The year was 1976. I was 26. By then, I had mostly stopped doing foolish things or stumbling inadvertently into harm’s way. No more bad LSD trips, extreme fasting experiments, near drownings, or getting into the wrong car with the wrong driver. No more leaping before looking and almost dying in the process.
Well, almost no more.
It was summer. My friend Bill and I had driven across the country in a Dodge Coronet station wagon that had belonged to my mother. We were exploring the Oregon coast. The area felt magical to me. I’d been to Oregon once before and stayed three months in Eugene, leaving only after the winter rains became unbearable. I loved the coast, the rocks, the churning ocean — and the people who seemed nicer and more generous than people anywhere else. When our car broke down, for instance, we spent a couple nights in a parking lot hiking back and forth to a nearby gas station where they let us borrow tools to remove, fix, and replace the starter. The total cost was 7 dollars, as I recall.
On the day I’m remembering we visited a popular beach along the northwest coast. I’ve since looked online and I think I’ve found this beach, one of several with large, pyramidal rocks rising up at the shoreline. The rock is not as tall as I remember, but tall enough — 65 feet, the height of a five-story building.
The beach side of the rock was accessible by a walking path, but I had other ideas. Most likely I removed my socks and shoes and rolled up my pants before wading into the shallow water (it was low tide) to splash my way to the ocean side of the rock. Out there everything felt different. Hidden from sight, I was on my own. Standing on the relatively flat base of the rock, I gazed at the ocean, the endless surge of water so lonely and awe-inspiring.
Then I turned around. The rock face was moderately steep but looked climbable. I didn’t stop to think. I just slipped into my shoes and strode forward. At first it was an easy uphill scramble, footholds and handholds appearing when needed. I had that heady, childlike feeling of adventure, following my itchy feet, like Mount Everest’s Sir Edmund Hillary, climbing “because it was there.”
Subtly at first, then more starkly, the slope steepened, and the rock became crumbly, like sandstone. I hadn’t been paying attention, so I was startled to find myself quite high up on a very steep, unstable rock face, splayed out like a bug, attempting to evenly distribute the weight of my body.
I reached for a little knob of rock, and it crumbled in my hand. I reached for another, with the same result. Then a third, and a fourth. Every time I slightly shifted my feet, sand and grit slid out from under me and skittered down to the ocean below. I glanced down, but only once, and only for a second. Too scary, too dizzying. Wholly alert now, I assessed my situation. There was no way around the terrifying truth: climbing down was not an option. I had passed the proverbial point of no return. The only way was up.
I extinguished my panic, pushing aside thoughts of slipping and tumbling to my death. My arms and legs trembled, but from exertion, not fear. I became singularly focused, conserving energy and moving with great care, knowing that if I slipped, there would be no second chances. Above me, not too far away, was the summit. I could see a cleft in the rock, plant material spilling over the edge. If I could reach that…
It took a matter of minutes, I don’t know how many. I’m still not sure how I managed it. I never found a safe, resting foothold or handhold. Instead, I remained in a modified crouch, barely breathing as I inched slowly higher.
And then I was at the top, grabbing onto a sturdy root and hauling myself up and over.
I stood up. My limbs ached and trembled, but I was very happy. Quietly triumphant. Had I just cheated death? Yes. Yet the moment was also anticlimactic. There were no witnesses, no one who’d seen and understood my dilemma or appreciated my skill. Everything was ordinary. I was standing in a flat, woodsy area with trees and plants, people’s voices in the distance. I pulled out the paperback book I’d been carrying in my back pocket, The Princess Bride, by William Goldman. I sat down and leaned back against a tree trunk. As soon as my arms and legs stopped trembling, I opened the pages and read a further chapter in the crazy adventures of the young protagonist. The story seemed appropriate. Eventually, I got up and followed a well-worn path back down the other side of the rock, where I found my friend Bill on the beach.
This happened almost 50 years ago. It’s not an exaggeration to say I could easily have died that day. If I had, all the life I’ve known since then, the experiences, the joy and pain, the friends and companions, the writing and artwork, would never have come into being. There would be a blank space in the lives of certain other people. Some, like my siblings, would be aware of the loss. Others, including my nieces and my closest friends, wouldn’t even know what they’d missed. And I wouldn’t know either.
Our lives are like that — an inch or two in one direction or another, and we’re headed down instead of up, left instead of right. A potential life partner is stumbled upon or passed by. A city that might have been our home is never visited. An injury is avoided or sustained, a child conceived or not.
I’ve been a cautious person now for a long, long time. I still get a charge out of telling stories of near disaster, but I decided decades ago I did not want to die because of a foolish decision. For that reason, most of my stories are old, like I am. What changes is the way I tell my stories, and each telling is always new.
Richard Ely is an artist, editor, and writing coach in Madison.
If you are interested in writing an essay for Isthmus, query Lindaf@isthmus.com.
