Tonight my 17 month old boy climbed up onto our tallest chair. It’s the same chair I used at his age, when I sat to eat at my grandparents’ dining room table. It was my favorite chair at their house until long after someone younger came along and needed it worse than me. The seat is almost as tall my son and still he just climbed right up and sat down as if it was no challenge at all.
Much to Nancy’s chagrin, he got this climbing ability from his daddy. My mom tells a story of coming out of her Mother-in-law’s house, into the backyard, and finding her three year old son, thirty feet up in the big pecan tree. She said she freaked. And then, feigning control, called for me to come down. She says she watched in horror as I haphazardly searched for branches to hang onto or stand on. Finally, she had to just turn away because watching was too terrifying for her.
Watching my own young son atop the tall chair, I started thinking about a youth activity I went to a long time ago. We were on a Pioneer reenactment trek through the dry, desolate dirt roads of southwestern Wyoming. After a long morning of walking, we stopped for lunch near some cliffs and I went off to do some exploring.
A few friends tagged along, which was always a sure recipe for disaster. My mom, who ended up with four sons of her own, is still fond of the saying, “One boy, one brain. Two boys, half a brain.” It sounds Native American to me. I love proverbs like this. I think if there was a third line it would say, “Three boys, no brain.”
Well, one thing led to another and my friends and I went from exploring, to climbing rocks, to climbing boulders, to free-climbing sheer cliffs thirty or forty feet high. No one got seriously hurt but we did find ourselves in a few extremely precarious situations. I remember knowing I was in trouble when I realized the only way down from the ledge I was on was to jump across a twenty foot deep, six foot wide crack in the cliff. My landing spot was a six foot by six foot rounded stone platform a few feet below me. Well, I lived to tell about the experience and also I learned a ton about not being a dork.
Since then I’ve thought a little about climbing: climbing cliffs, climbing ladders, climbing out of deep, dark, scary, snake-filled pits, etc. Climbing can be very fun and is normally pretty easy. You look for handholds in front of you and above your head. Then you reach up and grab them. Toe holds are also easy to find because they are right in front of you. All you have to do is lift your leg and set your foot on something solid. Then you stand on it. Up you go, steady and sure.
When climbing – or I should say, while you are climbing – you won’t have any trouble; it’s when you stop climbing that you run into problems. Stopping is bad. Let me repeat, stopping is bad. But, if that isn’t enough for you, and what you really need is some significant, double-black-diamond-difficulty, take a good long look at down at the bottom. Oh, yah, now you’re asking for some serious trouble.
Of course when you’re climbing a tree, or a cliff, or a big chair, eventually your mom is going to see you and make you get down. That’s just the way it is, get used to it. But, if you’re climbing something less physical, more mental, or more financial, or more emotional, or more spiritual, etc., something where up is the constant goal and down is not a known outcome, then don’t stop – just keep climbing. And more than that, the most important rule of climbing, the rule that will almost always secure your success and get you to the top is, always, always, always keep looking up.
How about you? What obstacle do you currently find yourself climbing?
Clark
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