wall. I found I had to take short baby steps and push away from the rope with my arms to keep the crate, which was going to sway no matter what I did, from banging. I’ve never taken a yoga class, but I’m sure there’s some sort of yoga exercise that involves holding your arms out in front of you for as long as you can, and then holding them out longer, and then holding them out until you feel like they’re going to spontaneously combust. I was doing that, but I was also lifting weights with both my arms and legs.
Fifty feet above the ledge, I bonked. I couldn’t push any farther. I let go of my ascenders and sat back in the harness, spent and out of breath, my arms screaming with pain, my shoulders hot and knotted. The air here was warmer, and I was working in sunlight, leaving me drenched in sweat. I’d drunk my entire water bottle at the bottom, to lose the weight, which might sound like it doesn’t make sense because the weight would be inside of me instead of in my backpack, but the backpack was making me top heavy and adding to the strain on my arms. By now I’d probably sweated off more water than I’d taken in anyway.
I didn’t feel fully recovered, but I remembered I was racing the clock. The idea that I might leave the canyon floor with a live dog but reach the top with a dead one was too much to consider, so I started up again, less concerned now with jostling the dog and focused more on just making it out of the hole, which was now, as I neared the top, wide and gaping. When I glanced down, the two canyon walls converged to create a sort of false vanishing point, an illusion of distance supplemented by the lack of any frame of reference to confer scale. For a brief moment, I felt like I was a mile high.
Perhaps seventy-five feet above the ledge below and the same distance from the top, I bonked again. My legs were okay, but my arms and shoulders were aflame with pain, and despite the generous padding, my harness was biting into my waist. It was like sitting on a sling made out of piano wire rather than three-inch-wide nylon webbing. The crate, which seemed so manageable at first, felt like it weighed five hundred pounds. I needed help, but help was nowhere to be found. My cell phone was in my backpack, but being below the rim of the canyon meant I had no reception. I’d worked out for years in weight rooms, so I’d been here before—that point where you think you want to just call it a day, a bad day, and try again tomorrow.
In fact, I’d been to that point before I ever started working out in weight rooms.
It’s seventh grade. Two days before Christmas, I’m walking to school and I find myself passing a row of cars where a group of older kids, the ones popularly dubbed “The Burnouts,” are parked. I assume my nemesis Ben is among them. I’d say chief nemesis, but on any given day, it feels like the rankings change, and it’s hard to keep track.
When I realize where I am, alarms go off. I should know better than to walk past The Burnouts, but I’m in a hurry. I’ve been careless. I’ve let my guard down. Usually if I know they’re there, I’ll make a detour. They generally sit inside their cars before the bell rings, smoking cigarettes and listening to heavy metal music, bobbing their heads, either stoned already or getting there. Most of them are older than me, and even the ones who are my age seem older somehow. I’m not small of stature, but inside, I am in many ways still a little kid, and these schoolmates seem like grown-ups, and hostile ones at that. They know things I will never know, and they’ve done things I will never do. They are bad enough, taken individually, but when they gather in groups, they take strength from each other and dare or goad each other on.
When I realize what I’m walking into, I have about three seconds to decide whether to reverse course, which will make me look like a coward and invite being abused as such, or keep walking with my head down and
Fifty feet above the ledge, I bonked. I couldn’t push any farther. I let go of my ascenders and sat back in the harness, spent and out of breath, my arms screaming with pain, my shoulders hot and knotted. The air here was warmer, and I was working in sunlight, leaving me drenched in sweat. I’d drunk my entire water bottle at the bottom, to lose the weight, which might sound like it doesn’t make sense because the weight would be inside of me instead of in my backpack, but the backpack was making me top heavy and adding to the strain on my arms. By now I’d probably sweated off more water than I’d taken in anyway.
I didn’t feel fully recovered, but I remembered I was racing the clock. The idea that I might leave the canyon floor with a live dog but reach the top with a dead one was too much to consider, so I started up again, less concerned now with jostling the dog and focused more on just making it out of the hole, which was now, as I neared the top, wide and gaping. When I glanced down, the two canyon walls converged to create a sort of false vanishing point, an illusion of distance supplemented by the lack of any frame of reference to confer scale. For a brief moment, I felt like I was a mile high.
Perhaps seventy-five feet above the ledge below and the same distance from the top, I bonked again. My legs were okay, but my arms and shoulders were aflame with pain, and despite the generous padding, my harness was biting into my waist. It was like sitting on a sling made out of piano wire rather than three-inch-wide nylon webbing. The crate, which seemed so manageable at first, felt like it weighed five hundred pounds. I needed help, but help was nowhere to be found. My cell phone was in my backpack, but being below the rim of the canyon meant I had no reception. I’d worked out for years in weight rooms, so I’d been here before—that point where you think you want to just call it a day, a bad day, and try again tomorrow.
In fact, I’d been to that point before I ever started working out in weight rooms.
It’s seventh grade. Two days before Christmas, I’m walking to school and I find myself passing a row of cars where a group of older kids, the ones popularly dubbed “The Burnouts,” are parked. I assume my nemesis Ben is among them. I’d say chief nemesis, but on any given day, it feels like the rankings change, and it’s hard to keep track.
When I realize where I am, alarms go off. I should know better than to walk past The Burnouts, but I’m in a hurry. I’ve been careless. I’ve let my guard down. Usually if I know they’re there, I’ll make a detour. They generally sit inside their cars before the bell rings, smoking cigarettes and listening to heavy metal music, bobbing their heads, either stoned already or getting there. Most of them are older than me, and even the ones who are my age seem older somehow. I’m not small of stature, but inside, I am in many ways still a little kid, and these schoolmates seem like grown-ups, and hostile ones at that. They know things I will never know, and they’ve done things I will never do. They are bad enough, taken individually, but when they gather in groups, they take strength from each other and dare or goad each other on.
When I realize what I’m walking into, I have about three seconds to decide whether to reverse course, which will make me look like a coward and invite being abused as such, or keep walking with my head down and
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