Just Your Hands

May tenth. The question Simone asked at the end of last Saturday was a practical one: do we do this again? And I told her I didn't know yet, which was honest, and she nodded the way she does when she's already decided and is just waiting for me to catch up.

I've been thinking about why the low wall felt different from the Tuesday sessions, and I think I finally have a word for it. With the harness, there's a contract. The gear is holding one end of an agreement, it says: if your hands fail, we've got you. You can trust the fall. Bouldering doesn't offer that. There's no rope, no belay, no second party to the contract. It's just you and eight feet of wall and the floor you can see very clearly beneath you. Your hands know exactly what's at stake, and they don't pretend otherwise. That's what made it feel so honest. Not scary, honest. There's a difference, and I wasn't expecting to find it on a Saturday morning in May.

Reading the next problem.

Simone got up that wall faster than I did and came down looking like she'd settled something privately. I didn't ask what. We stood there for a while reading the next problem, , and then we did it again, and then again, and by the time we left I knew the answer to her question. Yes. We do this again. Not every Saturday, not as a commitment with a name, just, when we feel like it. Which is a different kind of recurring than the Tuesday sessions, and maybe that's the point. Some things you hold with equipment. Some things you hold with just your hands, and the honesty of that is the whole reason to keep going back.