Jaguars Ripped My Flesh

by Tim Cahill

  My vision of doom went like this: The glider accidentally releases early, and there is no time to pull it out of its dive. The chutes are tossed into empty air, there’s a screaming fall, then impact, followed by chutes popping open above, just the way Wile E. Coyote’s Acme parachutes always opened a second too late in Roadrunner cartoons.

  At three hundred feet, half a minute later, I felt a little better: Not long ago, two hang-glider pilots in Sheridan, Wyoming, had used their chutes to survive a midair crash at three hundred feet. We continued to rise smoothly at about three hundred feet a minute.

  Barney and I were lying flat, hanging face down inside the triangle at about ten thousand feet, when the pilot shouted, “Now!” I pulled the release ring attached to a modified sailplane release mechanism. Barney had both hands on the base of the control bar. It seemed, then, as if we hung there, immobile, for perhaps two seconds. Then the glider tipped forward, and we were in a free-fall vertical dive.

  Barney was pushing out on the bar below us, trying to lift the nose of the glider and get some air under us. We wanted to avoid a tumble. The nose of the glider, having dropped straight down, wanted to keep going, to flip over. The whole kite could turn upside down, and the two of us would bang down onto the fabric of the glider as we tumbled, and then the thing would break, with us in it: the wings could just collapse in on the glider like the wings of a caddis fly folding over its back.

  The glider was a UP (Ultralight Products) 185 Comet 2—a two-man version of the kite that has set the world record, one of the hang gliders you are most likely to see at world competitions—and it was specifically designed to prevent a tumble. Barney brought the Comet out of its dive in less than one hundred feet, and I was clutching the control bar, catching my breath, when he said, “You’re flying her.”

  I glanced over at Barney Hallin, and he was hanging in the harness with his hands dangling. Like any novice pilot, I took the glider out of its mild dive—“We’re going to die!”—by pushing up on the bar. “You’ll stall her like that,” Barney said. “Move over to the right a little and pull in on the bar. We’ll circle the balloon.”

  Barney moved with me, and our weight caused the glider to bank to the right and accelerate into a diving turn. There was a sudden, comfortable instinct at work in the feel of a soaring glider. It was clear that if I stayed to the right, with the bar pulled in, we’d go into a spiraling dive. It seemed entirely natural, after banking into our turn, to move to the left inside the triangle and push out slightly on the bar. The glider leveled out as we swept past the balloon.

  Barney then had me do a left turn, and we swooped and dived around the balloon, which, unlike the glider, was at the complete mercy of the wind. For twenty minutes we worked with the glider, circling downward with the balloon in air that Barney said had a “lot of sink” to it. I was flying almost in control—soaring was a lot easier than taking off and landing, which is what I knew—and the earth below seemed to glow in the odd pastels I have seen when flying in my dreams.

  * * *

  At one hundred feet, Barney had me kick out of the cocoon harness so that I was dangling feet down from the hang strap. We were circling into a “no-wind” landing, doing perhaps thirty miles an hour. Not an optimal condition. Light-wind landings are the best: You just head into the breeze, push up on the bar, and stall down into a “no-step” landing. On a windless day, you have to power up on the control bar—“flare out”—at thirty miles an hour. Barney flared hard and stalled her, and we hit the ground running at about five miles an hour. My feet got tangled up with Barney’s, and we fell forward and the nose of the glider buried itself in the earth. It was the sort of landing I distinctly remember from my hang-gliding lessons.

  The balloon ride had cost four hundred dollars, but even then, lying on the ground with a puffy lip and a mouthful of dirt, I had no doubt that the sensation of soaring, of dreamflight, was worth it. And Barney was right: There’s a better, cheaper way to pay your dues. It only hurts for about six months’ worth of Saturdays. After that, you’ve earned the jewels atop the Crazies.

  Fear of Falling

  I am hanging from a rope.

