Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

A Climb up Memory Rock, Part II

OK, right!

When last we left our intrepid stoic, he was clinging somewhat precariously to the side of a prehistoric volcanic thumb trying to reign in an overactive imagination that had teamed up with his common sense to question why in the hell had he brought them 300 feet up the side of this rock to cling in the first place. At home with a book and a nice hot cup of tea would have been a much better place they suggested. If fact, if it hadn't been for that damned sense of adventure and his trusty sidekick, the "what-the-hell" attitude, that's where they'd all be instead of wondering just how high the body would bounce if a foot slipped and gravity, the pathological beast, did the trick, fair enough.

Now, there was no way I was going to chicken out at this point. Kelly was up on top of the rock and I couldn't back down now. Things hung in the balance, in more ways that one, until mighty pride stepped up to the plate. Pride stepped in a cuffed Myself around a bit and made him hide somewhere behind my frontal lobe for a bit, sulking and waiting for a chance to sneak back into the conversation. I took a deep breath and looked around. Ok, a couple of good footholds here and there and...nope, that'll lead me back to the place I got stuck. Hmmm... Myself points out that my arms are now beginning to shake and that certainly can't be a good thing. Pride glowers and he ducks back out of the way. How did Kelly get up I wonder. Then it hits me; the old lateral move. So I spider across a bit of the rock face to my left and there appears a nice set of places to put my various appendages. Reminding myself to let my legs do the heavy lifting and to test my holds one at a time I make my way up to the top.

Wow, what a view! The Cascades are always beautiful but in the crisp winter air the giants seem to be just out of reach. Shasta and Lassen to our south, McLoughlin and Theilsen to the northeast. Mt Ashland looked little more than a small 7000 ft hump to our northwest. It was exhilerating. We could even see up to Three Sisters near Bend a couple hundred miles away. What a trip! We talked and pointed and generally looked about for around half an hour and then we realized that it was cold. I mean really cold. I'm sure the stong breeze blowing didn't help. So we decided it was time to go down.

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to climb a ladder than to descend it? When climbing you tend to look up, when descending there is a real tendancy to want to look down. Once you do that, then the second guessing starts. So you say, hey, I got up here didn't I? And that's when Myself jumped back into the picture. The problem was that pride was off having a celebratory beer int he pleasure centers so things were balanced again, except I was a lot more tired and a lot more cold and I had to look down.

To be continued some more...

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