I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a rock-climbing junkie. When I see real rock or even pictures of cliffs, my fingers start to flex and contract somewhat involuntarily. Nothing else I’ve ever done is quite so intense as hanging by a few fingers from a tiny rock crystal hundreds of feet up on a cliff face, working to slot a piece of gear into the crack in the rock, and shaking with a mix of fatigue and terror as I fight to clip the rope through a carabiner so I can be safe again, at least for a moment. As soon as the gear is in and the rope is clipped, I know I can’t fall more than a few feet—until I climb again, which I must do to get off the cliff-face.
Some people would ask if I like being “safe” so much, why I bother to climb rocks. I’m not a classic adrenaline junkie. I have no interest in out-of-control activities like jumping out of airplanes or even rafting on Class 5 whitewater rapids. In fact, I don’t like to do anything that I perceive as particularly dangerous. How can I reconcile rock climbing with avoiding danger? The answer has to the do with my experience of risk and how it has shaped my thinking.
A few years ago, I spent a weekend rock climbing and road bicycling high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. On Friday, we climbed a 300–400-foot face several times, including a few hanging belays (the climber who controls the rope hanging from straps attached to the rock, rather than standing on the ground or on a ledge). Saturday and Sunday, we bicycled the mountain passes, descending curving roads at speeds occasionally exceeding sixty miles per hour, and even passing slow RVs on the corners. (Would you sit behind a slow moving vehicle on a ten-mile descent if you had the choice?) In the evenings, I slept with most of my riding gang in a campground frequented by hungry bears. A few of our gang chose to stay in a B&B—to be cozier, have warm muffins for breakfast, and avoid the bears.
Here’s where the weekend got interesting. The bears did not visit the campground, but they did invade the B&B, where they tore up the kitchen and ate the breakfast muffins. The riders who chose to avoid the danger had the closer encounter with the bear. When I returned home, I learned that a rider-acquaintance had died in a coffee shop when a car crashed through the window and crushed him against the bar, while I was “risking my life” rock climbing and riding the passes. Again, the one who chose the “safe” activity for the weekend was not safe.
My son is three-and-a-half, right in the middle of the accident-prone years. He rides his bike too fast and falls down occasionally. I make sure he always wears a helmet. He tumbles off chairs. He has fallen out of a tree and done plenty of other heart-stopping things, but he’s only been seriously injured once: he lost a tooth and a lot of blood when he fell on a coffee table—while doing one the “safest” things imaginable—watching TV.
All across the country, kids and the adults they’ve become are suffering and dying from obesity and sedentary lifestyle-related illnesses—at least in part, because their parents have kept them safe from all the terrible things that might happen if they play in the streets, or in the parks, or ride their bikes to school.
I take all this to mean that avoiding dangerous activities will not keep me, or anyone else, safe. I like safety. The fact that I can’t avoid danger by avoiding dangerous activities is what makes rock climbing so appealing. While I am climbing, I know that I am doing everything possible to keep myself safe. I wear my helmet. Before I climb, I inspect and re-inspect my equipment and ropes. Once I leave the ground, every ounce of my energy and every thought in my head is 100% focused on safety. At the moment that I slot a piece of gear and clip it, my sense of safety and security is intense, as is the certainty that I must climb again. The whole experience is a wonderful metaphor for life. For me, it is also a big part of what makes life worth living.
If you also crave intense, momentary feelings of safety in a hectic, inherently dangerous, unpredictable world … perhaps I’ll meet you at the crags some day.
