And Death looks you bang in the eye,
Robert Service. The Quitter.
It sure is easy to die. Doug and I were rock climbing yesterday. I was cleaning the route, which means, if you are not a climber, that I was stripping the gear off the climb, including the top anchor, threading the rope through the two top anchor points, dropping a doubled rope down to the base of the climb, attaching my ATC to the rope and my harness, and, finally abseiling to the bottom. I have done this sequence of events literally thousands and thousands of times.
I had got most of the way through this procedure and was just about to lean back on my abseil system to check everything before committing to the abseil when I looked down and, with some horror noticed, that as I was cleaning the route I had cleaned my attachment to the anchor off the anchor. I had been standing for a few minutes, threading and pulling rope, on a small ledge at the top of the cliff not clipped in to anything at all! I was so embarrassed and ashamed to make such a stupid mistake with such high consequences that I said nothing at all to Doug.
Out in the sea kayak today I watched a paddler proceed glibly through a series of sharp rocky reefs as the swell broke all around. I support in theory, every individual’s fundamental right to do dodgy things if they want to. I’m 61 and I don’t want some bureaucrat dictating what I can and cannot do. But sometimes I wonder if we are always fully cognisant of the risks we take; or are we just relying on decades of negative feedback to inform our decisions, or even worse, outdated assumptions about our own skill level? Only a close look in the mirror will tell.
I know I feel deeply foolish for faffing around with the abseil rope while standing, unanchored on a small ledge at the top of a cliff. Falling off, sustaining injury or even dying is profoundly stupid and not worth anything at all. Dumb risks are just dumb risks. No more heroic than squandering your life eating junk food and laying on the couch.
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