Napo day 9

A List of Things I Can Climb

1) The beech tree on the hill on the south side of campus with smooth, wide branches that spiral upwards. In the top branches many students have carved their names framed by hearts in perpetuity. This love will spread disease and blight to the tree, an open would for sickness to seep in. 

2) The orange 5'9" at the climbing gym with the overhang and the one hold shaped like a brain and all the others shaped like melted bees wax. Actually, I can climb most of the 5'9"s in the gym. My next goal is that slanted yellow 5'10". I try to climb three times a week. It took me a month to master the 5'9"s but I suspect the 5'10"s will take longer.

3) 10, 11, 12 flights of stairs down and up from the subway every day. I make two or three transfers in one trip. Some day I will get where I am going, but the G train will not take me there.

4) Out the window frame of my childhood home onto my slanted black tar route, warmed by the long hours of the summer sun, even after the night has fallen like a blanket over the sleepy suburb of my parents' neighborhood.

5) The chain linked fence behind by my high school. Past the huddles of smoking teen who stood behind it cackling like hyenas and into the cool relief of the woods beyond.

6) Down the ravine behind my parents house and back up to the back yard of my childhood best friend. Both of us climbing together into the wilderness, stumbling and sliding. Using our hands and feet, elbows and knees. Any way we could cross the steep, fertile valley that lay between us.