On Ice

It’s tricky to navigate ice, it seems to always have an agenda of its own. Driving into Lee Vining, the ice-laden roads carved into our conscience. I noticed Ben’s eyes never unfurl from the highway, save for the quick sideway glances of people standing disoriented in front of their fresh collisions. The prospect of skidding or losing control filled the air between us and for a long, drawn-out hour, we tiptoed across 395 to the crag, then dragged our bodies, bundled in goose down layers, heavy from gear and ropes strewn across our backs, through thick snow and up the steep gully. Soon the ice we feared beneath the wheels was whacked and pierced on the wall by the crampons attached to our mountaineering boots. In this setting, we took back some control, but still, insecurity remained. It was a more familiar one though, the kind I’ve been married to since I began climbing at six and training all those years to haul this mix of risk and shameless passion up with each ascent. To revel in that wildly unstable but addicting exposure.

Atoms can become more stable when they share electrons. Climbing is and always has been the glue between Ben and I. We pass that passion back and forth like food on a plate. We’ve been together for a while –– we respond, when people ask how long our relationship has endured. But when did he ask you out? I say long before he really did, sometime when we first scurried up to Garden Wall on Bishop Peak not knowing much of anything about the other, and I, making methodical movement up the wall, and he, grounded in all that energy belaying me, seemed to warp time, sending passion through the rope.

The male dancer can’t exhibit strength if he has no ballerina to lift up. “Ice!” Ben yelled from high above, just before a shower of incessant shards screamed and dislodged from the falls, tumbling down to me in a threatening manner. I crouched, focused on keeping my stance as my numb toes remained squeezed against the thin margin of packed snow before the steep dropoff. Just as she, with her tightly-bound shoes fastened to her calves, can’t twirl in mid-air without hands of his interlaced to hers and his trustful body bolstering her graceful silhouette. I ducked behind a rock near where I stood belaying. Swaying in place to stay warm, craning my neck to the sky to quickly respond if he were to fall. To exist cautiously in these crags, we work symbiotically at what we want and wish and yearn for. Only with this partnership do our times at the walls of rock or ice we travel across the state to unfurl before our hands and open up. I saw one of Ben’s tools swing high and thunk into place, finding with his first whack a perfect nook to sink into. A hero stick they call it, but nothing about the ascent felt heroic to me, maybe grandiose but more desperate than anything. What we were doing out there with knives for hands and feet, seemed to answer itself in the soft moments and dominate my mind the rest of the time. I felt exposed amongst the elements of that 20 degree day, under the impression my safety and that of the boy I love most, now approaching the anchors, was and has always been more in the hands of nature than in the rough, calloused palms of our own. We were safe, but even carving that assurance into one’s mind like one twists in an ice screw is risky; one faulty move and what you deemed as protection has abandoned you. This thought, when it arises, is equally grounding and uprooting to the small, timid figure of mine who, during the Saturday afternoon before school dragged us back into session, decided to meet the ice where it was at and ask permission to exist harmoniously with it, not tragically. A belay, a shout, a pitch led by the other; I revel in how Ben and I coexist comfortably out there, teetering on danger and complete safety with love brimming in the middle.