Tag Archives: Partnership

On My Mind

Partner Check

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Climbing is a partner sport. There’s someone at the other end of your rope, someone whose life is in your hands and who is holding yours just as carefully. It requires communication, trust, and honesty – if I truly can’t climb something, I put us both in danger when I claim that I can. Likewise, if you are climbing, I’m watching the rope and it’s on me to tell you when it needs a quick tug to avoid a snag that could be dangerous.

In climbing, a partner check takes place every time one ties into the rope and the other clips in a belay device. We both look at your knot and we both check that my belay device has been set up correctly, that it brakes where it’s supposed to, and that the carabiner holding everything together is locked. Every time.

But sometimes we make mistakes. We take it for granted that this is something we’re used to doing and we forget. Sometimes we catch these mistakes before the climber gets off the ground. A quick, “Hey show me your knot” could be the difference between a fall and something much worse.

But sometimes we make mistakes. My climbing partner decided to follow a route in the climbing hall one day, meaning another climber had set up the rope and it was already hanging when she tied in. She climbed the route and I let her down. I had unscrewed my carabiner and was taking my belay device off my harness when she looked at me, face white, and said, “I didn’t finish my knot.”

I was horrified. She showed me where her half-completed figure eight had pulled tight onto itself as she climbed, how it had held fast even though there was every reason it might not have done that. She hadn’t finished her knot and, in making sure we were situated on the correct side of the rope as she got ready to follow the route, we had somehow skipped our partner check, therefore failing to notice.

We got damn lucky.

We apologized to each other immediately and continued to climb shortly thereafter, making an exaggerated show of doing our partner check. The friends there with us teased, but followed suit. Climbers do a partner check every time – we had just missed it that time.

And all it takes is one time.

Everything was okay, and we’ll never make this careless mistake again. To make ourselves feel better, we reasoned that we had now effectively saved our entire climbing group. But we know it could have had a very different outcome. We slowed down a little, went through the standard procedures as a matter of fixing them into the motion of our bodies, and kept climbing.

Nobody’s perfect, and that’s why I’m writing this post. Please do your partner check. Everything depends on it.

Thuringian Forest – September 2024
Germany

Into Boxes Again

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In some ways, it was the easiest move I’ve ever done.

Clothes packed into duffel bags and suitcases, books and crockery into boxes, decorative items gently wrapped before being placed into other boxes, frames taken off walls and stacked. Furniture loaded into the car or the van, padded with pillow and blankets. Three or four trips, one to a village a short ways away, and we were done.

And with every trip, things everywhere.

Furniture carefully moved into pre-measured locations, no space to spare. Empty a bag, fill a set of drawers, unzip the next bag, reorganize the drawers.

We spent hours combining two kitchens into one and formed piles: Things we use and love, thing to store for later use, things to donate, things that simply needed to go. Glad we had built a new set of shelves.

Mere days later, the bed stood slightly higher and more items found their place. Shortly thereafter, a new cabinet in the bathroom took care of a general sense of organized chaos.

A beloved photo printed on canvas. More pictures arranged and hung. Every spare surface filled with plants.

Forms filled out, phone calls made, appointments set, items slowly crossed off the bureaucratic to-do list. Agreements set with the landlord, a day spent painting the old apartment, items gradually sold to colleagues, to strangers, other items donated. I’ve always found it pretty easy to part with things.

A new, longer route to work. Depending on the weather, through the city or through the park. Based on the snow conditions, by bike or by bus. Alarm reset to save time for last-minute adjustments.

And then finding rhythm. Alarms ringing at different times, shower occupied morning and evening, discussion of which temperature to wash clothes. Who starts coffee and who makes the bed and are you coming straight home after work?

This move reminded me of my first move: Excitement, joy, family around to help, pizza when everything was done. I have a lot of experience with moves and it makes a difference, having people there to direct, to carry, to organize. It makes a difference, not doing it alone. But this move was yet different in its celebration, in the name labels that went up on the doorbell and mailbox.

This move was not just a change of location, be it part of town or city or country, but a change of circumstance, a change that I’d tried once before in a very different place and very different time. Aware of this, I had a moment shortly before where the world swayed under my feet and I needed time for it to steady itself; I needed time to steady myself.

In many ways, this was the easiest move I’d ever done. In another sense, the ease belies the work it took to get here.

And that’s how it is with transitions, I think. You don’t realize you’re there until you are. And then you step over the threshold.

Welcome home.

Weimar, Germany – January 2024