Tag Archives: climb

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Perspective: beneath the clouds

Beloved why?
I am glad for your love
and warmth
and connection
and my cat’s
and my adult children
friends
family
patients
work
and why? Beloved

A high Adverse Childhood Experience Score
Two alcoholic parents
One sick with tuberculosis through pregnancy
Letters from the hospital to her mother
After birth
Never mention me
As if I do not exist

She told a story that she dreamed
she gave birth to kittens
played with them
and gave them away

Not a dream of joyously welcoming her new baby
Me.
Yet I didn’t hate her or my father
My damaged parents
My damaged sister
Who followed their path, not mine
There was nothing I could do
Only three years old when she was born
Try to shield and mother her
As best I could

Why Beloved
I have tried so hard to grow
to love
to forgive
and yet I have no human lover

My cat jumps on my notebook
And interrupts this writing
She is happier to welcome me home
Than any man I’ve ever dated

My daughter’s boyfriend picks her up
at the airport and has made her dinner

If I am a failure at love with a partner
Or too smart or damaged or difficult
To love
For humans
At least my children have both found love
And if I were to choose me or them
Yes, I’d choose them

Is that why, Beloved?
Sacrifice to heal the next generation?
It is worth it.

And yet, that small child part of me
That even as a toddler thought the adults were unpredictable, dangerous, mean when drunk as they laughed.
She is angry at them, Beloved
She is angry at you, Beloved
Or at people
Or at the universe
She still believes in every cell, in her bone marrow, in the vast universe in her mind

that she too could be, should be

loved.

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Ice climb

Friday afternoon I drive to Ouray, Colorado, to meet a friend from high school. She has been ice climbing for years! I plan to watch, because ice climbing sounds terrifying. But I do take my harness, just in case. My friend talks me into trying it. The picture is NOT me. That is a competitor and she is amazing!

My climb was at the beginner ice wall. There are volunteers with loaner gear from gear companies. Boots, crampons, two ice axes and a helmet. My friend and a friend of hers give me instructions and I watch my friend climb first. She will be climbing all week!

I am wearing 1980s snow pants. Puffy and unstylish, but very very warm! I got all the way up and acquitted myself decently! Kicking each foot into the ice and then trusting that it will hold me, that is the interesting bit. Heel down, so that the crampon, boot and foot become a lever. And all the time in the climbing gym helped me to trust the harness, trust the ice axes, trust my feet.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: lever.

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Sisyphus

Sometimes clinic feels a bit like Sisyphus must feel. Rolling the stone of illness up the hill but it is eternally rolling back down. I can’t stop it. People age and people die and otherwise there would be no room for young ones.

The last two weeks of clinic has worn me out a bit. A friend says that I take too much of it home, worrying about people. How to let go of this?

I make connections in clinic. Not all the time. Sometimes I fail. I made a connection with more than one person with diabetes this week, but one was funny. The connection is that he mentioned that he is an elk hunter. Oh, and flies to California to fish and has a very lot of fish. I said that I’ve had elk and like it. That was when the connection engaged: he was very pleased that I am not horrified by hunting. Hunting elk is not at all easy or cheap and cleaning the animal and carrying it out, well. He is coming back about his diabetes and left cheerful.

If I go home trailing those connections and spend my time worrying about this people, I’ll wear out. I don’t want pneumonia number five. So how do I connect but let it go when I go home?

I will think of the connection as much smaller than the boulder that Sisyphus deals will. Not a boulder. A small piece of the rock. I can suggest how the person can lighten the load a little. Then I must stand aside and let them go. They have to decide what to do about their health. It is between them and the Beloved, they can try what I say or not.

Now it is not a boulder that I am trying to keep from rolling down a mountain. Each person has their own mountain to climb in their life, their own habits and histories, good or bad, trailing them like Marley’s Ghost in A Christmas Carol. I can suggest a tool to loosen a link of diabetes, or a slightly different trail up the mountain. Then it is up to them. I can’t carry them and should not carry them. Maybe they are approaching a patch of scree and I can suggest an easier or safer path. And then stand aside, stand down, let the people go.

Now I am not pushing a huge rock. I am standing on my own mountain, quiet, and looking at the path behind. I am resting a little and on my own path. I don’t know what will be around the next bend in the path. But I love the mountain and the forests and the birds and the ocean. All of it.

Thank you, oh Best Beloved.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: olympics!

