Belayed for life || story by RICHARD DAHLSTROM || photos courtesy the Dahlstrom family
I shout from the top of the sandstone cliffs at what we call “boat launch rock” in Larrabee State Park as my son, standing out of view on the beach below, begins his climb. My hands slide the rope through the belay device as I feel his ascent through the slackening line. My two daughters, the oldest and youngest of my three children, are waiting their turn. “Children” though, is the wrong word. This will be our only climb of the season before we scatter to the winds. The youngest is about to leave for New York with friends for a whirlwind of musicals, having just graduated from high school. The oldest will be in Europe before the week is out, working on a farm as she takes a break from teaching high school English in Seattle. And my son, presently on the face of the rock, is about to embark on a summer of studying college Italian. It’s somehow appropriate that we’re all here together climbing before everyone goes different directions, for climbing has been a significant thread (or shall I say, “rope”) tying me with each of them through the years.
I feel the tug of the rope as my son comes into view, smiling as he ponders a dynamic move. He learned to climb while we lived in the upper Skagit Valley, above the North Cascades Highway near Marblemount. Though we left the mountains when he was nine, we kept climbing, enough to keep the joy in it. Eerie, Larrabee, Squamish, The Tooth, Liberty Bell. Climbing together—even at climbing gyms—has always provided a context for relationship, for navigating the footholds of change from childhood to adolescence, from mountains to city, from home-school to public school. Of the three children, he’s the one least afraid to fall, and hence least afraid to risk.
With the safety of the top-rope and endless options for moves available in the sandstone at Larrabee, he reaches not for the obvious bomber holds, but for the nuanced flake, the finger crack. He falls more than the rest of us—and is a better climber than the rest of us. Perhaps there’s a causal relationship between the risking, the falling, and the excelling. This describes not only his climbing, but his life. I love him for this.
The oldest is next. She’s comfortable on the rope as she quickly rappels down, out of sight, belayed by her brother. I listen as they speak ‘climbing’ to each other while she begins her ascent. She was eleven when we moved to the city, fourteen when she and I first climbed Mount Rainier together. Our lives were linked early on through secret forts in the forest, long hikes among hidden peaks, stacking and hauling wood for burning, and climbing. Always, it seems, she chooses the steep routes; she’ll flip through the guide book to find the most challenging. She lives her off-belay life the same way, choosing the steep: advanced placement classes during high school, a college degree in three years, a teaching career by age 20.
She pauses to ponder a problem at the crux. Her face is in view and I watch with awe as she considers her options and then makes her move with enough grace and confidence that you’d think she was reaching for a piece of pie in a buffet line. Her climbing is cerebral: she focuses on the next steps, the goal, the problems, and how to solve them. It’s this capacity to pause, consider, and then do, without fanfare or panic, without complaint or drama, which makes her such a woman of grace. She’s quickly to the top and then rappels back down to give it another go, because the single face of Larrabee offers nearly infinite variety of moves, routes, and problems. Perfect for my oldest.
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