Last weekend we headed to the Consumnes RIver Gorge, a climbing area we refer to as Bucks Bar since that's the road it's on and the town it's nearest. A gorgeous, granite walled area on the Consumnes River about a half hour from our home as you head southeast into beautiful, lonely country. I think I've been climbing once or twice since Jordan was born, and not since Sawyer was born. There always seemed to be plentiful reasons - my climbing harness was pretty tight before both pregnancies and nothing got smaller after, who would watch the children while we climbed, and, oh, that vicious case of vertigo that developed and stuck between both pregnancies. But they've always just been excuses.
When I was recovering from the umbilical hernia surgery, Tom took Jordan climbing. She'd prepped by doing the monkey bars every available moment since school began and her strength to body mass ratio is pretty idea for the sport. As is her intelligence, enthusiasm, and sense of adventure and she of course excelled. It was all I needed to want to get back out there as well. Sawyer is fairly coordinated and I thought he'd like it as well and so we made it a family adventure.
The Consumnes around Buck's Bar is an incredibly stressful location to take a three year old as it turns out. Although Sawyer is pretty well behaved, you realize the pervasiveness of the energy when you're bordered by a climbing wall on one side and a steep drop to a river on another. We set up at a spot that was too difficult for any of us at first, but when we switched to a better spot, we all climbed. I went first and was so excited to have gotten as far as I did - no the top, but I went past the first place I'd decided to stop and was thrilled to have essentially climbed past my vertigo. Jordan went next and went as far as she possibly could, and it wasn't enough for her. Sawyer had climbed on a harness at a smaller spot where Tom was anchoring him form above and liked it, but not enough to give this next wall a go. So Tom was last and styled it, of course, and having him on belay felt good and mostly natural again.
We are very beginning climbers, and although we did a fair amount of it in a couple of springs and summers before we had kids, I'd never call myself anything but a novice, which is fine for me. I'm really happy with single pitch climbs, toproping and climbing in fair weather. Tom would be game for a lot more, I am sure, and has probably spent at least double my time climbing. But it's something I'd rally like to continue, to do more of, and to do a lot more of with my kids as they get older as I think it's great for self confidence, for self control and is a great sport all around. I'd also like to keep doing it as a way to honor a friend of ours who just died this week in a freak winter climbing accident on Mt Hood.
Brooke was one of the very first guides I met when Tom and I agreed to take over ARTA in Lotus. She was welcoming, warm, incredibly appealing and attractive with a sense of humor and pervasive giggle that was refreshing. She never worked a full summer with ARTA in Lotus after Tom and I took over, moving to the Rogue for most of our first summer, but she returned often enough to get to know her and to have memories of her in our house and with our kids. Tom knew her from the start of his ARTA career, in fact spending a day on the river with her teaching her to paddle guide. We went on river trips and Baja trips with her, watching her grow up from a college kid and into a woman, each year more centered and comfortable in a body that shed its baby fat and gained sinewy strength sheathed in the highest of outdoor fashion (thanks pro deals). Her sense of humor and her modesty brought ever more people into her circle of friends, and everyone knew when they met her boyfriend (later husband) Thad, that she had found someone who would only further that growth and strength. Thad was a lucky guy, and she was a lucky girl, the way all relationships should pan out.
She is, actually, the kind of girl you'd like to see your own daughter become. We gave Jordan climbing shoes for her 6th birthday, and there's some irony there. Like there is in all aspects of parenting. Wanting your children to be resourceful, independent, adventurous, fulfilled, and never wanting them to ever be in a situation that you can't personally save them from single handedly. That momentous task of loving someone more than you ever through possible, and immediately giving them the tools and resources to one day no longer need you, and in fact, to fly away from you. I want to give Jordan climbing shoes and then I want to tell her she is never, ever to use them to climb more than stairs.
Hearing Brooke had died stunned us. She's one of those people who is so vibrantly alive that having the opposite of that doesn't seem even a remote possibility. We don't know Brooke that well, but in the tangled web that is ARTA, many of the people we are extremely close to were extremely close to her, and the collective stunned silence in the community is deafening. Her memorial will be at Camp Lotus on Thursday and we're expecting many, many river guides who worked with Brooke through the years to come for dinner and to stay at our place. Tom's organizing the lunch for the memorial where over 300 people are expected. All the questions we have about details we say "we'll just ask Brooke," or think, almost laughingly, "Brooke's going to have a field day over all of this!" And then we remember that she's just simply gone.
There's really no question about it: you want your daughter to grow up to be a woman on intelligence, laughter, strength, and friendship like Brooke, and so you do all you can to make that happen. You want her to have a life filled with adventure and so you give her those wings as well. And those climbing shoes. But you never stop holding your breath. You know in every instant of your life that which brings you the greatest joy, if ever it disappears, will bring you unfathomable pain. But you wouldn't give up or change a minute of it.
What Thad is going through is equally unfathomable. What my sister went through losing her husband. We all get so irritated at things our spouses do, but then you hear about a loss such as this, and in an instant those things fade and what is left is the photo negative - all the things you have always loved in them. And you try and hold on a little tighter to those things and to be more forgiving and more appreciative and to love that they take your daughter climbing and that they inspire you to ski harder or run faster or write more. Thad seemed that kind of partner, one who made his wife even more herself, more fully realized, more fulfilled.
I want to grow up to be more like my daughter, and my mother, and my husband, and Brooke. I am so grateful to my mother for having raised me to be adventurous, to own climbing shoes, and to travel and to have flown from her nest at my earliest opportunity to go as far on a plane as I could. It shows just how much she loves me. I want to honor all that she did for me, all that my parents did for me, by traveling more, doing more, daring more. I promise to be as safe as I can and as fulfilled as I can. I wish I could promise more. That we could all promise our parents, our husbands and wives, our children more. But we can't. So we hold our breath, love 'til it hurts, let go, and pray.
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