Lost n' Found

"Yeah, I used to climb a lot."
"I just haven't had a lot of time recently."
"I've been trail running a lot lately."

I'm sitting here trying to pull out a post about the beginning of my return to climbing. The problem is, it began a few months ago and the fog of time is too thick for how I want to express it. I'd love to be able to reach back and talk all about the process of return. Guide you along that happy trail. All I can muster up for your eyes though today is a scattering of imagery, like a box of puzzle pieces dumped onto the table. Some of them are connected from the previous attempt and seem to make some sense. Other pieces will just be...well...that, pieces. A single thought, a single image, expressing a speck that somehow will hopefully make sense in the whole scheme of things.

All in all, none of that really matters I'm sure. The few eyes that will see this spattering of thoughts will likely stop reading right about now. Maybe, with a little push of actual effort by me, this will catch a few brains though and if not, then this is therapy in the first place anyhow.

THE LOST

To say that my climbing had been lost is actually a terrible term. When you lose something, it is not a purposeful event. You do not put your key under the porch and say to yourself, "Nice, that will now be gone from my mind forever, just as I planned." I'm sure there are psychologists that could talk about self-sabotage and that many relationships are actually sub-consciously doomed by their actual loser, but I think my point has been created. So, saying that I had "lost" my climbing life may need to be rearranged a bit. I think that it is more likely explained just as I would explain what I did with the actual gear itself. Piece by piece, the cams,
rope,
biners                                       harness,
         belay device,
cordalette                       nuts                             dogbones,
              slings
these were all placed into two Rubbermaid bins, dropped off into the gear room, told "I'll see ya in a week or so", and then left to a clock that for some reason just seemed to keep on spinning.
Instead of being lost, my climbing was placed on layaway. Ha! Layaway. I'm imaging handing over those red topped Rubbermaids to a K-Mart desk lady, black short hair and an indifferent smirk on her face, and giving her a wink. She nods back and slides it across the floor, bumping it into somebodies online class, another persons knitting set and some teenager's recently forgotten muscle car project. I'll be back for it soon, I'm sure of it.

It sat in that layaway for way more time than I thought it ever would. There was actually an entire year that went by where I only borrowed back that container twice! Once was a decent outing with about 4-5 routes climbed with great friends and a classic hound dog. The other, however, shouldn't even freakin count. I basically took my gear for a hike up into the surrounding red rock canyons of Sedona. Getting to the base of the climb, I racked up...got ridiculously off-kiltered on the first contact of shoe rubber to rock, finished only the first pitch, and moseyed back on down to the truck. Great experience with a great friend, but hardly a coin into the bank of actual Climbing.

So for two years, the number of climbing excursions could be counted on one hand. Hell, I probably wouldn't even include the thumb on that hand either. For those future readers who don't know me and wouldn't instantly guess why this occurred 2 years ago, well; The creation of Dark Sky Brewing Company began 2 years ago. Not necessarily the thought processes and research, but the construction and real gloves on work. Some people have to shelve pieces of their life because of having kids. My newborn "kid" had stainless steel diapers and puked up sugar-water/yeast slurrys instead of baby food. My late nights were not created by little walkie-talkie monitor screeches or scheduled feedings, but instead by lugging around newly kegs and worrying about doors left unlocked and leaking fermenter valves. It quite obviously has been a labor of love and continues to be well worth the effort to see smiles across the taproom and hear peoples love of the beer, but, it none the less pulled the parking break on the tendons of my hands...so to speak.

THE FOUND

I am now sitting on my couch on Christmas Eve, watching my pups wrestle outside in the snow as a storm roll in. Here and now, I have this great and smile inducing feeling once again. The lost feeling that I have now found, nay rediscovered, is that I am yearning once again.

Yearning to keep shaking the cold from my legs on the third belay ledge
Yearning to give a pound while being lowered off limestone bolts
Yearning to have sore shoulders from hauling gear up to a Spire
Yearning to sit above an overlook and eat a tuna fish sandwich
Yearning to work a problem in a warm chalky gym
Yearning to scratch the back of my hands up
Yearning to lay exhausted on a crash pad
Yearning to rattle the bag while on a rest
Yearning to hear the clink of big cams
Yearning to go get my fingers sore
Yearning to knock on sandstone
Yearning to find terrible feet
Yearning to reach an anchor
Yearning to leave an anchor
Yearning to find good feet
Yearning to grab holds
Yearning to "Yaaat!"
Yearning to throw

So cheers. Cheers to more years of finding the joy that only the Climbing Life can bring me. It has been an interesting reintroduction so far...in a good way. In a great way. I find myself happier on the rock. More satisfied with performances and okay with defeats. An old traddie heart but now happy and comfortable even among the grunting gym rats. I AM an old climber, and in that I mean that I have experience enough to know exactly what climbing is to me.


~N