Baby Steps

This is a short story I wrote for my Beginning Workshop Fiction class with Professor Kristin LaCroix. It’s a vivid memory from my early twenties during a rock climbing trip.

Baby Steps

In the mountains of southeast New Mexico, I found myself with twenty other young adults on a ten-day rock climbing class called L.E.A.D. which stands for Leadership, Education, Adventure, and Direction. No, it wasn’t a drug rehab program or a reduced sentence for a juvenile crime, but it felt like it. 

One morning, we were watching an experienced climber. Gary was one of the teachers, young, but a little older than us, strong and confident. He was setting pitons as he climbed up a cliff as high as a ten-story building. He ascended to eighty feet, almost at the top, when he lost his footing and came hurling down the face of the cliff. Two or three pitons popped out of the cracks they were set in. Twenty of us watched helplessly from the ground. His helmet bounced off the granite wall again and again. Finally, one piton held. The rope went taut. The tension of the rope arched his back, and he lay there in a suspended backbend. Still as death. His head was only eight feet off the ground. We rushed up to him. He caught his breath and began to talk. He was OK. 

We were shaken up and decided to break for lunch. We timidly ate crackers and cans of sardines then headed to our next climb. It was a chimney. It looked mercifully easy—just shimmy up. How hard could it be?

When it was my turn, I clipped onto the rope, began with my back pressed against one side, and moved my hands and feet up the opposite side. The rock wall was a perfect gray screen for the video playing in my head. Gary was falling, endlessly tumbling down, his head bumping off the rock wall. It was like a dark meditation, and I couldn’t break it. Halfway up the chimney, my leg started to shake. Shit! I couldn’t get my body to move. The only part of me that would move was my uncontrollable sewing machine leg. 

I was exhausted from the scare earlier. I berated myself because it wasn’t a challenging climb. I yelled up to the woman who was belaying me up and said, “Just pull me up. I can’t do it!” I saw her lean over the edge in her bright blue jacket and red helmet, and she yelled at me, “Quit being a baby!” Fury rose in me, and I said, “Fuck you! Fuck you!” under my breath because this was a Christian climbing camp. Pure anger pushed me up to the top of the chimney. I wasn’t a baby after all. I think back on that chimney fondly, but I’m still pissed off at my belayer.