This weekend I was supposed to go to New Hampshire and climb in a place called Rumney. The weather didn’t agree with this plan but the result was still wonderful. I’m hesitant about sharing where exactly I went climbing instead, because the place was totally empty and that seems like it should be impossible.
Possible reasons for why it was totally empty is that you need to squeeze through a very narrow crevice to get to the climbing area. This is hysterical fun if you do happen to fit.
Another reason might be that the rock is loose and dirty. You will be hit in the head. Wear a helmet.
This was my first time Sport Climbing outside of the gym and it was terrifying. It was also strangely wonderful. I thought about Mary Oliver as I so often seem to do in the moments I feel terribly alive and her poem “When Death Comes”
“When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”