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Yes, but no cigar

The photograph is from one of my hikes in Palisade in the last few weeks. The rocks are gorgeous.

The title is from an old joke.

I climbed at the gym again yesterday after work. I really like the immediacy of the walls. I do not like the auto-belays. The ones at this gym let you down pretty quickly. I climbed up one wall and then down. I tried the easiest boulder route for the second time and made it! I am a bit stiff this morning but not too bad.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: cigar.

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Serendipity

I took this zoom shot of Independence Monument in the Colorado National Monument. I was pretty much blind, but I’ve spend so much time photographing in sunlight on the beach, that I am happy with the composition. I had no idea that I captured the climbers until I looked at it at home.

This is without any zoom.

Zooming closer.

And later along the canyon, we saw the first climber on top. They are both there, but I was shooting blind again.

What an amazing and fabulous day.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: off-beat.

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Up in the air

I took this hiking Mount Townsend in May, 2017 with my daughter and a friend. Do you see the wild rhododendron in the shade?

The top of Mount Townsend is at 6260 feet, here. It is beautiful switchbacks through woods and then opens up at the top. The altitude gain is 3000+ feet.

The first time I hiked it, in 2000, it was clouded at the top. We were disappointed and ate lunch and napped. When we woke up, the clouds had dropped and we had an amazing view of the Olympic Mountains from the top of the ridge. A marmot kept us company further along the ridge as well.

The rhododendrons look like they are just floating in the woods. Airborne!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: airborne!

Ok, this doesn’t fit the mood, but my title makes me sing it!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1J8E9dnd5g

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Home Hurrah!

New Year’s Eve was a travel day for me, flying from Dulles to SeaTac. This time my checked bag came along and did not divert to party in Chicago, as it did on the trip out. I had a wonderful two weeks in Arlington, Virginia and Rockville, MD with old friends and my son and daughter-in-law and daughter. Very kind friends picked me up at SeaTac and drove me the two hours home. I slept for three hours on the plane and another hour in the car. The pair of socks on yesterday’s Ragtag is for one of the two people who picked me up.

The plane was about 40 minutes early and the airport was impressively empty. There was some traffic on I5, but it was not crazy. There was quite a bit of fog all the way home.

Yesterday morning we went to the climbing gym for the second time in the two weeks. I had not climbed in maybe three years? And I have never done a lot.

The rest of my family climbs like squirrels and spiders. I currently climb more like a panicked sloth, but I did a 5, a 5.6 and a 5.7 the first day. Yesterday I planned to take it easy, but I roped up for one and it was the wrong one, so I tried a 5.8. My family was clambering up 5.11s. Whew. It was really fun and loads of fun to watch them. And hurrah that I can climb some after Long Covid and two years with unhappy muscles!

Peace and joy to you and yours.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Hurrah!

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Blueberry mountain

My maternal grandparents bought property in Ontario, Canada, a place on a lake, because they couldn’t afford holiday property in New York State.

My grandfather died at 79 but my grandmother kept going to the lake. We had our own names for the surrounding properties, including blueberry mountain. At around age 90, my grandmother said she wanted to pick blueberries. We loaded into the boat and headed for that area. Lake Matinenda is on the Canadian Shield, so it’s all rock, rock, rock. There was no path. At one point I was helping my grandmother from below and my cousin was reaching for her from below. My grandmother was about 95 pounds at that point. She was going up a face of granite and getting out of my reach. “Have you got it?” I said frantically, worrying she’d fall. “I don’t know,” she said. But she did and my cousin helped. At the top, the blueberry picking was not that good, but the views were fabulous. My cousin and I agreed, we were not bringing her up there again! If she fell, we’d have to get her down the hill, into a boat, into a car and 17 miles into town. She seemed majestically unconcerned and denied having any problem climbing. It was way too much thrill for us, worrying about her!

Which brings us to today’s music!

And another Fats Domino, fabulous!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: thrill.

I took the photograph of Katherine White Burling in 1979.

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Ladders at work

You can see the ladder that we used to clamber on and off the boat while the mast was removed, set down on sawhorses by the boat and then secured on the deck. I had a woman shipwright from Haven Boatworks and she was fast and efficient. I helped. I am not bad with knots but she is way better.

I have a ladder at home so I can do some cleaning and buffing and show Sun Tui to interested buyers!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: ladder.