The veterans had warned him:
There was blissful ignorance, and beyond it, terrible vision and the failure of faith.
He had been told there would be times when the scales would fall from his eyes, and he would see the yawning depths and the thin veneer that would no longer keep him from falling, the veneer that vision now would set aflame. These would be the times of adrenalin poisoning and cotton-mouth, of whitened fingers and shaking legs, of clinging to the wall with a ferocity and fear that paralyzed rather than moving with dynamic grace. These would be the first signs of stepping beyond the limits of ignorance and nonchalance, the first brutal baptism of the terrible vision.
He had listened to the warnings indifferently and had not cared to ask further. The veterans knew that the rashness and boldness of ignorance was the catalyzing agent of the process. The youngster would have to make the journey himself. He did not see the knowing glances amongst the brotherhood. He did not hear the tangible silence that qualified the warning and the peace that radiated, but remained unspoken.
* * * * *
The canyon on the southern edge of the plateau played host to all colors, all species, all moods. Orange, red, buff, and white geologic formations undergirded verdant slopes flush with oak, maple, ponderosa pine, yucca, and beavertail cacti. Black bears wandered the floor with deer; jays, tanagers, and swallows populated the space between the rims. Under cloudy skies, the colors were muted and the canyon subdued. Under clear skies, the canyon exploded with intimate life and color.
This day was cloudy. The youngster wandered beneath the canyon rim, looking up to judge his potential routes. He felt no joy as he considered his possibilities, nor did he feel any fear at the prospect of climbing. He felt only an interminable apathy, a boredom with all matters great and small. This new endeavor promised only to be as any other endeavor, ultimately empty and valueless, even this in which he might risk his life.
A rope suddenly snaked out into space from the rim and fell down the line of his route, the end snapping the wall at his feet. He gaped at the rope in open-mouthed stupefaction, then raised his eyes to the canyon rim. No one. The rope turned out of sight over the rim; higher, clouds floated lazily by. He called out. No answer. He stepped forward and tugged on the rope; immediately, an answering tension coursed down the line. Hesitantly, he tied into the end of the rope, then started at the sudden whirring of rope against rock as the slack was hauled out to a secure and comforting tightness. He paused a moment, then made a tentative initial move onto the wall. The unknown belayer was conscientious; slack was immediately banished from the line.
He avoided the direct start of the route, a featureless wall of twenty feet, and chose instead to scramble up a side chute. At the top of the chute, he gingerly sidestepped over to the crack that composed the main portion of his route. His throat went dry as he contemplated the ominous lean of the wall past vertical and the curvature of the crack off to the right many feet above him. The alien and forbidding wall that he perched so precariously on contrasted starkly against the luminous blue afternoon sky and the ever-present clouds, creating a dreamscape of intense surrealism. Already, the lush and verdant canyon walls and floor below him ceased to hold any relevance for him; having no relevance, they forfeited all claims to his attention.
He gingerly tried various combinations of high steps and hand jams in the crack to begin. The rope held faithfully through the aborted starts, waiting. Deliberately, he began to stoke an aggressive rage. At its peak, he lunged onto the wall, committed. The crack gave way grudgingly as he began to thrash higher and higher.
His hand jams slipped the moment he attempted to move on them, creating the disconcerting feeling of an imminent fall and demanding the rapid placement of his next higher handhold. Occasionally in his struggle, small ledges traveled down to provide momentary footholds, but even these could not negate the effect the leaning wall was having on his forearms, biceps, and deltoids, as his arms continued to take most of his weight. The rope kept pace with his ascent, providing peace of mind and a measure of safety.
The crack began to curve up and off to the right. He was forced to keep his right arm high in his hand placements. Resting stances became less frequent, and breathing came harder. In a growing apprehension, he surveyed the last feet of the crack and the fingertip traverse leading back to the left that now became visible for the first time. It promised a safer angle between climber and anchor. He did not like the distance he was off the line of his belaying rope. The rope was still with him, still tight, but due to the curvature of the crack, he was climbing further off a vertical line with each foot of ascent and increasingly open to a dangerous pendulum if he fell. He did not see how it was possible to ascend higher, yet still, the crack continued to give inch by inch to his violent paroxysms of effort.
The terrible vision was bestowed at the moment he made a delicate transition from crack climbing to the fingertip traverse. As he glanced along the length of the traverse, he felt the cold slap of danger and the yawning exposure now sucking at his back. His hands and fingers were numb with fatigue, and his feet were no help at all, holding a tenuous friction grip on a featureless wall six inches ahead of his center of gravity.
Flaring emotions blazed into his head: fright, anger, blame, recrimination, panic. His world contracted to painfully small proportions – the narrow ledge in a vertical environment, the quivering rope on full tension, his weary, weakening body, a frantic mind. There was nothing else except the vision that now set nonchalance and hope aflame, a vision that saw with bitterly cold certainty the full inevitability and implications of a fall, a vision that pierced the depths he had so casually moved over and forever destroyed the previously substantial world he had always known. His legs began to tremble. Sweat coursed into his eyes. He was paralyzed with rigid effort and fright.
He could not hold the effort.
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