Peace in Wild Things

Discover the adrenaline, elation, and sense of peace in wild things to be found in rock climbing…

Orson Humphrey reaches the summit of his climb in Big Bay, MI. (photo by Ron Caspi)

Marquette, MI – Your toes begin to cramp. Chalk dust sifts upward, tickling your nose. You press your body into the rock, fingers searching the cliff like a blind woman reading a face. Sweat drips into your eyebrows and you lick dry lips. Slowly, you inch your pointed left toe, ballerina elegant, into a crack two feet up and to the left. Your right hand slips into a crevice just big enough to grasp and you make your move. Core muscles flex and bunch as you pull yourself six inches higher—six inches closer to the top.

Orson and Rachel prepare their climbing gear. (photo by Ron Caspi)

What urge pulled the first rock climbers off the ground to hang by fingertips, toes, and willpower? What need called them to cling, precarious, to dangerous cliff faces with little between their dangling bodies and a sharp, deadly fall? Was it to prove something? Was it animal imitation? Is this compulsion a leftover instinct modern sedentary society has yet to quash?

It is no longer a necessity to scale precipices in search of food, but the drive to climb leads thousands of professional and amateur climbers to rock faces across the globe. Climbers test strength and endurance against rock ranging from pitted Kentucky sandstone, to Yosemite’s soaring peaks, to Thailand’s tropical islands and thousands of places in between. Marquette climbing is described as “the epicenter for climbing in Michigan” by Mountain Project, an international climbing website.

Orson Humphrey helps climbing partner Rachel Mills tie in before her ascent. (photo by Ron Caspi)

I came to climbing last summer, at the age of twenty-nine. My life had recently undergone many major changes, one of which was the boyfriend, Orson, who helped me first step into a harness. While not especially afraid of heights, attempting to scale the jagged rock face in front of me made my stomach clench and hands sweat. It was a beautiful late summer day. The sugar maple leaves glowed in a mix of yellow, orange, and green—a few weeks behind peak color in Upper Michigan. The view from the cliff top would be breathtaking, encompassing a multi-hued carpet of colored forests for miles.

Orson sizes up the rock wall he is about to climb as Rachel attaches his lifeline to her belay device. (photo by Ron Caspi)

We were setting up at a sport¹ climbing crag in Negaunee near the Suicide Hill ski jump. I cinched the climbing harness tight around my waist and thighs, pondering the why. Why did I want to attempt ascending the craggy black rock old miners dug iron ore out of decades ago? I rocked back and forth in cinched tight climbing shoes. Did I simply want to be able to say I had rock climbed? Was it my ego? Did I, perhaps, crave the adrenaline fear and core exertion would cause to surge through my body? The past four months of anxiety, guilt, sadness, and confusion roiled in my heart, gut, and mind.

“You ready?” Orson asked with a rakish grin and a twinkle in his dark brown eyes. Orson, thirty years old, has a compact, muscular physic shaped by years of climbing, skiing, and snowboarding. His passion for, and experience in climbing make him an excellent teacher. We had only been together for several months, but our trust stage ratcheted up several levels as I stepped to the rock face and began to climb, placing my life in his hands.

Orson leading the climb and clipping in to the quick-draw. (photo by Ron Caspi)

I had watched Orson carefully as he climbed, paying attention to how he moved and the placement of his feet, hands, and body. Pressed to the rock face, moving upward inch by inch, the resemblance to ballet was unmistakable.

All my life I wanted to be a ballerina, coming close in 1^st grade for one season until the teacher moved away. For years after I contented myself with ballerina pictures and figurines, voyeuristic pride in my little sister’s Highland Dancing, and twirling, pointed-toe pirouettes in the kitchen when no one was looking.

The author, Rachel Mills focuses on her next move while ascending. (photo by Ron Caspi)

As I set my toes into the first cracks and ledges, wedged my fingers into gaps, scraped my knees, and pulled myself upward, I imagined myself a ballerina. My breath came deep and even as I ascended. I felt nothing but the rock beneath fingertips and pointed, tight-toed shoes. Anxiety, fear, guilt, floated away on the hot breeze that ruffled sweaty curls at the base of my hairline. With one last surge I pulled myself upward, muscles I didn’t know existed screaming in back and thighs.

I stood at the top of the ridgeline, whole body shaking, elation, excitement, and wonder prickling goose bumps across my skin. A sense of accomplishment flowed through me that had nothing to do with competition, but my own struggle with elements both internal and external.

“Turn around if you want, you’re fine,” Orson said from below. Heart hammering I turned my body to look across the multi-hued landscape, breath catching in my throat at the panorama before me. A Wendell Berry poem, “The Peace of Wild Things” drifted like milkweed down across my mind:

“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Orson and Rachel share a celebratory kiss after completing their climb. (photo by Ron Caspi)

Each assent, every ballet toe-hold arm-stretch shaking fear/excitement quivering heave upward, I feel a breath of the peace Berry speaks of.

“It’s spiritual,” my friend Jaspal said of climbing. “It’s just you and the rock.”

You come to the rock in fear, excitement, exhilaration—needing something from the inert solid force that existed thousands of years before you and will hopefully continue to exist for many thousands after. You lay your burdens at the base, test the rope, and begin to climb.

by marquette_magazine