Every Person Needs Her People
While meeting with parents is a regular part of my job, it was a relatively new concept when I first began co-coaching the Adventure Rock climbing team. It certainly seemed wild to me that any parent would entrust Brian and me with his or her child; we were practically kids ourselves. So, when I was approached by a rather skeptical parent as we prepared for a team trip to Kentucky, I wasn't all that surprised. This mom, riddled with concern, emphatically stated, "But climbers are just so eccentric." In many ways, her statement was a fair one: let's go camp for several days, skip showers, cook over a tiny stove, sleep in tents, use all of our energy to move ourselves gingerly up a rock face, and walk away with sore muscles and raw hands because...well, climbing is fun!
I wasn't always a climber. In fact, in a lot of ways, I was a lot like that particular mom. I scoffed at any request made to join Brian on numerous climbing outings. I laughed at the trivial pursuit and the equipment that went with it ("Why are those shoes so small? And you have to carry all that stuff just to do more work when you get where you're going?"). But the very best thing that came from me finally relenting - even better than sitting atop a 10,000+ ft. peak in the Sierra Nevada Mountains - is the community I was welcomed into.
Some of our best friends and some of the people who adore our tiny human most happen to be people we know solely because of climbing. It's hard to top watching my child play with some of my favorite people's children! Any chance we get to spend time with our climbing pals, our crew, is time we truly cherish. I've learned how to hike, climb, and camp better thanks to them. I've lived some of my best experiences (a summer in France anyone?!) with some of them, and HQ will grow up knowing the meaning of community thanks to them.
So the past two weekends, with campfires and climbing friends, have been the greatest fall weekends we could ask for. Pudgy pies, chili, guacamole, wine, and friends who know the meaning of words like gri-gri and belay make for a happy me!
Every person needs her people, and I'm so glad we have our climbing people. They make life at sea level a lot more enjoyable!
I wasn't always a climber. In fact, in a lot of ways, I was a lot like that particular mom. I scoffed at any request made to join Brian on numerous climbing outings. I laughed at the trivial pursuit and the equipment that went with it ("Why are those shoes so small? And you have to carry all that stuff just to do more work when you get where you're going?"). But the very best thing that came from me finally relenting - even better than sitting atop a 10,000+ ft. peak in the Sierra Nevada Mountains - is the community I was welcomed into.
Some of our best friends and some of the people who adore our tiny human most happen to be people we know solely because of climbing. It's hard to top watching my child play with some of my favorite people's children! Any chance we get to spend time with our climbing pals, our crew, is time we truly cherish. I've learned how to hike, climb, and camp better thanks to them. I've lived some of my best experiences (a summer in France anyone?!) with some of them, and HQ will grow up knowing the meaning of community thanks to them.
So the past two weekends, with campfires and climbing friends, have been the greatest fall weekends we could ask for. Pudgy pies, chili, guacamole, wine, and friends who know the meaning of words like gri-gri and belay make for a happy me!
Every person needs her people, and I'm so glad we have our climbing people. They make life at sea level a lot more enjoyable!
Comments
Post a Comment