climbing with a friend

I went climbing yesterday for the first time in about a year. I went with a friend who i used to climb with from the adventure group. She also hadn't gone rock climbing in about a year, but it was her suggestion that we do it, remarking that she didn't want to lose all her rope skills. I agreed and overcame my general anxiety about doing anything and my specific anxiety involving rock climbing, reclaiming my climbing gear from another person in the adventure group who I had lent it too. It felt nice going through the slings and carabiners, I just love the feel and sound of climbing gear. It's the same way I feel about bikes and bike parts.

At any rate, we met up and drove to the tiny crag we decided to climb at, about ten miles north of town. My friend brought her two young boys, who though don't climb, enjoy exploring and kicking around in the desert. I set up a top rope, rappelled to the ground, and we each went up a fairly easy route. It felt good touching rock again, tying the rope to my climbing harness, making goofy and encouraging comments as I belayed a friend who I trusted with my life and she with mine. All the deep subliminal things that make me love rock climbing and always will, even when I'm too full of fear and anxiety to do it. I so wish I had discovered climbing back when I was a young adult.

after we stopped climbing and packed all our gear away, my friend, her kids, and I hiked north of the crag to a water-filled hueco we had spotted from the top of the cliff. There were hundreds of tiny black tadpoles in the puddle, and many more in a nearby hueco that was nearly empty of water, Luckily we found an abandoned bucket nearby and transfused several bucketfuls of life-sustaining water from the large hueco to the nearly dried out one. The kids where so happy that we had, in their minds, saved the little colony of tadpoles that were in a race for time and were at the whims of the reliability of this summer's monsoons. As if to reward our actions a thunderstorm developed and it started to rain, softly at first, and then in a torrent just as we arrived back at our cars. My friend remarked that she was afraid that her kids wouldn't remember such small moments and tiny adventures when they grew up, and I assured her that they would.

It was a good afternoon, and we agreed we would return again next week to climb again.