Take it Easy

Those were the words that rung through my head for three months.

“Take it easy. When you’re ready, you’ll know.”

I would tell myself this for days. But truth be told, after the first two weeks, you pretty much forget about rock climbing. Suddenly your shoulder’s don’t feel as tense, your fingers stop cramping up and regain full motion, and that annoying callous on your big toe even starts to wear down; and without the assistance of a pumice, I might add. (also any guy who owns a pumice, c’mon now.)

This is what three months rest does to you. It makes you forget about the annoying pointless competition between a-holes to see who can lock off a one armed pull up.

You even forget the guy that says, “I can’t do it” to every problem he gets on. The guy who swears by his lace-ups and just can’t understand how anyone would want anything else goes away and the strange term v10 becomes about as meaningful as the word floccinaucinihilipilification; and that is a word.

Now, four months later, I realized that a break is exactly what I needed. I had to stop caring about those petty ins and outs of the climbing world. The stupid bickering over the placement of a hold making the problem an iota harder, therefore deeming it a v-whatever! I had to stop caring, and in the words of Tyler Durden, “truly let go.”

After about two months I swore off climbing all together. Threw in the towel and walked away, so to speak. Yet it wasn’t climbing that I was averting. And it took a month to realize that. See I love climbing, as a genuine and good-intentioned part of my life. Playing the role of the carefree stress reliever that originally drew me into climbing, was what drew me back.

I needed to really step back to realize that I was caught up in the climbing world that allots no room for error, and no excuse for failure. Much like the military I was at the point where if I wasn’t pulling my own weight then I was pointless. In retrospect, I was at the breaking point where I was so concerned about being the best possible climber, that I completely missed the art and sport of climbing.

I don’t deal with those headaches anymore. Two tweaked pulleys in each hand and a busted ankle later, I realized that pushing yourself to the max is not good, if it’s for the wrong reasons. But, nonetheless, I returned

Because, there is nothing more enjoyable to me then the fluid movement of climbing a boulder knowing where each intricate little sidepull and crimp are. Knowing to drop knee and extend your arm enabling an extra inch and a half so that sloper on the top-out now feels more juggy. Finding a route so beautiful that no matter how many times you send it, you still hop on every time as if it’s your first. Working a route indefatigably, so that by the twentieth try, you can do it blindfolded.

That feeling of walking up to a route, especially outside, (although the perfectly designed indoor route works, too) and being so engulfed by it that you don’t hear those around you and the words, “I need to climb this” slip from your lips rather than those anguished, “What grade is this?” words that stifle the climbing world.

Taking a break was, in essence, the best thing for me physically and mentally. I’ve succumbed to a new level of climbing, where I find myself enchanted by climbing itself, and nothing else. I canceled the mag subscriptions because they were only adding to my competitive, better than thou attitude. Now I read magazines on sports I have nothing to do with. I feel as though it makes me appreciate those other sports more cause I can look at those magazines and just admire the skater’s or surfers or basketball stars doing their things. I was becoming an egotists about the one thing I loved…and I hope that never happens again.

Sal Zullo