The thousand-headed monster returns

I smell dragon breath.

It comes in the form of an oft-repeated question that the friends of my newly found beloved pose to me within the first few minutes of every encounter.

"Do you climb?"

I'm at a loss for an answer, but the significance of the question is slowly starting to dawn on me. The climbing theme gets a lot of air play in my beloved's modus operandi.

I formulate an answer that seems to satisfy what sounds more like a statement than a question.

"Not yet!"

The thousand-headed monster of fear is peering at me with evil intent.

Why so Nervous, Nellie?

In short ...

The nature versus nurture debate has been tossed around since the days of Shakespeare...

 "A devil, a born devil, on whose nature .
 Nurture can never stick" .

 (The Tempest).

...either way, traumatic enough events abound throughout my life to account for my easily frazzled nerves, quite aside from any influence that my wog genes (a "wog" being any non-Anglo-Celtic European, esp. from Southern or Eastern Europe, e.g. Greek, Italian, Balkan, Slavic, etc., in Australian English) might impart on my behaviour. No need to rehash the trauma history here in all its gory detail. Perhaps suffice to say that I first ran away from home at the ripe age of 4.

In all honesty, I wasn't specifically "running away from home" as much as "running back to home" ... from Canberra (to which my family immigrated in the late '60s) to Florence (from whence we came). Being a resourceful kind of a kid, I worked out that walking there just wasn't going to cut it, so off I fled on my trusty tricycle. I probably managed to cover quite some distance around Lake Burley Griffin before the scouts that my mother sent after me finally caught me up and shepherded me back into her yard. Thereafter she kept me on a much tighter leash, I'd say for the next 20 years.

Acrophobia

You'd think that someone who spent the first 4 years of their life inhabiting a 10th story apartment with a balcony would be fairly comfortable seeing the world from far above. My father had even had to put chicken wire around the balustrade to stop me from launching all manner of projectiles through it and watching in wonderment as they clattered to the pavement far below.

Of course, it's not so much an extreme or irrational fear of heights that sends me to jelly on a rock climb, so much as the fear of falling!! ...or, more specifically, the fear of inevitably hitting something on the way down and/or at the end of the fall. That's the only bit that will hurt, maim, or kill me, after all.

Perhaps that's not so irrational.

Why climb?

...well, because it terrifies the bejesus outa me, of course!!

If it worked for Eleanor Roosevelt, it works for me...

The good First Lady tell us that "we gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot."

Hmmm, strength, AND courage, AND confidence ... I could do with some more of these, I'm sure. Thinking that I cannot? ... well, there's examples aplenty, so why not start with the one I find most difficult and terrifying!!

I touch on this briefly in my profile: I have an unending drive to push the boundaries of my comfort zone, live outside the square, learn new stuff, and get better at old stuff. Oh, and I get a kick out of giving my ego a good thrashing every now and then, too - for which life has given me (and continues to offer me) ample opportunity.

In short, I hooked up with the man of my dreams (more about him in a later post) about a year ago, he turned out to have more than a passing passion for rock climbing, and - in spite of my considerable reservations about my rock climbing prowess arising from past traumatic experiences doing same - the rest is history. Or is that "his-story" ...??!!

My first foray into the climbing world...

Mid-80's, Victoria, Australia.

My Best Friend Forever is into all things exciting, adventurous and outdoors, and her latest passion has become rock climbing. She's off for weeks at a time, encamped at the base of Mount Arapiles where, I'm told, all self-respecting "rockies" hang out and do their thang. When she returns, she smells not dissimilarly to a goat, and her deep suntan is barely distinguishable from the dirt stains. Oh, and it's Mount Ara-pee-leeees, not Mount Ara-piles ... unless you're a naughty little ratbag who likes to tweak the tail of anyone who takes themselves overly seriously. Who, me???

The day comes when BFF sweet-talks me into having a go at this climbing thang. Off to Hanging Rock we go - where else would you go to hang off a rope, methinks in all sweet innocence? Nowadays, roped climbing is officially banned from the Hanging Rock National Park, and an entrance fee is charged for the Park.

Latter-day "no climbing" etc. sign at the entrance of Hanging Rock, Victoria. The designer of this sign must've been watching my feeble attempts - it looks like a person holding on to the end of a rope being hauled up the wall!

In the mid-80's, however, it was a free-for-all and there existed some popular climbing routes across the Park. The idea was to scarper up the rocks (100m+ tall pillars of congealed lava extruded through a narrow vent in the bedrock, about 6.25 million years ago), and once atop, to walk back down via the multi-step gravel path. The concept left me scratching my noggin in wonderment - why bother with the scarpering bit when you can amble along the lovely path, either up or down, and admire the lush surroundings at your leisure? Missing the point completely here, obviously.

So, on this bright and sunny Summer's day, we park ourselves at the bottom of a rough rock wall and BFF rummages around in a duffle bag full of clanking goodies. The details are way too old and blurry for my recall but I guess she must've had me on a harness and belay of some sort. Or perhaps not - overindulgence in safety and precaution was never her forte.

