“God Damnit” I scream at my inanimate carabiner that holds my life in its metallic grasp. I’m three hundred feet off the ground, no way to get down, and the 45-year-old, ragged-haired, tie-dye wearing man whose YouTube tutorial was the only climbing experience I have was utterly useless. My cockiness in my abilities and my constant reassurance to the real climbers in my grade that “trust me I got it” had transitioned in a rapid succession of regret in the form of my legs shaking and my eyes welling with tears.     

To outsiders, I present myself with certainty. When my peers were asked to fill out a survey for my Psychology class about my personality, the two words that consistently came up were: outgoing, and loud- I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that. In one sense, I believe that doing things with confidence and openness is a way to enhance your livelihood, and on the other hand, loud isn’t a word I tend to use positively.  My competitive nature tells me that I have to be better than my sister, who got a full ride to college, or my brother, who at the age of 12 was already winning state-wide art competitions; what would put me above the mediocrity of living “The American Dream” and settling down in a house in the suburbs, the answer for me is unclear.Ultimately, I mask these insecurities by having a certainty in myself and my abilities With this belief in myself and growing passion for indoor climbing at my local gym, I found myself committed to doing a 400-foot, four-pitch, outdoor climb on a weekend when it was supposed to snow. Me and my climbing partner, Max, who had coincidentally also never climbed outdoors, huddled around a computer watching a “multi-pitch climbing tutorial” presented to us by a middle-aged man named Jason Smalls, and excitedly planned our game plan for the next day. 

As the sun crested over the limestone scattered mountains the following morning, Max and I rather than being comfortably nestled within our beds, were knee deep in a sludge made up of married snow and mud, hiking to our self induced looming destiny, a towering rock formation breaching over the top of the trees. Once reached, the steeple of rock, which for dramatic effect I will call Tower of Doom from here on out, sat leisurely in the back of our minds, as we had not yet reckoned with what we had in front of us, but rather were eager to just get climbing a in nd warm our frigid extremities. It was not until we began, that our callowness established itself in the form of fear, and mistakes. Shockingly, when you find yourself 200 feet off the ground, a 25 minute youtube tutorial feels an immensely incompetent form of “experience”.      

Glancing below my trembling legs, the imminence and magnitude of my situation became clear. Fact 1, I have never climbed outside before and my hope of getting to the zenith of the Tower of Doom, lies with a smiling middle aged man who I had never met. Fact 2, we are cold, tired, and out of service. Fact 3, in our ignorance, we had overlooked how to bail on a route, meaning our lone option was up. In this desperate situation, it was the same confidence that got me into this mess, and the noise I had intended to make in completing this, would have to come to fruition in order to get me out. We pushed ourselves harder than we ever had, not climbing, but rather crawling, dragging ourselves up what felt like a never ending sea of limestone. We repeatedly dug our fingers into the face of the cliff, indenting the personality of the crag into our skin. When we finally collapsed at the pinnacle of the Tower of Doom, it was no longer fear that clouded our minds, but the ethereal feeling of accomplishment, the feeling that only comes when you’ve pushed yourself to utter exhaustion to complete a goal. Recognizing that I had gotten in way over my head, and yet pulled out the other side successfully was both a powerful lesson in why not to be stupid, and a robust, potent reassurance that I can do anything I put my mind to.  “So Finn” “Yeah?” “How do we get down” “Oh sh*t”