The Sharp End of Life. Dierdre Wolownick
water rose Gutenberger Wall, a slab of granite several stories tall, sprinkled with shrubs, several climbing routes, and an occasional goat straying down from the houses at the top. On the side we walked in on, the rocks were only one pitch, or rope-length, tall.
The half-hour hike down to the gorge flew by. My stomach was jittery as I thought about how I was going to try rappelling. I’d heard my son and other real climbers talk about rapping down off some wall—it always sounded dramatic and impressive. I was about to join that club. I could already see myself easily gliding down a big wall, one hand controlling my rope, the other waving to the camera.
We picked our way carefully between boulders and slippery grades covered in grit, holding saplings or rocks for balance. At a flat, rocky outcropping, we stopped and put our packs on the ground. Mark selected a small pile of gear from his bag and quickly carried it down the slab toward the edge of the cliff.
The overhang. The abyss. Those were some of the words that battered my mind as I watched him disappear. He was walking casually, so I knew he was safe and secure. That didn’t stop my stomach from twisting.
When I talked about climbing at the college, my colleagues often said they could never climb because they were afraid of heights. But whenever I went up anything really high, like a skyscraper, and looked over the edge, I felt it too. Right in the pit of my stomach. Now, the intensity of this moment grabbed me out of nowhere, anchoring me to that spot high on the granite.
My fellow newbie climber, Betty, followed Mark down the slab, all the way to a sort of rock railing right before the drop-off. They both leaned over the edge to attach gear to the anchor bolts that were almost at the top of the wall we would be rappelling down.
It was no higher than the walls at the gym. I could see the bottom, even from way back where I stood, motionless. Frozen.
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