Desert Surfaces

An experienced camper and reasonably accomplished climber, I watch the leaders fit others for harnesses and climbing shoes and instruct them to re-pack their bags, leaving unnecessary gear behind. On the steaming blacktop outside the Outward Bound California desert headquarters, I stand to the side, doing hamstring and quad stretches, and checking out an overweight woman with a Farrah Fawcett hairdo and a faded T-shirt reading, "Walter Scott Elementary School PTA." I predict she won't make it up the first pitch.

The ten pages of required forms and waivers we filled out in advance expressly admonished us to be or get physically fit, able to run five miles a day, to pack only the items on the checklist provided. Can't these people read?

Other members of our ten person group introduce themselves - a couple of guys resembling gypsies with metal carabiners, compasses, and Swiss Army knives dangling off every beltloop and pocket, a woman with long manicured nails, and several kids half my age. No one I would choose for a climbing partner. I re-consider my decision to vacation alone.

My boss worried about me, heading out alone on a wilderness trip. Peeing behind boulders or dodging rattlesnakes and coyotes in the desert, certain danger lurking beneath every cactus and at the bottom of each cliff. I'm tough, I told her. It'll be great, I said. Just the kind of excitement and exertion I need. Coming off the completion of six months of arguing with my ex-husband over our divorce, I looked forward to the idea of freedom, being on my own - no one else's schedule or agenda to contend with.

The sun bounces viciously off the asphalt, and I adjust my sunglasses. Nail Woman chats at me while she re-folds fourteen pairs of underwear. "Don't you think that guy with the orange sleeping bag has a great butt?" She indicates one of the techno nerds.

"I'm going through a divorce," I say. "I'm not into guys' butts." I move away toward the spigot to top off my water bottles, wondering what's up with those fingertips. It'd be like showing up to perform a Chopin piano solo with two inch press-on nails.

Rock-climbing and hiking were sports I loved before I was married but haven't experienced in the eight years since. My ex turned out to be not much of an outdoorsman. When we broke up, he went back to school to get his CPA. Tried to sue me for spousal support.

The three group leaders herd us and our lightened baggage into the van headed for our campsite. We sit politely while the lead guide with the bushy yellow beard talks to us about the importance of helmets and teamwork.

The images of the desert through the windows startle me as we approach. I've seen photographs, but am unprepared for the actual vistas, rendered brilliant by desert light. The deep greens of the squatty creosote bushes, Palm and Joshua trees, contrasted with the yellow of the sand-stone cliffs and the occasional red of a blooming barrel cactus. Against the severe blue of the sky, all the colors appear bright, primary and true, like the pigment in a child's paintset.

Over the first few days we boulder and climb faces easily accessible from our campsite. Boring. Our leaders go over knot-tying in detail, quizzing us frequently. We start out with basic "top-roping" where the rope is anchored at the summit of the climb, and we set the anchors ourselves. I've done these a hundred times, and the drill only takes me a few minutes to complete. The tiny twenty-three year-old female instructor comes over to check it out. The anchor I've set breaks loose when she pulls on it. She tells me to practice until I get it right.

"A weak anchor could kill you, or someone else," she admonishes me.

Oh please. I get Bushy Beard to check me out the next time.

When we move around as a group, the male instructor with the pony tail educates us on the ecology of the area, illustrating how nothing disintegrates in the desert. Even an apple core won't rot and return to the earth with the same acceleration it would in a forest in New England. He tells us to watch our step, splitting up rather than walking single file, so we don't create a new path. Emphasizing the fragility of the ground cover, he informs us that much of the plant life under our feet has taken decades to grow.

I'm surprised, having perceived the desert with all its prickly edges to be so tough, unforgiving, and resilient. Able to heal and cleanse itself like the sea, or the human body. To generate new growth like a starfish replacing its arms. Not the fragile and vulnerable ecosystem he reveals to us. I step more carefully on my next trip back and forth to my sleeping bag.

Day three we learn about "lead climbing," a skill I attempted long ago but never mastered. Bushy Beard demonstrates, starting up a ground level face and putting in "protection," the small pieces of metal shaped like triangles, hexagons and cubes that catch the rope if he falls. The female guide follows, removing the pieces. Bushy Beard slips once, falling three to four feet, scraping his leg before righting himself. I suck my breath in through my teeth at the blood seeping through the hair on his calf. I offer to coil ropes as one of the teenage guys tightens his shoelaces and clips in.

The sun vanishes quickly here, and wide curtains of stars emerge to replace the blue sky in the time it takes to change from shorts to long underwear. Almost ninety degrees at noon, the line on my compass thermometer wavers around forty most nights. We take turns making spaghetti or Jambalaya for dinner, anything that will disguise the gritty texture caused by the inescapable wind-blown sand. I'm partnered with Nail Woman, now Woman of the Newly Trimmed Nails. After the first couple days of watching her and chip and tear them on the rough sandstone, I caught her borrowing the clippers Bushy Beard uses to trim his calluses.

