It's a peaceful, sunny day, and there isn't anything but nature for miles around. The look on her face is nothing short of blissful. Her serenity is infectious, and I find myself absent-mindedly enjoying the smallest details of the scene. The air is of that perfect temperature where you can hardly feel it at all but for the wet, green scent of deciduous trees carried on the slightest of breezes. I can feel the rock against her hands somehow, and it's pleasantly warm from the sun. The climbing rope, in contrast, is rough and unruly, a bit sticky from being handled by countless chalky hands.
It's just slowing me down.
The thought wasn't my own, and she hadn't said a word. Nevertheless, I understood the sentiment clearly. It was a bizarre feeling. It reminded me somehow of the dialogue in a silent movie. The woman arrives at the top of the climb, distracting me from my confusion. She swings herself up and over the lip onto a small plateau about the size of a school bus, nestled into the conjunction of two masses of granite. Enjoying the feel of solid ground beneath her feet, she siezes the opportunity to take in the view. The trail she had climbed so far was moderately steep, enough to bring her above the treeline and put the surrounding land on display. It was beautiful.
After a glorious, timeless, moment of appreciation, she turns her attention back to the challenge at hand. She sits down on a knee high rock and pulls a topology trail map out of her back pocket. It looks as if she has marked out this trail by hand with a fine line green marker. There are little arrows and notes at various points along the trail. She traces the line with her chalky, callused index finger, stops just near the end, and confirms what she seems to already have known. The next face is the last, and she'll have triumphed over the upward portion of this journey. She stashes the map and looks up, hands on hips, assessing what she has to work with.
A fixed rope hangs down the center of the route, just like it had been on the last. This must be a well-known trail, more for leisurely day-climbing than adrenaline pumping adventure. She's ninety percent through her climb and has hardly broken a sweat, and this face is only about half as high as the last. It starts to click in my mind, what she's contemplating, and I feel a sudden wave of dread.
She nods her head decisively and moves toward the base of the wall. She dips her hands into the chalk bag on her belt and launches herself enthusiastically up, not wasting any time scaling the first five feet or so. She doesn't bother attaching herself to the toprope. I can feel her exhileration - the freedom of being able to move unencumbered by safety measures, and the raw, buzzing gnaw of fear that there's nothing between her and an eighty foot drop but air. She loves it.
I love it. I also feel like vomiting.
The further she moves up the more hammering my sense of foreboding becomes. She's swinging gracefully from nub to edge to crack, and I try to convince myself that I should just enjoy it the way she is, that she's obviously got the hang of this, that she'll be fine. But I can't tear my attention from the rope hanging just a few feet away. She could just clip in, it wouldn't take that long, she could still enjoy the climb, maybe not as freely, but is the momentum really worth it?
Halfway through reaching toward the next hold, she glances at the rope, hesitating. As if echoing my screaming thoughts.
Slowly, her hand starts to reach a little further, in the direction of the rope.
I almost relax.
And then she sees it.
Her eyes have refocused, beyond the rope, to a cave-like feature in the rock wall perpendicular to this one. There, only seven or eight feet away, calmly and patiently staring back at her, are the bright green eyes of a mountain lion.
I feel a heart plummet like a lead balloon and I don't know if it's mine or hers.
The big cat is crouching at the edge of the large crack between the two rock faces. Its large, velvety paws are wrapped delicately over the edge of its perch. Its thick tail flutters just a little at the tip.
I am absurdly captivated by the pattern of black spots on its nose.
The green eyes don't blink when the woman loses one of her footholds. Suddenly, everything is happening too fast. Her two remaining holds aren't secure enough to hold her entire weight. In a split second she has to decide which is going to fail first. She focuses all her energy on her last foothold, and launches herself as much as she can in the direction of the rope. There are only a few horizontal feet between her original position and where the rope hangs, but in the time it takes her to close that gap she's fallen at least three times that far. It's all too fast. She feels the rope against her fingertips, slithering past at a sickening speed. It wobbles as she touches it, and by some miracle, she feels it around her wrist, she can pull it up and grab tight with her thumb, she can actually manage it, and
SNAP.
The rope pulls tight and she screams. She can't feel herself falling anymore. What she can feel is fire spreading up her arm. She fights to focus, to assess her new situation. Everything is hazy with pain. Before she really gets a grasp on what's happened, she's sliding down again. Slower now. She can see the rope, and it is indeed wrapped around her wrist, and again around her thumb. Both joints are at terrible, unnatural angles. The rope must've caught on itself and her hand, snapping her around and interrupting her plunge to certain death. But it wasn't caught anymore, and it was sliding along its looped path with increasing speed.
Out of everything that has just happened, I am inexplicably tormented by the rope burn she's getting, and can't feel.
There isn't much further for her to fall. She hits the ground, the plateau she had just been resting on, with a thwack of climbing gear and skin on rock. In the end, the collision will probably only have given her a few bruises. She lays still, gasping for breath. With the imminent danger of falling gone, and adrenaline levels dropping, she is slammed with a surge of pain from her wrist. She shuts her eyes tight and tears squeeze out the corners. She tries to steady her breathing. Deep breaths. No more panic. Action will be required again soon. She opens her eyes to search the crevice for the wild cat. It's nowhere to be seen.
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And I woke up. The familiar ache of panic and terror gripping me, and this time with residual soreness in my wrist. I could feel all of her pain like it was my own. But she's not done yet. Her story isn't over. I have to go back to sleep. I can't leave her on her own.
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