Anyhow, she's off, up one of the broad, rocky pillars, clambering like she was born to it, and stops about 10 metres above ground to call down instructions to me. Looks easy enough to me. Barely a foot above the ground after what seems like eons, however, and I'm heaving and slipping off the rock and starting to swear and curse. My floppy sand-shoes are no match to her sticky rubbers, for one thing. BFF tries to accommodate me by lowering her (size 8) specialised climbing shoes down to me on a rope, and I slip my (size 6) feet into them. Rock climbing shoes are a crucial interface between a climber and the rock and, for them to work effectively, should wrap your foot up snugly enough to allow the minimum required blood flow to your toes without them dropping off. With BFF's over-sized pumps, I manage to gain a few metres' elevation but there's barely a discernible improvement in my upward progress, and by now my Italian temper metre is red-lining and I ain't going nowhere except straight back down. In a grump.

BFF tries her damnest to impart to me her joys in climbing, in the hope I might see the light and have another go. No way José!! Not this Little Black Duck. Back to cycling, skiing, sailing, horseriding, windsurfing and bushwalking for me. Period.

Why blog?

Well ... because one of my Facebook pages told me to, of course:

 https://www.facebook.com/WordsofWisdom444

Using your intuition, choose one or more of the following and then go to the first comment for your guidance **Flake, Like, Burgundy, Nose, Scarf** Wishing you all a magical day!!

True to my Nervous Nellie nature, and given that this blog is about my rock climbing exploits and we sometimes climb on, over, around, into, under, and/or alongside flakes of rock, I naturally gravitated towards "Flake" ...

Flake - You're being called to write your story. Certainly you can use your computer and type away, but there is something therapeutic in the act of writing with pen and paper. You've got a story within you that needs to be told, and how you choose to tell that story is completely up to you. Allow yourself to let go of worries regarding proper grammar and sentence format, and just write whatever comes up. This is a very healing ritual for you at this time, and you can decide when you're done whether you want to share your story, or keep it for yourself.

So ... here 'tis!!

Not too keen on the pen and paper business, and my OCD tendencies would absolutely prohibit anything but "proper grammar and sentence format" but hey - the devil's in the detail. I particularly like the suggestion that I can decide whether or not to share the story ... for now, it stays with me, although it's written with some non-specific audience in mind and told via a vaguely anonymous voice.

In actual fact, the idea of writing my story first "dropped in" - as ideas sometimes do, right out of the blue - in the middle of an 8-day climbing holiday in the Blue Mountains (more about that holiday in a later post). We were on our way to Blackheath, on a day off the rock, and I was idly noting to my climber boyfriend (and more about him later, too) that the vast majority of climbing books and blogs are written by - and for - "experts in the field" (an expert having once been described to me as a has-been with a drip ... ex-spurt) who have long since forgotten what it was like to fumble around with beginner feet and be overcome by a raging panic attack, and that what's really needed is a book for newbies, written by newbies and full of useful newbie pointers and appropriately encouraging newbie noises. So the next most logical bright idea was for me to jump right in there and start a-writing. Climber boy wasn't visibly impressed, but the gals at work, when I ran the idea past them during our next morning tea together, were thoroughly excited.

Funnily enough, the Words of Wisdom "Nose" option attracted me too. Perhaps because I'm rather given to "following my nose" in the first instance and then watching my long-suffering, more logical, cerebral self catch up somewhat belatedly and engage damage control. Perhaps also thanks to an Indian friend who once paid me the height of Indian compliments by exclaiming that I have "a nose that could cut a cake" ... an innocent enough observation that was immediately followed by the qualification (prompted, no doubt, by the fact that partner-at-the-time fell off his chair and was ROTFLMFAO) that amongst Indian people, a long, straight, sharp nose is a feature of sublime beauty. It soon became a long-standing family joke, retold to subsequent partners at a moment of intimate trust.

Nose - You're being asked to pay attention to your body. You know what is right for you and your body is validating that truth to you in various ways. Please don't discount what you feel as nerves or something else. If something feels right - it is. If it does not feel right - it isn't. The more you honor yourself by heeding your intuition, the more in touch you become and the more answers you have access to. Have faith.

Hmmmm ... don't discount those nerves, huh?! In 12 months of climbing almost every weekend, I've experienced at least 52 sets of panic attacks. Yep - that's about as many climbing weekends as there are in a year. Not that I've discounted my nerves, particularly. My mother used to call me "Bastian contrario" - an idiomatic Italian expression referring to one who assumes opinions and attitudes that are diametrically opposed to those of the majority. It wasn't meant as a compliment. More to the point, in spite of the crippling panic attacks and frequent emotional meltdowns at the rock face, something about this climbing thang has always felt "right" to me ... and so I've persevered.  As has the ever-patient climber boy (more about him in a later post). So, in faith, I climb on ...

"Theirs not to reason why,  

  Theirs but to do and die"

Thank you Alfred Lord Tennyson. I'm not yet privy to the universal purposes of this blog about my climbing journey and - through it - my personal dance with my fear demons. Nor am I, as yet, aware of what part of my existence is destined to expire through the process. But I trust the process will be of value in the greater scheme of all things good and useful in the world.

xxoo NN