She and I attempt to light the lantern and Coleman stove in our mittens, the only light source being her coal-miner style headband flashlight. I try to steady the lantern against the picnic table, and it takes both hands to fight the wind. We shield the lit match with our bodies while she struggles to get it into the lamp. After the fourth attempt, the match dies, my left mitt slips off the lantern base, and a big gust whips the lantern around a hundred and eighty degrees at the handle, smacking the side of my head and sending my baseball cap whirling into the dark.

Nail Woman quickly lifts the lantern from the dust where it has fallen, and hangs it from a limb of the lone tree in our campsite. She looks at me and I see she has both lips pressed between her teeth, chewing back a smile. I take a breath and touch my head - nothing hurts. Imagining the scene of the lantern swinging wildly in an arc between my hand and head from her perspective, I can't prevent the coughs and snorts of emerging laughter.

Then she lets out an explosive "Bpaaahahaa" sound, her headlamp bobbing and casting beams of light up into the canyons around us. I laugh even harder, dropping onto the picnic bench, head down on the dark surface of the table, shoulders heaving. Eventually the Jambalaya gets made, and the fifteen year old girl leads us all in the theme from Gilligan's Island while we huddle around the campfire, shielding ourselves from airborne sand.

Afterward, on the way to my sleeping bag in the underbrush beyond the cooksite, I stand in the chilled dry air, entranced by the silence and the stillness. A coyote howls, sharp in the distance. I rub my triceps, feeling small and exposed in the vastness of the desert.

On the fourth day, we heft frame backpacks filled with gear, hiking non-impact style through the low brush and several hundred feet up to overhung faces and tight chimney cracks. I take an extra rope from Gilligan's Island Girl to ease her struggle with an oversized pack.

This new site energizes us. I attempt a pitch with a high degree of difficulty rating, falling twice and nearly giving up. Techno Guy suggests a couple of moves, and I'm able to execute a hand jamb in a crack that inspires clapping from the team. I love it. My mind feels calm and balanced, yet vibrant and alert. I remember why I loved climbing.

PTA Mom hesitates while her toes grip a tiny ledge, her left knee chattering up and down - the leaders call it "sewing machine leg." I'm certain her belay partner will have to tighten the ropes and catch her as she lets go. Nail Woman yells up to Mom that she's only two moves from the top, and we're stunned as she reaches out her right foot, transfers her weight onto it, and hoists herself to the top with both hands. I let out a yelp and run to give her a high five once she rapels down to safety.

Techno Guy confessed a secret fear of heights over the prior evening's campfire. I never would have guessed that about him. The faces we cover today have an intense but high view of half the valley. We watch as he edges slowly up a tight pitch, sweat drenching the back of his T-shirt and running down his calves. At the top he looks out from under his helmet at the landscape, then down to us with a grin. Back at the bottom he unties my soggy red bandanna from around his head, handing it back to me.

"Thanks buddy," he says, punching my upper arm. "I think it brought me luck."

That night as I finish brushing my teeth and washing out my bowl at the water containers in the back of the van, Gilligan's Island Girl walks up.

"I didn't want to come on this trip, you know," she says.

I nod at her as I swizzle tepid water from one cheek to the other.

"My parents made me." She stands, looking at me, toothbrush and cup dangling from one hand.

I spit a stream of foamy spray, watching as it bounces off the hard packed sand before being absorbed.

"Uh-huh," I say.

"I hated it at first," she continues, not taking her eyes from my face. "I cried at the airport. I thought the climbing would be easy. I mean, it looks easy on ESPN."

Pulling out a grubby yellow bandanna, I attempt to dry my metal dinner bowl.

"But it's really hard. And scary too." She wipes her knuckles across the bridge of her nose.

I picture her on the second day balancing on a ledge thirty feet up, Pony Tail Leader belaying her and supporting her weight on the rope as she screamed how she didn't trust him to catch her if she fell.

I look at her face. Her eyes are blue and small.

"I know," I say. "It's hard depending on other people."

With the sixth and final day comes my chance to follow a guide in lead-climbing. At the start of most of the climbs I closed my eyes, centered myself with two deep breaths, and focusing on the rock in front of me, told myself I could do it. This time, I adjust my helmet, step to the rope, and watch my hands shake. The route the instructor created so easily minutes before appears impossible. The nylon rope slips from my soggy palm as I attempt to hook in. Looking at Techno Guy waiting his turn against a boulder, I catch his encouraging nod. I turn back toward him.

"Hey," I start out. My mouth feels dusty. I'm not sure if I'm stalling or there's really something he can do for me. Maybe a few tips to get me started. "This one's kinda big," I continue.

He smiles and steps toward me. "Hey yourself," he says. "You've got this down." His helmet shifts back on his head as he looks at me, then nods up toward the top of the face. "Piece of cake."

I still don't speak, and he must have seen something in me I didn't know was there, because the next thing I know, he's put his arms around me in a bear hug.

"For good luck," he says.

I take another breath, feeling my shoulders relax. And as I look out past him at the sand, cliffs and sky of the desert, I consider the vulnerability lying just beneath the surface.

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