Caught_In_the

Caught In the Act

Ray Purcell

Going ass over teacup, is the perfect expression to describe not just falling but the inglorious part of that fall when the head drops below ones ass. It's an expression that's comic; it doesn't connote the horrific, or the morbidity, or mortality associated with said fall. It's the kind of fall a cartoon character does when they run out into thin air. The toon creature will obliviously continue to run further and further out over a chasm and then stop and pause only at the moment of clarity; then, with a whoop or whistle in the background become inverted. The head and shoulders will proceed momentarily stretching at the abdomen elastically and then with a snap the ass and legs will join the fatalistically falling body to the absurd conclusion.

I was bouldering. My right foot was smeared into a small scoop in the edge of the arete and held there by my center of gravity. I stood up reaching high and right with my right hand grasping a small slightly in cut edge. I crimped my fingers and held it. In my mind I hesitated for a moment at the improbability of the overextended and tenuously stable position. Astonished really that I hadn't fallen off as I expected I should. Joe kept encouraging me to, "Step up, step up high!" Lying back off of my right arm I began to hop my left foot up to a secure ledge about the width of a cigar. With my left leg frog legged my foot was no more than a biscuit from the ledge where I would weight it, push up, and reach high with my right hand for a nice vertically angled pincher hold.

In that instant of concentration something happened and I was no longer on the rock. The sense of muscular tension released, the pressure of the gritty surface on my fingertips was gone. The buff colored grainy, bumpy and fissured landscape that had dominated my view turned sky blue. I felt as though I could have lived a life time in that moment and another lifetime as I became aware that I was tumbling. I felt only one thing as I lived out that lifetime, I was unconcerned.

What makes us uniquely human? It was the take home catechism question when I was in third grade. There's only one thing? My mother had been a lay catechism instructor, and the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church had an answer. Mom passed that answer on to me with the conviction of a theological scholar. She said "freedom to choose good over evil." Walt Whitman once said "you should not know too much about a thing...". But he was referring to the cold disimpassioned study of nature by science during the fullest flower of industrialization; not to mention the first greatest carnage of industrialization, the Civil War. The gist of Walt's statement was let the flowers be flowers and not over analyze them. Whitman was an experiential man, a poet, so the "what makes us uniquely human" question would have been right in there.

I remember debating the answer to that same question for an entire two-hour class session during a college Intro. To Philosophy class, and I don't remember that Dr. Meyer allowed us a single unchallenged answer. Of course someone else in that class, who had obviously been similarly indoctrinated as I, brought up the freedom to choose thing. I had long ago discarded that answer on my own and in a haughty way pitied the poor ignoramious as he/she was shot down with this loud retort. "My dog can choose between good and bad!"; i.e. dig up the marigolds and get hit with the rolled up newspaper, vs.. what ever other acceptable dog-like thing the dog might do that won't get its nose slapped.

Whitman also said, "Reexamine all that you have been told in school, or in church or in any book. Dismiss whatever insults your soul." Okay Dr. Meyer, I have another answer for you, Humans instinctively catch each other. Even primates, who have the necessary dexterity to reach out and break a fall have never been observed to do this, except in Disney cartoons. Other animals have been observed to groom each other, clean wounds, even administer medicinals, but not catch a fall.

Alright I can already hear it from those more cynical about the nobility of humanity. Oh yeah, so why do people stand around watching while someone is victimized? Well, because defending is a cognitive function of the higher brain, but self preservation is visceral, a knee jerk behavior. Coming to the defense of others involves a whole lot of internal analysis, more for some than others depending on how selfless a person has become. But no matter how self-centered a person might be you"d have to be one twisted puppy to not reflexively reach out and break a persons fall.

In the postmodern world we've become disenfranchised from some of our fundamental human reflexes. Behaviors that had evolved out of thousands of years of survival as a species. Subsequently we have become alienated from a necessary linkage between each other and the rest of God's creation. As a society we're reeling, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually flailing; it's as though a critical hold has broken off in our hand during our ascent.

In his book A Sand County Almanac Aldo Leopold, an early conservationist, discusses activities, like hunting, that we pursue to rediscover, reform, recreate the essential bond with nature that has become obfuscated by technology. Which brings me back to climbing. I'd argue that the experience that most of us seek through climbing, with the exception of some of the produced (contrived) for the masses competitive forms, is to periodically reforge the core of what it really means to be human.

Blue and brown swirled, blurred shapes fused together. I knew the moment that my head began to proceed the rest of my body, but there was the oddest emotional sensation of... protection. The physical sensation felt like nothing more than gently brushing against people in a crowded hallway. I stopped, no jarring impact. I was part on the ground and part on a pad, with my friends standing around expectantly. As I got up there seemed to be relief since the general opinion was that my fall was not going to end well. It was important not just to say that I was ok, but I was ok because of them.

From the start of this boulder problem I knew that Derek, Joe, Rene, and Bruce were behind me, along with a bunch of foam crash pads. On the other hand, there were also a lot of sharp edges, large boulders, and desert firmament that I could just as easily crash into. Where I consider each of these guys my friends, oddly I don't really know do know that much about them. I don't know if they're married, have kids, or have dark and sordid pasts- and I don't care. I figure if it weren't for my conviction in the fundamental bond between myself and my partners, a leap of faith so to speak, the odds would have been stacked against me, and without that advantage it would have been truly foolish to climb, to take the risk. Conversely, if someone isn't there to fall you can get a little rusty at catching them. Fortunately for me they caught me in the act.

January, 2003

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