  Well, not hanging precisely. The rope, at the moment, is quite slack, but it is fastened to a fixed point above, and the only way to keep it slack is to exert various pressures against this chimney of granite, this vertical hole in the mountain. My back is pressed up against the rock on one side; my knees are flat bang hard to the granite on the other. I am not accustomed to exertion in the fetal position, and muscle systems I had been completely unaware of all my life burn and shriek. This is torture of a refined sort, and I see—in the fullness of pain; in the clarity of fear—Man as he was before he was Man. Here we are gibbering in the trees, beasts without words, knowing only that falling is death.

  Scientists have proved that humans fear falling almost from the moment of birth. One experiment, conducted with infants barely able to crawl, elegantly proved the point. The infants were placed on a sheet of glass and encouraged to crawl over it to the waiting arms of their mothers. When a solid-colored mat was placed under the glass, the babies crawled straight to their mothers, but when the mat was removed, revealing a drop-off, the infants would not venture out onto the glass. The experiment had to do with perception, though I think it demonstrates that falling is our first and most primitive fear.

  And that is the wordless and primal message the autonomous nervous system now wants to impart to my conscious mind. “Get off the rock,” it says, “or you will surely die.”

  The only way to get off the rock—without falling—is to climb, crablike, up this vertical hell-hole, this chimney erosion carved out of the granite in Yosemite National Park. Rock climbers, masochists who enjoy pain and fear, call this particular chimney “the Iota.” It’s a piece of cake for almost any climber with the exception of novices like myself. I am concerned, at the moment, with the psychology of the rope. It could just as well be tied around my neck as fastened to the sling about my waist. The rope does not comfort me.

  There is a dialogue in progress here: The rational mind insists that this is a new rope—damn thing cost $120—and there is a good bit of built-in elasticity so that if—please God, no—I should fall, the jolt will not tear my innards out. The worst that can happen, the absolute worst, is that I’ll scrape up against the rock and end up looking like parts of my body have been scrubbed with a wire brush. This I know in my mind—but my body does not agree. “You asinine fool,” it howls, “you are going to fall, you are going to die.”

  I have been trying to get up out of this chimney for nearly thirty minutes now. Sometime back, two other climbers shot by me as if I were standing still, which, in fact, I probably was. They stopped only for a word of encouragement: “Go for it.” And then they were gone.

  At any given time, there are several hundred climbers in residence at Yosemite. In the early days of the sport—say the late fifties—they came for the big walls, for El Capitan and Half Dome and Sentinel Rock, those great glittering slabs of granite two thousand feet or more high. As more and more climbers “bagged” the big walls, certain members of climbing’s aristocracy began working on “problems.” They took on smaller, but more difficult, walls.

  Climbs, and climbers, are rated on a number system. A 5.0 climb is just a tad more difficult than a steep uphill walk. In the late sixties, a 5.7 climber was considered a pretty fair rock jock. These days, some of the world’s best climbers are attempting routes rated 5.12, “problems” that would set Spider-Man to whimpering in fear.

  These climbers—the very best—make Yosemite their home for the summer and early fall. They are the new matadors, the ultimate in grace under pressure, and Yosemite is their arena. I have always admired rock climbers, and have often wondered what it was that pushed them. The only way to find out, I reasoned, was to give the sport a try.

  And so here I am, hanging on the rope, contemplating the fragility of flesh. Two more moves to the lip of the chimn
ey now. And then one more—I am at my limit, exhausted—except the last move is a doozy. I must place my hands up above my head and pull my body up, up, more now, more, up over the lip at least to my waist so that I can bend over the lip and throw a leg up. That’s all. The muscles in my arms have burnt my bones to ashes. There is no strength left, and so I—no, no, no—start to fall, and that is when—oh, yes, now—my adrenal glands do their stuff, and from out of nowhere, I feel a blinding burst of absolute energy and I am up, over the lip of rock. Safe. My heart booms like thunder inside my chest. I am lying on my back, staring into the impossibly blue sky, and it is as if I can see beyond the blue, see into the depths of space, see the brittle glowing stars whirling forever in their galactic polka.

