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[Aug. 8th, 2008|07:32 pm] |
yesterday I said
"let's go back to the jungle gym"
"?"
"I'd really like to scramble across those rocks, just dance across them"
"if it will make you happy" (it will not make me happy and I will sulk) he didn't say
(I am not good at rock climbing but I think scrambling is a lot of fun and it is better than watching you all day) I didn't say
it will and it did and with climbing shoes on a pile of rocks - gravel for giants - well, I just danced across them.
this is at the precipice trail in acadia national park.
actually, off the precipice trail in acadia national park, where the guy in the rock climbing store said there was some good bouldering. that is free climbing with rock climbing shoes on great big, wonderful heaps of rocks that you can go at fiercely from any angle, any skill level you choose. it is fun for noah who likes to cling to a rock with his fingers and fun for nyssa who likes to shuffle up and hang by her ankles.
next door to these boulders off the precipice trail is a great big landslide of pink granite that stretches on into an incalcuable, appreciable distance.
and so with all my bottled up energy, even more than usual, I ran at this pile of rocks
all limbs equivalent and as important as each other
shifting my weight from ankle to toe to shoulder to fingers to hips
not even looking up because I am just moving forward (and that happens to be up)
pink granite is flashing by me because I am scaling faster than a spider monkey
as I get higher, the rocks get bigger and fewer, and scrub starts to crop up between cracks of rock. I can move back and forth laterally across the entire face, 200 feet. here I pause and the view is wonderful, just above the trees next to the road, and noah dares me and then races me to keep going
and I scale with my hands and feet doing things I never thought that they could so fast that I don't even notice when the boulders become smooth rock face and that I am going nearly straight up, all I can see is a flash of blue and plaid and curls and my sight is set on it and I am honed in on catching it , pulling myself up in cracks and in juts and by ancient wild blueberries tiny, ripe, and sweet.
it is so foggy that water droplets form on the tips of noahs curls and I can see moisture in waves in the air, fifty two degrees
these are things I would have noticed if I weren't moving so fast racing up the face of this mountain so far above the jungle gym and it seems like it will take forever to reach the top so I stop and eat blueberries, pulling off a handful in a swoop, eating the stems too because I am in such a hurry. when I rest and look out (not down!!) I see a cruise boat and islands in the bay of fundy or sometimes nothing at all when the fog is irritable. I don't think I will ever make it and I will never make it and why haven't I made it yet. I have been climbing so fast for so long and layers of clothes are coming off, jettisoned on the side of mountain anonymous until hey,
I made it.
oh shit, I will never make it down.
it is contrary to the scenery, the discussion I had at the top
I had about the same one at cadillac peak five hours ago
I want to know what reminds me that I am alive
or to have a good reason not to die because life is so complete right then.
I do not want to remember that I am wearing this wristwatch or that someone in the world, even me, has or ever had an agenda or conflicts or an agenda so obstinant with conflict so trivial or really that the town of bar harbor exists.
I do not think that is has to, or any of those things really.
but anyway: I was trapped by minutiae but the view was amazing and there we sat gorging on blueberries and life and each others' brains and the view until we were cold again and I decided to finally look down. oh shit. how did we climb this wall? it is straight down, and it is wet, and I am tired, and I am hungry. (this is when super cool nyssa jumped out and I used everything I learned in boy scouts to slide and scoot and pull myself across a rock face (with just my fingers!!) to avoid imminent and impending and surely disaster! a fantastic tale of team work and amazing stretches, death defying stunts five hundred feet in the air! the audience is on edge when the ancient brush, never disturbed by human hand or nesting peregrine falcon, is our hero's sole support for her life and the plant itself begins to lose its grip on the rock. can she shift her weight fast enough to escape, without jarring the plant or her fragile position, sprawled flat on a rock?? gasps where I think, something I never think, that death and pain are perhaps real and tangible things, and also perhaps propinquitous. and then finally, still about a mile from the bottom, when the rock face shifts flatter and the rocks are crumbled apart when I know, whew, I am home free from here unless I do anything stupid.) so I got to the bottom and smoked a cigarette and then peed my pants.
it is in bar harbor, maine, that I appreciate the dynamic of human emotion
that human emotion (frustration) is real and when I learned that I am learning that with just the power of knowing, it is as real as you let it be.
between the walk it out or talk it out or rock it out, what I prefer is difficult to say.
of this trip, here are the rules so far:
1. one-way tickets everywhere |
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