I have four titanium rods, three titanium screws, and three half-screws working together to give me a left ankle. My left calf heads straight down towards the base of my foot, bypassing the tendency for calf muscles to have some form of definition, giving me what I have become to call affectionately my “cankle” or just “cank” for short. If normal foot flexion extends downward from zero to fifty degrees and dorsiflexion is measured upwards from zero to twenty degrees, my cank has an overall range of motion of slightly less than a degree or two. This makes for a few challenges when rock climbing.
But let me down climb a little. When I was sixteen, I was into horses, running cross country to get out of Math class, cross-country skiing, and shooting rifles at targets. I wanted to become a biathlete, a psychologist, and someone who had enough money to keep horses and have a property large enough to ski across. My mother took me on holiday to a resort in the Dominican Republic which included, amongst its comprehensive holiday package, free trail rides. Being a fairly accomplished rider, I asked for a more spirited horse to make the ride more interesting. Like most trail horses, my mount started to speed up on the return trip knowing that the bag of feed was waiting for him in the barn. Unlike most trail horses, mine flattened his ears, took off from the others at full tilt and started bucking wildly. I decided to jump, rather be thrown and land in an uncontrolled head-first heap.
I landed with my full bodyweight on my left ankle, and smashed it like a drinking glass. Four surgeries, thirteen casts, six pairs of crutches, one zimmer frame, one brace that was made by a prosthetic specialist, two canes, two balls attended in 80s monstrosity dresses with matching decorated plaster, and twenty-three months later, I put my bare foot on the ground for the first time. The surgeon warned me that I needed to “walk on eggshells for the rest of my life”; I wasn’t to choose a job that forced me to stand on my feet, I couldn’t choose a sport that involved using feet, and most importantly, I shouldn’t do ANYTHING that could mean a fall onto the cankle.
“And”, he added, “whatever you do, get used to pain.”
Flash-forward twenty years. I’m thirty-eight, living in New Zealand, and working as a teacher. Two of my Japanese friends take me to Golden Bay for the weekend and I sit on a stump and watch as they stretch gracefully up the warm rock at Pohara. My cankle is already smarting from a wee stumble in the five minutes uphill to the crag. It’s also throbbing in the ‘rain’ place—you know, old people are right about their joints hurting.
“Want to give it a try?” my Japanese friends ask.
I open my mouth to make an excuse, but this time I just can’t. It looks like so much fun, and they make it look so easy, smiling as they climb and calling encouragement to each other. For the first time in twenty years, I ignore my surgeon’s voice as my friends help me into their harness, put chalk on my hands, and tell me that the shoes are meant to feel uncomfortable.
What I discovered, without sounding too clichéd, is that I had been sitting and observing and not doing for far too long. Yes, it hurt my ankle, yes, I had nothing even close to technique, yes I had next to no muscle in my left leg, but I was partway up a rock! I managed only a third of a climb, but as I looked out behind me towards the blue waters of Golden Bay, I felt a freedom I hadn’t had in years. I realised I needed this feeling of being away from the ground.
In October of 2012, I underwent four hour surgery. This time it was to remove the old and outdated hardware, and put in new hardware that would surgically fuse two of the four ankle joints. When finished, I would hopefully be pain free. I would have a partially bionic leg but it would be a stump that wouldn’t move. Could I climb again and was I nuts to want to?
The recovery time for this surgery was much shorter, but it still took over a year and a half before I tentatively put on my climbing shoes again. Initially, the hardest part was trusting that my left leg would hold me. I couldn’t stand on my left foot without falling over—my balance had deserted me—so how could I expect to scale a wall? Sometimes just starting a climb at the climbing gym with my left leg would scare me. I would start to sweat uncontrollably, and my heart would pound in my throat. And, if I made it onto the climb, I would freeze part way up the wall. I had never experienced just how much my own head could get in the way of what my body wanted to do. It was a complete shift from my previous way of thinking, and I struggled to push past it. Luckily, my Japanese climbing friends and several new ones were at the local wall to help me. They encouraged, cajoled, pushed, and belayed me until I could trust my new ankle.
Last year, at the age of 42, I started to climb in earnest. I’m at the stage in my climbing now where I can feel exactly my limitations. I know that when I climb and need to bend left or have my knee way over my left foot that I need to problem solve and think what I can do, instead of what I can’t. I also know that after a weekend of climbing my right leg will be covered in bruises from trying to compensate for a lack of movement. I also know that slabs, corner cracks, and big jugs are my friends, and that any climb requiring balance and delicate movements will cause me more grief than the average climber. I also know that even if I fall on a top rope, I am safe and so is my cankle.
I still have a lot of technique to learn, but I am approaching a style that is all my own. I wouldn’t call it graceful, and I certainly wouldn’t call it proper. In fact, I’m not sure what you would call it. Why do I climb? Because when you have limitations (physical ones as opposed to the baggage we all carry in our minds) reaching the hold that last week you couldn’t, coming off a climb bruised but happily triumphant, and reclaiming twenty years of living on eggshells, well, nothing beats that.
Why do I climb? Because finally, I can.