I discovered rock climbing relatively late in life. I had tried it once or twice in my twenties and it didn’t grab me. Then when I was about 33, a friend who had been climbing for many years brought me back to the climbing gym and something clicked. 

I was at that time in a period of actively moving back into my physical body. When I was young (up to mid-20s), I was very athletic. Soccer and tennis had been my two primary passions. In my mid 20s I started moving inwards, exploring my consciousness and psyche via philosophy, meditation and psychedelics, and I learning about the state of the world: climate change, peak oil, geopolitical motivations and alternative community living became my focus. My physical body, once so well honed, was left fallow while I explored these inner and global realms.

In my early 30s, I felt the desire to re-inhabit my physical body. I wanted to feel strong and capable again. I started exercising on a regular basis for the first time in several years. Early morning runs, push ups and pull ups became part of my daily routine. Initially, the feelings of progress and notable physical changes were motivation enough. But rapidly I hit a wall. I was never a big fan of working out for its own sake, and I desired to use my physical body, not simply to build it for its own sake.

Enter climbing. 

Climbing provided the most tangible of physical gauges: can you make it to the top? Can you do that one hard move? Do you have the strength? Can you learn and implement the technique? The motivation for exercising quickly shifted from “Can I do one more pull up than last time?” to the very practical goal of making a move that previously was impossible. There was, and is, a magic in being physically incapable of doing something one day, and being able to do so the next. 

Beyond the physical, climbing provides consistent me safe access to deep and primal fear, including to death itself. Even once I learned to trust the gear and my partner, being very high on a rock face or mountain reaches a place within me that supercedes the prefrontal cortex and my “understanding.” The fear of falling is so ingrained within us that it is a regular encounter for most climbers, including myself. Facing this fear, again and again, by choice, while simultaneously pushing myself to my physical limits, is the intersection that keeps me climbing. (Being in amazing nature with amazing people too!)

Climbing is considered a high risk sport, but I disagree. It is low risk but high consequence. While a few climbers die every year, it is a tiny percentage of the total number of climbers, and in almost all cases it is human error that causes the death. The risk of catastrophic failure is almost zero outside of human error, often a lack of attention or not following good protocols. 

When I find myself on a high balcony, often I experience the feeling of jumping from it. It is not a suicidal thought nor have I ever pondered actually doing so. It is like I experience another quantum version of myself, in some other reality, who jumps. Hanging off the side of a cliff, tens to hundreds of meters from the ground, with air all around me, connected to a one centimeter rope which is connected to another human, or hanging by my own personal anchors attached from my harness to small pieces of metal affixed to the rock, looking down from such heights, looking out at such vistas, it is not uncommon for me to experience the same quantum shift. Against all odds, multiple over-engineered pieces of redundant equipment fail and I fall. I experience my own death. The rush of wind. The slowing of time. I close my eyes. I allow the experience. I practice serenity rather than panic. I feel my final feelings and think my final thoughts. This brings to me such clarity on what matters. On who matters. On life itself. 

I take a breath. Another. I open my eyes and I return to the moment and to safety. I have just climbed a sheer wall. I am safe in my equipment and in my knowledge of how to use it. I lower myself or I am lowered back to the ground, ready to choose another climb.