Climbing up walls and soon real rocks and mountains is my new thing. I have always admired these strong people who are able to control their body and physical strength and coming closer to nature. So now here I am, learning all about harnesses, climbing shoes, ropes and knots. My initial reason for starting this sport, if one could call it so, was to appreciate nature and travel to remote places I wouldn’t go otherwise. However before coming closer to caring Mother Nature I ended up confronting my suspicious human nature. Sweat fear and panic attacks. In order to climb any higher than three meters I have to tie myself on another person who is responsible for me not breaking my neck and dying a quick but unfortunate death. So what I really learn in mountaineering practice is not making knots and climbing up rocks but trust.
In this particular case trust means to feel comfortable hanging from a long rope controlled by a person who I have never seen before and in most cases I do not even know his name. For some reason all the others seem to feel very comfortable losing hands and feet from the wall and just hang like a pendulum choosing their next root up to the sealing. And by “others” I mean also the newcomers just like me, not only the ones who started climbing after leaving their mothers belly.
For some reason I feel I am the only one who has the normal reservations of our uncanny society that teach us not to trust anybody unless he is proven worthy of our trust and even then not to get too surprised if he/she sleeps with your long beloved partner or if he hijacks and airplane and crushes it on a New York skyscraper. So in a world full of potential man-eaters, terrorists and all shorts of shadowy human like creatures up to every kind of mischief I do not see how I can trust a random person holding the rope that gives him the power of life and death over me. So I sweat and tremble every time I feel that my own strength might not be enough to keep me up.
I just wonder how all these climbers all over the world trust so easily. Did they have a different kind of training in their childhood that did not include “do not talk to strangers” and “do not take sweets from people on the street”? Or am I just the weirdo that took this advice at face value and now has an adrenaline explosion covered in sweat every time I feel I might lose my grip on the climbing wall. And all that just because I am once again the control freak that hates depending on a rope whose end is in the hands of Mike. Or was his name Eric after all?
