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 Home
Outdoor
Adventure Tales
of Adventure |
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Why I Rock Climb
by Susan Fox Rogers
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It is a Thursday evening in 1976 in Central Pennsylvania. I am fifteen years old, a brown-haired, outgoing, solid-bodied girl in white painters pants and a blue striped rugby shirt - the rock climber's uniform of the day. I step lightly down the stairs into the living room where my parents sit in overstuffed chairs, lights shining brightly down on my mother’s New York Times and the book my father is reading. They are intellectuals, readers, academics and from this world of culture I have emerged: a tomboy who doesn't like to sit still or to read, a tomgirl who is about to put forth her weekly request.
"Can I go out climbing this weekend?" I ask. My mother looks up and asks, "Will there be another girl along?" And the battle begins. I never fought with my parents, but now, at fifteen, I have something worth fighting for: my right to go rock climbing with the boys, no other girls in sight.
What my parents fear, no doubt, is that I go off into the woods with the boys to do something besides climb rocks. Rock climbing is mysterious to them. I go away an ordinary girl and come home with my hands smudged white with gymnastics chalk, my hair a mess, my clothes spotted with dirt - and glowing with happiness. They are half right in their suspicions: I am in love. And now I have to convince them that my love is directed only toward cold hard granite.
Today, when a girl heads out to rock climb, her parents won't have to ask if another girl will be there - a woman will probably be her guide, and other girls will undoubtedly be there eager to learn the skills of moving vertically. But parents may still wonder at their daughter's passion. My advice: watch it grow.
Climbing gave me something to focus on - even obsess over - when I was fifteen. While my friends were worrying about pimples or if they had a date on Friday night, I was dreaming of dancing on nubbin-sized holds. Okay, I worried a little about having a date or not, but my world didn't hinge on that. I didn't need boys to make me feel good about myself because I had found that pulling up over the top of a climb made me feel invincible - even beautiful.
I was always active growing up, playing football in the park and leading games of capture the flag. But organized junior and high school sports were not for me. I was looking to play, not to compete. This doesn't mean that I wasn't competitive, because I was: I always wanted to climb harder. But in a world that continuously measures, I needed to keep my play score-free: I wanted to move freely, because in movement I was discovering who I was.
Climbing was vertical chess that engaged my body and my mind; climbing was a dance with the rock. Through climbing I learned how to balance, how to focus--one tiny hold at a time--and I grew to be strong. So when I finally decided to pay attention to my schooling I took those body skills with me: balance, breath, strength, one paper or test at a time. Now, working as an editor and a writer, I return to climbing as my central metaphor--if I can do it out there, I know I can do it here in front of my computer.
I came to climbing through other outdoor activities: backpacking, hiking, caving, rafting, canoeing, cross country skiing. And though it was climbing I focused on, I know I could have easily become a mountain biker or kayaker. What could not have changed was the setting for my play: the outdoors. I need blue sky, green trees and dirt under my feet. I need space. It is there, wedged between green and blue, that I am able to sweat without apology, can squat to pee in the dirt, can strip my body of all of the expectations that surround me as a girl, a woman.
I also need unexpected snow storms and rain pouring down on my hike, I need to know that I can find my way out of the woods with only a compass or a map. I need to know that when I get home I can sit back and laugh at this, and have a story to tell.
When I tell my stories of wrong trails taken, of wet sleeping bags or sleepless nights, women out there hear them, and laugh with me, knowing that they, too, have survived similar trials and come back stronger. And it is my great hope that some girl out there will hear these same stories, here, in these pages, and will want this sort of adventure - that she will first follow these footprints into the woods, and then continue past them, deeper into the woods, higher up the mountain.
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About
the Author |
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Susan Fox Rogers
: Susan Fox Rogers is the editor of SOLO:ON HER OWN ADVENTURE and ANOTHER WILDERNESS: NOTES FOR THE NEW OUTDOORSWOMAN and many other collections of stories. Susan started rock climbing when she was 15.
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