Mountain Pretty
*I wrote 75% of this post summer 2015.
** Stay tuned for my talented friend’s new Mountain Pretty blog.
“Aww, your poor fingers! They’re twice the size they used to be!”
she said. WTF I thought. Who would say that?
I felt,…really mixed emotions.
Ashamed? Thought about it. No.
Proud? Maybe. Indignantly. YES.
Fcuk you, American culture. I have never been “pretty” and I’m not starting now.
These fingers are going to get a lot uglier. I’ve only begun to climb and I’ve EARNED EVERY BIT OF THIS UGLY. I’ve been learning to ice climb and lead trad, rescue climbers off multi-pitch climbs, make v-threads without a v-thread tool, to jam fingers and toes in narrow gaps to crack climb. I’ve been sleeping in my tent and car more than my own bed. I have been in the backcountry so much recently that when I had to pee while on a lunch run at work the other day I started to look for good pee spots in the bushes before my civilized brain reminded me where I was. I warned the guy I started dating this spring “sorry about my toes… this is the best they’re going to get.” I knew three of my toenails were already on their way to falling off after Mt Adams and Glacier Peak and it was only the beginning of climbing season. My favorite jeans might never fit again, but I’ve decided I’d rather have backcountry quads than be able to squeeze into them… though the body shift has been a bit of a trip. I won’t pretend it’s all been delightful. If my calves get too big for my Frye boots I‘ll be pissed, and the weight flux before and after a climb is kind of nuts, and I do kinda miss my fingernails looking clean, just for the decency of it. But if my fingers were delicate they’d be missing a hell of a lot of fun.
Yep, this is a different world, full of women who do ultra trail running, ride their bicycles across the country the wide way, who laugh about their 4000 calorie days during peak training and who know how to poop in a blue bag on a glacier while roped to other people. It’s a different kind of selfie: less sexy, more “I am at the top of ____ and I am still alive” (proof) usually while sweaty and wind chapped. It’s a different kind of Friday night (waking up at 3am Sat for the push instead of going to bed at 3am after the club closes). It’s a different kind of motivation that has nothing to do with cultural expectations. It’s a very different kind of femininity… it’s, well… NOT femininity. It’s straight up DISREGARD for “femininity” AND “masculinity.”
I’ve barely scratched the surface of how far I can push myself. But already the things I have been able to do and see because I’ve given up pursuit of pretty and taken sides with dirt have been ridiculously epic and awe-inspiring. None of it sits well with the typical culture of femininity. We’re WAY inside “tomboy” territory now. Never felt like one of the girls. Always built forts and treehouses with the boys at recess. I’ve lost track of how many “butch” jokes have been lobbed my way over my life despite being a very petit heterosexual. But very seldom have I been confronted with another woman looking at the well earned scrapes and scars with PITY. What about strength, grit, determination, values beyond appearance? What about the women with taped up hands and bruises everywhere who are dancers, firefighters, gymnasts, …organic farmers? They’ll get to the end of it all and have such unreal memories of having used every bit of their body that they could. Used it all up. (((Yea, okay, don’t get your panties in a twist…it takes all kinds. I’d rather my surgeries be done with delicate hands, man OR woman. And I did stilettos for a decade. I can still rock a mini skirt.)))
And of course, this bleeds into SO many discussions happening over SO many centuries about what it is to be feminine or masculine. Discussions that will probably go on for centuries more. And for much of history it’s been framed as a man vs woman debate. But the ENDLESS fountain of surprise for me is the way that WOMEN POLICE WOMEN. A female coworker and I were just joking today about how we should put a fake book jacket on the “How to Lead Gracefully” book given by the women’s group at our corporation to other women in the group. In the works now is a Photoshopped book jacket of a man in a leadership pose under “How to Lead Gracefully”; yes, let’s call out that irony. Here little girls. Here are the rules for being little girls. Sigh. But mountains don’t care at all what gender associations you have. They only care what you are made of. Dirt, trees, ice, rivers, wind, rocks… grit, balance, strength, power, determination, … and yes, gracefulness.
Admittedly, mine are VERY first world problems. (My fingers aren’t pretty.) A pause and nod to the women who fight SERIOUS cultural hurdles to stand on mountains. In 2015 my friend and I were lucky enough to have Nimdoma Sherpa as our guide in Nepal. She’s from one of Nepal’s first women climbing groups (it’s an incredible story) and one of Nepal’s Seven Summits Women. And look up Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita, National Geographic Adventurer of the year 2016, and the 13 Afghan women climbers who received so many threats just for wanting to climb “…death threats and a forged picture depicting her and her father having sex because he backs her involvement in sports…” (NPR interview) “They summited three peaks, even getting to name one that had not been scaled. They named it “The Lion Daughters of Mir Samir,”” (Denver Post 2015). If you’re passionate about what they’re doing check out http://ascendathletics.org/.
AND A NOD TO HISTORY, to the women who were climbers when climbing was barely a thing, like Fay Fuller who was the first woman to summit Rainier—in 1890— in a wool dress. And a huge shout out to the Washington Alpine Club that makes a point of accepting 50% women every year to their basic mountaineering course. If they didn’t who knows if I would ever have become a climber.
I hope that the day will come when a woman with callused feet, goggle tans, and perma scratches won’t have to defend it to other women. I’m not the sweet doe that turns admiring heads when delicately gliding into a room, princess-and-the-pea skin, thighs fitting into the most skeleton of hipster jeans. Does it have to be weird that I don’t want to be? Would I ever give this up for that cultural validation? Bah.
My poor fingers my ass.
Their thighs take elevators.
I’m a mountain climber.
