done and have never even seen someone else do. “Keep your feet wide and out in front of you,” he calls. I try to do as instructed, but clearly I have not understood. Because I have climbed diagonally to the right, when I sit back, I have no idea the rope will pull me back to the left. I try to get my feet out in front of me, but fail. I get a harsh introduction to a new climbing term:
pendulum
.

Basically, I tumble and swing across the face of the rock. E immediately brakes my fall, but I'm free-swinging across the rock, slamming into the face, flipping nearly upside down, dangling. Fortunately my helmet absorbs the impact and I finally stop swinging some thirty above the beach. E directs me to right myself and spread my feet against the rock as he slowly lowers me to the sand.

My heart is pounding, my hands are sweaty. If I had known E longer than just a few weeks at that point, I may have burst into tears. I've had the wind knocked out of me, but mostly, I'm embarrassed.

He comes rushing to my side once I'm safely on the beach. “I am so sorry,” E apologizes over and over. “I should have kept you on course. I should have prepared you better for coming down. I would never endanger you.” He wraps me in a hug.

Other climbers come over to see if I'm okay. It's quickly clear that I'm only a bit shaken and then the timbre of the conversation shifts.

“Wow. That was spectacular!”

“Are you trying out for Peter Pan?”

“The whole wedding stopped to watch,” someone mentions, gesturing to the wedding party where the nuptials have since resumed. He high-fives me.

Once the adrenaline passes, though, I realize that though I'm a bit bruised, I'm not genuinely injured. I tried something scary and survived the worst I could imagine—falling.

And I am okay.

In the following months, E takes me climbing at Red Rock outside of Las Vegas. Now that I've visualized that I can do this, I climb more fluidly and top out at a one-hundred-foot wall on the first attempt. A group of hikers pass below, stopping to watch and comment. I tune them out and keep my attention on where it needs to be: on the rock in front of me, finding a thin edge to support my shoe, then crimping an eroded knob with my fingertips.

Of course, knowing I have been safe in the past and able to do something scary doesn't mean that I am ready to do what's next. That's what I'm thinking as I now put on my harness and crampons in the cold Ouray air, adjust my helmet to go meet my ice-climbing class.

Ouray is the winter ice-climbing capital of the United States, home to the world's first dedicated ice-climbing park. Dozens of frozen waterfalls, refreshed nightly by sprinkler nozzles, create eighty- to two-hundred-foot-high climbing tests, winding through more than a mile of the Uncompahgre Gorge. The annual Ice Festival is a weekend extravaganza of competitions, exhibitions, and instruction with many of the world's top ice-climbers. It's basically a geeky Mardi Gras, just with frostbite.

I am obviously not among the elite climbers, only the rankest of beginners. Still, I know a few things. I know, for example, that vertical ice-climbing is accomplished with the use of crampons, pointy bear traps that clamp to the bottom of your boots, and ice axes, also known as ice tools. To ascend, climbers kick the front points of their crampons to create a platform on the vertical ice. They swing ice axes overhead to establish an anchor to step higher on the crampons. The strength of the ice is often surprising. Even if the axe pierces only a centimeter or so, that's enough to support a climber's weight. Again, the concept of trust is critical. It seems impossible that my ice tool,
barely embedded into the ice, is enough to hold me—but it does. I'm learning to believe.