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Illustration by Drew Shannon
I’ve always considered myself an emotionally courageous person. There are many types of courage after all: moral or artistic, or social courage for instance. But when people think of bravery, it’s physical risk-taking that comes to mind.
I think I have a reasonable portion of other kinds of courage, but in terms of the physical type, I am bankrupt. I don’t cliff jump, sky dive or downhill ski, and only once could I be persuaded to go on a roller coaster. Instead of cannonballing into lakes, I creep and yelp. So how was it that at the age of 58, I found myself dressed in workout gear, chalked up and ready for my first attempt at indoor bouldering?
Well, I know how: My 21-year-old son told me he had a guest pass to a new climbing centre, affectionately nicknamed Rocky. “Come with me, Mom. You’ve got to try this!” It’s a measure of how much I adore my kids, and how flattered a parent is if they want to hang out with you, that I went.
Rocky was beyond imposing with its tessellated skin and exterior climbing wall that looked to the distant mountains. The towering interior felt like a cathedral, with light falling from high translucent panels. The south and north walls shot 20 metres to the roof. Climbers worked their way up, hand and foot, or belayed down, clipped into harnesses, secured with carabiners and ropes.
But we sought the lower half of the east wall, which only reached 4½ metres in height. In places it was cavernous, in others convex; the holds, in every Crayola hue. I studied the crash mat, a reassuring half-metre thick. Even at 58 I would bounce if I fell. The bouldering wall was a child’s playground compared to the plummeting verticality of the rope-climbing walls. All you need to boulder are climbing shoes and chalk.
I tied the laces of my rented shoes, and watched my kid nail a yellow V4 route (climbs are labelled V0 to V12 in difficulty). It involved heel hooking and holds he stuck to through friction instead of grip. I tried a V0. I was to employ core strength to stay close to the wall, and then at the end, at the treacherous height of three metres, reach quite far and grab the final hold with both hands to complete the climb.
It looked easy, but – with my nose just centimetres from the wall, uber conscious of velocity, abrasion and weight, reliant on my middle-aged muscle and sinew – it wasn’t easy at all. And so I met my climbing partner, Fear, always right ahead of me.
I was physically spent in an hour, but watching a woman climber move over the wall with mindful Daddy Long Legs grace, a little voice in the back of my mind said, “But what if I could?” I decided to choose as a goal just getting to the top of a V1.
Thus ensued my year of bouldering. There were wonderful moments – the sheer fun of climbing with my kid (sporadically, to not exceed my welcome), his excitement and ability to find evidence of the tiniest improvements; “But your toe placement is so much better, Mom!”
There was the first time I climbed alone at a gym aptly named Bolder, in the reassuring ambiance of parent/tot hour where I topped out all their V1 routes. How I got great at traverse climbs (conveniently just above the ground). The rare moments when Fear fell to the mat, and I scrambled over the nose of a convex climb or caught the sloth-like swing of an underhang. Once, I completed a V2!
My hands that kept me awake, rubbed tender by the abrasive holds, grew calloused. I claimed the female climber Miho Nonaka as my hero.
But hanging out with Fear all the time is hard. Embarrassed, I went to Rocky early to avoid other climbers. More mornings than I care to admit, I got to the parking lot, turned the car around and drove home.
Though my son consoled me on three steps forward, two steps back, and my husband wisely advised me to “pick your own top,” and though I bought these great climbing shoes with orange laces, eventually I let bouldering dwindle and drop.
Is physical courage a fixed deficit for me, or did I budge it a little?
I applied myself instead to overcoming my dancing inhibitions – to become one of those people who, with whatever body they’re graced, dances like no one’s looking. I joined an adult flamenco class, and though I’m clumsy and dyslexic, our teacher somehow released me from self-consciousness and helped my feet find a new love affair with the ground.
I got obsessed with knitting (don’t scoff, knitting offers frontiers of technical complexity). Also, I no longer shriek on entering cold water but slip in with a kind of graceful breaststroke plunge.
But even as I write this, it all feels a bit flat, and I think about the sun-filled quiet of Rocky in the morning, of those great shoes. Perhaps I could apply the lessons of flamenco and climb like no one’s watching. I could get my bone density checked. Because it’s still so weirdly intriguing, and the quiet little voice remains hopeful, way at the back of my mind: “But what if I could?”
Sophie Stocking lives in Calgary.