Risk - Step Back to Move Forward

Last Saturday my friend and I went hiking along the Salmon River. At one point the trail joins the road and on the opposite side, several young men and women (everyone looks young to me now) were practicing rock climbing along a granite face. We stopped to watch and I recalled my first rock climbing experience.

My knees rattled like a loose bobbin in a sewing machine. Mouth dusty dry, I whispered, "I can't."
"Geeze girl, your eyes are wide as monster truck tires. What's your problem. Just step back, you'll be fine once you take that step," my coach hollered from the other end of the red and blue rope. He made it sound so easy; it's not taking the step that was the problem, it was stepping back, blindly back into the clouds, in the vapors, thin air, limbo, nothing, infinity.
I tugged at the harness, checked the "bineer" and wiped my sweaty palms on my cargo pants. Just then the chapstick barely in my pocket flipped out ~ clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, 1,000 feet down. My destiny. I can't.
The climb up Smith Rocks was intense, but doable. A 5.6 for my first climb. "You're a dancer," coach challenged. "You can do it easy." Crawling up the monolith, inch by inch, hugging the rock face, spurred on by pride and coach's encouragement, I felt safe. Even if I fell, I'd be caught in the belay, suffering, at worst, a few scrapes and a bruised ego. But this repelling down business...What if I push away and slam back against the jagged wall, splat? Even if I thrust my leg out to catch myself, the impact might fracture a tibia and then I'd be kicked out of the dance program. What if I flipped upside down like my brother did when he repelled? How embarrassing.
"Come on. Just do it," coach egged (this was years before NIKE coined the slogan).
"You didn't tell me we had to repel," I whined.
"How else did you think you'd get back down? I'm counting to five."
"Wait, can't we call a helicopter? (this was years before cell phones, too) Ten, count to ten."
"4, 3, 2, 1"
"Yes! I can!"

I slid to the bottom of Smith Rocks without a hitch and still claim the experience as one of the most satisfying, Zen-like challenges in my life. I stepped backwards to go forward and succeed. A few years later, while climbing a 5.2, I heard a loose carabineer, the thing supposedly holding me safe, tumble down the cliff. I decided then that rock climbing was too risky for me. I wondered, last Saturday, why I don't take many risks in my life any more. And yet, my friends say they admire my courage. This Saturday there will be an Open House at my home. I celebrate the risk of selling my house to follow my call. This Saturday I will take my past foster daughter (I found her again) out for a day of beauty before she moves back to Ohio to be with her birth mother. That chapter in my life was certainly a risk, risk of loving and letting go. In a few weeks I return to the art school for a 10 year reunion, stepping back to move forward? I still take risks I suppose (calculated, conservative, reasonable risks for me), more emotional than physical. I think the physical ones are easier. I don't really have an ending for this blog post...I can't see what I'm stepping into right now, just trying to trust infinity.