  It is a moment of absolute clarity, such as we’ve all experienced at one time or another. Here you are driving along the highway, for instance, and a car darts over into your lane. It’s a ’71 Dodge Swinger, crumpled left fender. Older woman at the wheel. White hair, black dress. Her eyes are wide, her mouth is open. She is about to scream. You swerve right, up onto the shoulder. Gravel rattles against the undercarriage, and the right wheel catches some grass, rocking the car. The Dodge shoots safely by outside, but you are rocketing toward a mailbox, painted white. The little red flag is down. Swerve left, spray gravel, screech, and swerve back onto the highway.

  After a heart stopper like that, most people will pull over, turn off the engine, watch their hands shake for a few minutes, and replay the entire episode in their minds several dozen times. Seldom have they seen anything so clearly: the woman’s dress, her eyes, her mouth, the total lurch and swerve of motion. Everything seems extraordinarily brilliant. And the entire affair took perhaps five seconds.

  I was stuck in the Iota for nearly an hour, but there was the same crystalline clarity about the experience, and I had, for just a moment, a true sense of what rock climbing is all about.

  Our bodies, it would seem, are stingy with regard to certain juices that can have all sorts of beneficial, not to say delirious, effects. Only unpleasant things like danger or the proximity of death or final exams open the floodgates.

  Each of us possesses adrenal glands; they are two tiny, triangular meatballs located at about the north pole of each kidney. The average adrenal gland weighs less than a fifth of an ounce and measures about an inch across.

  The outer 90 percent of each gland is called the cortex and is of no interest to us here. The inner 10 percent is called the medulla. In times of stress, the adrenal medulla is stimulated to secrete two hormones: adrenaline and noradrenaline. Together, these substances can, quite quickly, prepare a person for effective emergency action: Respiration increases, the heart beats stronger and faster, and the blood is pumped to those areas of the body that most need it. Additionally, the central nervous system is stimulated.

  The effects of adrenaline and noradrenaline may be felt subjectively as fear or anxiety combined with increased mental alertness. It has been found that those who exhibit fear under some specified stress tend to have high concentrations of both adrenaline and noradrenaline in the blood. However, those who are prepared to stand their ground tend to display even higher concentrations of noradrenaline.

  This noradrenaline is wondrous stuff. It affects those systems in the brain that are concerned with emotions, especially euphoria, well-being, and alertness. After its release, noradrenaline is absorbed back into certain nerve endings, where it is stored for future use. (These accumulations in the nerve endings may be more important in the immediate response to stress than the adrenal glands themselves.) Drugs that inhibit the absorption of noradrenaline by the nerve endings are antidepressants. They make you feel good by keeping the noradrenaline sloshing around in your brain.

  Amphetamines, it is thought, may actually cause noradrenaline to be released from the nerve endings. Amphetamines act as mood elevators, help decrease fatigue, and produce increased initiative and confidence. They also augment the ability to concentrate.

  So there is is: noradrenaline, the basis of what many people in the so-called “thrill sports” mistakenly call adrenaline addiction. It explains why many otherwise sensible individuals habitually hurl themselves into truly frightful situations, and why—having survived, say, a three-day avalanche-ridden climb at elevations over ten thousand feet, they come down from the hill acting like one of the rarest of God’s creations: a really happy speed freak. It is, in short, a good and proper reason to confront our most primitive fear.

  May 13, 3:00 P.M.,

  Yosemite Valley

  I am five hundred feet up a nearly perpendicular slab of granite, climbing a route known as the Grack. The temperature is hovering around eighty degrees; sunlight comes blasting off the quartz, and the rock itself is hotter than a desert highway in August. I am certain that an egg thrown against the wall would fry well before it oozed its way five hundred feet to the boulders below.

