Today I managed to get outdoors for some rock-climbing, for the first time since we were all hounded into isolation. It has been a truly beautiful day, and I have been feeling throughout the week that unless I did get back to climbing soon I might never manage it. So, I packed all my gear and headed along Calderdale to the small village of Heptonstall. There is a large quarry here with some of Yorkshire’s best routes …. but I avoided that like the plague and stuck to some minor outcrops in the vicinity where there are several problems I had half a chance of actually climbing.
I did manage three simple routes, but have to confess that I have ended the day disastrously weary, and with the kind of scrapes on my arms and legs that are the mark of the extreme novice. Nobody would guess, watching me today, that I have been climbing for very nearly sixty years!
I occurred to me, while driving home, that art and rock-climbing have something in common. It is possible to forget how to do it, and only constant engagement keeps you up to scratch. Recently, returning to acrylic painting after a long lay-off, I realised that I had started the task with quite the wrong brush. My Wassail project of two months ago found me hovering between different kinds of ink, and it took me ages to settle on a suitable pen. It wasn’t surprising really, as my last significant use of the medium was many years ago. What is more, I actually find this experience of reacquaintance with a technique after a long lapse to be fairly scary. Yes: just like rock-climbing!
In each case I understand the basic concept, but as TS. Eliot put it, in The Hollow Men: “Between the idea/And the reality/Between the motion/And the act/Falls the shadow”.