My Marriage to Rockclimbing – Danika Brandvold

It’s taken me a long time to get here.

Last night I went to see Demetri Martin perform his comedy act at a venue in downtown Vancouver. It had been a pretty good day. I’d spent the morning reading and sipping good coffee from one of my favorite local coffee shops. In the early afternoon I hiked up Lynn Peake with some friends. In the afternoon I made a beastly sized chicken bacon salad with ingredients fresh from a nearby market. It was a wonderful Saturday.

As I walked along Georgia street in the brisk west coast evening, I couldn’t help but notice myself smiling at the strangers passing me by. There was something new about the way I was walking, and for a couple of blocks I couldn’t figure it out. Was it that I was about to endure hours of bust-a-gut comedy in a beautiful theatre? Was it because I was sharing this experience with a friend who loves to laugh just about as much as I do? And then it hit me.

My bounce was back.

The spring in my step, the smooth in my swagger, the attitude in my strut – whatever you want to call it: it was back.

And it was then that I realized…
It’s taken me a long time to get here.

In the last few months of my 2011 – something happened. At first I thought it was the end of semester crazies. Then I thought maybe it was the ‘great adulthood epiphany’ (a mythical type of wisdom that we in our early 20s are rumoured to seek). But it’s the smallest of events that seem to have the most significance. The smallest and the least suspected.

At the beginning of November I took a fall while I was rock climbing. A bad fall. Parallel to the ground and hanging from the ceiling I was reaching for a hold with my right hand when the rock slipped. Picture yourself doing a belly-flop into a pool from the high dive. Now flip your body around so you land with a curved back first. Replace a watery surface with memory-foam mats. Add some body tension and you’ve got yourself a hard fall. The kind of fall that makes a thunderous smacking sound on impact and causes spectators to gasp and grab the first aid attendant.

Stupid ‘Red V3’. I wasn’t even working on that route.

For those of you who know me, you know that climbing has a very large spot in my life. It is my passion. I draw strength, courage, and appreciation through what it offers me. If it were legal and/or possible I would already be married to climbing. 4 lyfe. And I would make a very good wife and we would grow very old together.

Unfortunately, I don’t handle injury easily (at least not my own injuries). For me it’s an emotional process. Stages 1-6 are all the same: denial. Utter and complete denial. As if I can get hurt. Pshhhh, that neeeeeever happens.

Like an idiot, (such an idiot), I kept climbing. Pain swelled in my bones and muscles but I thought I was being tough by ignoring it. It would go away eventually, right? I can climb through this. It will get better. It will be the way it always was. I can climb through this.

A week later I couldn’t sleep without pain. I was abnormally fatigued and warm-up routes (so easy your grandmother could climb them) caused my muscles to flame in agony. I couldn’t even dance in the back at work. I couldn’t even open a door. Of course I couldn’t ‘climb through this’. What was I thinking? I knew I was being an idiot. Safety never takes a holiday – even if your future marriage is on the line.

Only one person managed to talk any sense into me.

“Danika” my climbing partner Rob said while we were tying in to a route for warm-up. “If you’re in pain, you probably shouldn’t be doing this.”

“But pain is just weakness leaving your body right Rob?” I joked half-heartedly. A small voice inside my head muttered: you moron, he’s right!

Nerves twinged in my gut as his old owl eyes looked down at mine. Does that mythical adult wisdom come easier if you’re a ridiculously tall 28 year old grad student? I felt like I was letting him down – and the way he looked at me seemed to confirm that indeed I was. Then he said something that stuck with me.

“There’s only one person who can help you Danika,” he pointed his finger at my chest. “and that’s yourself.”

There are some places in our lives that we invest a lot of love. Maybe it’s something like climbing. Maybes it’s a friendship we’ve had since we were children. Maybe it’s something bigger – like a boyfriend or girlfriend, a first love.

Whatever it is, we cherish it deeply. It becomes a part of us, and we never want it to change or fade or disappear. We hold on to these things even when it hurts us. Even when we know that all we need to do is be brave enough to let he, she, it… let them go. The trouble is, nobody is going to tell us when. And that (for the most part) is for us to decide.

I’ve never been very good at goodbyes. Especially for the things I hold onto in my heart. I was terrified with the idea of not climbing. I just wanted to go back to the way it was before I fell. But there is no going back. There’s only going forward. Life was about to change and I knew that it would leave a big hole in my heart for a while. Was I brave enough to face what was coming my way? Was I strong enough to live without?

Keep the pain, or move forward. Keep the pain, or move forward.

By the time I saw the doctor I’d sprained three ribs, pulled some of my muscles and was told that I wouldn’t be able to start climbing again for a month. Time which normally would have been spent working on routes and bouldering problems with friends was replaced with physiology and chiropractic appointments. I felt estranged at first but then I began to seek a different kind of recovery. An emotional kind of recovery.

Close friends did my physio exercises with me. Rob stayed in touch and we’d have coffee while he was on his way to the gym. The best girlfriends I’ve ever had created a dance forcefield around me so that I could still enjoy a concert we’d planned to go to without further injuring myself. My study partner mocked my wounded puppy face in the library and make me laugh until my ribs hurt (…literally). And somewhere between all of this I started to realize that I have amazing and caring people in my life who at the drop of a hat would do anything to support me.

And that’s when I decided to get rid of more of the aches in my life. I had some big conversations. I developed standards. Standards of happiness. Standards of friendship. Standards for relationships. Standards for cleanliness in my apartment. Standards for the quality of meals I fed myself each day. Standards of exploration – because I (like my friends) have a big heart too. If I let one thing go, it just makes room for another. And so it spiralled. And somewhere between breaking up with a bad news boyfriend and finally cleaning underneath my bed I bounced back.

Facing a trivial and relatively minor back injury gave me the courage I needed to face my entire life – get rid of the aches and pains I’d been holding on to. This injury gave me the courage to let go. I was now, somehow, brave enough to face the pain and emptiness rather than live uncomfortably with it. Again, it wasn’t easy. I fought some sadness. I hurt for a while even after I let go. Here I am, two months later and I have that spring in my step.

As I bounced along on that chilly January evening with a smile on my face and warmth in my heart – I felt bigger. And I think I know why:

Because “life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” (Anais Nin)
I think I’ve just found mine.