  The Grack is rated as a 5.7 climb, well above my ability to lead or climb solo. Consequently, I am roped into a belay system: One of American’s star rock climbers, Doug Robinson, is sitting on a ledge fifty feet above me, holding the rope in the prescribed manner and bracing for my inevitable fall. I am standing on an inch-wide ledge. Every muscle in my legs is twitching rapidly up and down, like the needle on a sewing machine. I can relieve the pressure on my legs somewhat by standing up straight and leaning into the wall. Unfortunately, this sort of full body contact with the blistering granite makes me feel like a strip of bacon in a frying pan.

  My experience in the Iota has helped. I have discovered, in the past few years—as editors began sending me out to fulfill a lot of adolescent fantasies—that a period of intense study and preparation helps get the noradrenaline pumping in those tough situations in which the tough should get going.

  Scientists here proved this. Preparation is not only a form of life insurance, it also maximizes the noradrenaline experience. In clinical tests, monkeys placed under sudden stress showed increased levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline in the blood, as expected. But, when the monkeys were prepared by a warning system and then placed under stress, the adrenaline level remained the same, while the noradrenaline level increased.

  Still and all, in order to generate a little noradrenaline euphoria, you are going to have to put up with a lot of adrenaline and the anxiety it causes. Risk is a push me-pull you, manic-depressive, psychological roller coaster, and, at the moment, on my tiny ledge five hundred feet in the air, I feel very low indeed. I have been an hour and a half on the rock and I am exhausted.

  Doug Robinson sits serenely on his ledge. This climb is child’s play for him, no more difficult than taking a flight of stairs. He is smiling out over the valley and thinking of a cheery little book he wants to write about it all, called Short Pants and Sunny Granite.

  I am thinking about two not-unrelated subjects. First, I am planning my attack on fifty feet of wall. Second, I am considering the neurotic problems of one of my dogs. Since puppyhood she has consistently cowered from people and other dogs. Twenty-seven inches high at the shoulder, she spends half her waking life walking around all crouched down with her belly an inch off the ground. When cornered, she rolls over and wets herself, as if to say, “Beat me, I’m useless.” I am thinking about this particular dog because I have never before appreciated her approach to stress. I am thinking that there must be some sweet, almost sexual satisfaction in her life of constant surrender. If only my ledge were wide enough, I’d consider rolling over myself. It would be up to Doug Robinson to figure some way to get 210 pounds of urine-stained deadweight off the wall.

  As for attacking the rock, I have a bad case of precommitment jitters. This is the toughest pitch yet, and it looks like ten or fifteen minutes of solid misery. You have to keep up a rhythm, and there is no place to rest. Starting such a pitch is like launching into a fistfight with someone who outweighs you by fifty pounds. You have to see the thing through all the way to the end, and stopping for any reason whatsoev
er will result in a brutal beating.

  Where I stand, there is a crack in the Grack that is maybe a foot wide. The surrounding rock is as slick as polished marble. The first move involves placing both hands in the crack and pulling in opposite directions, as if your intention is to split the wall down the middle. Next, the feet come up as close to the hands as possible. You want your weight over your feet for increased stability.

  The next move is to inch one hand up a bit inside the crack. The second hand follows, then one foot comes up, then the other. Only one hand or foot moves. Three points should always be stable on the rock.

  Within five moves, no more, my exhaustion fades. The wall is a problem that can be solved. The crack has narrowed considerably, and there is no leverage in attacking it like the Incredible Hulk separating steel bars in a prison cell. Here, just one hand goes into the crack and a fist is made. This is called crack jamming, and it is the first time I have ever attempted it. Doug Robinson insists that he has never heard of anyone who lost his footing on a crack jam and consequently yanked his arm out of its socket and off his body.

  Another fist jam. Another. Now the crack is thinner yet. An open hand goes inside, sideways, and is maneuvered about and flexed in any manner that will hold. I actually feel as if I’m getting stronger.

  As the crack narrows, hand jams give way to knuckle jams. Here the crack will admit only the index finger, which is then curled and flexed. Feet come up close to the finger in the rock and rhythm dictates that the next knuckle jam is placed … now … then another, and another, until the crack disappears altogether and I am a mere five feet from Robinson and the sit-down ledge. Between us, all is slick, glittering granite.