Two years that were filled to the brim and overflowing went by, and my van died in the fall. I cried. When a cash-for-car's tow truck came and picked it up, I realized the day after that I had forgotten to take off the license plate. I called them, expecting to unscrew the license plate off my trusty old friend in his industrial graveyard, and say goodbye one last time.
"It got picked up yestahday?" The woman on the other end of the phone asked me, with what I believed to be both chewing gum and coffee in her mouth. I confirmed, and she laughed, and chewed the gum voraciously. "Honey, that thing was crushed this morning! It is a cube now! Sorry sweethaht!"
My beloved home of two years was now a cube. It was time to move on.
Now, another minivan sits parked in my dad’s shop. It is clean and empty. This time, I want to be the one to fill it. My dad knew this, and acknowledged it by showing me how to use the table saw, offering a few ideas, and then parting with “I’ll be up at the house. Don’t cut your hand off, your mother would never forgive me.”
***
Though I’ve lovingly dedicated my life to it, I don’t consider myself to be a wonderfully skilled climber either. I prefer it this way, being a student to the process; running down a dream; trying hard to be better.
But yes, I have spent a lot more time in front of craggy mountains than the frightening blade of a table saw.
***
Back in the shop, it was me, Bruce Springsteen, some scrap wood, and the task to turn this shell of a minivan into a home. My home.
I’ll never forget the creation of the first bed leg. I measured again and again, nervous to break the ice. The table saw was constantly in my periphery. It spoke to me through its sharp teeth. “You can only measure so many times, Nat.” After a few songs⏤ which is a significant amount of time when listening to Bruce Springsteen live albums⏤ went by, I took a deep breath, stared down the table saw, tried not to flinch, and cut my first of ten very uneven bed legs.
***
I felt more prepared to try the Moonlight Buttress than I did to build a bed in my minivan. Still, it was an intimidating endeavor. In my time in Zion, I had tiptoed around it, forever inspired but never willing. I’d been “saving” Moonlight. In other words, I was measuring, again, and again, and again. Eventually, its calling became too loud and too many stars aligned; one of my best friends was equally as eager and the weather was perfect. It was simply time.
We went for it with our hearts and our souls, and they carried objective success for us until the crux pitch. You could say that first foray to the crux of Moonlight, I faced the table saw, and cut the three best pieces I knew how to. I learned from each one, but ultimately, none of them were good enough to get the job done. We weren’t dismayed, but excited that the stigma was gone and we could actually get to work on building something meaningful.
***
My maiden toil on the bed-build went late into the night. Gradually, the table saw became less gripping to use, and the bed legs were coming out closer to how I needed them to be. After a few failed attempts, I had four good legs for half of the futon style structure. I had poured myself into these thirteen inch 1x2s, and I was excited. I grabbed the plywood sheet that my mattress would eventually lay on, and balanced it on the upright legs standing on the floor of the garage to ensure that it was level.
Springsteen was halfway through Thunder Road, as I proudly admired my ugly duckling bed legs.
Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night.
You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright.
Dancing with satisfaction, I put the levelling measure on what would become half of my bed, just to be sure of course.
It wasn’t level! I couldn’t believe it! How? Confused, frustrated, and determined, I drew more lines and fired up the table saw again.
A few songs later, I returned to the garage floor with the best bed legs of my four hour carpentry career. Springsteen was bringing the house down with The Promised Land, and I was feeling good. I set the sheet down onto my four new legs.
The exact same! I couldn’t believe it!
Out of frustration, I dismissively flicked the levelling measure off the structure and onto the garage floor. When I went to pick it up and shake off the defeat, I noticed that even on the floor, it wasn’t reading level.
In fact, it was the exact same reading as the structure.
I inhaled the lesson I was taught by bed legs and uneven ground, and moved on with my work.
***
A week after our cherished failure, my friend Danny and I returned to Moonlight. Commitment and devotion were in the air as we blasted to the crux, climbing confidently and enjoying the synergy of sharing the rope with a brother in a beautiful place. When I think of bliss, I think of moments like that one; moving but not rushing, sharing wordless smiles, and watching Zion Canyon teem with afternoon life.
We arrived at the crux. Danny tried first, coming oh-so-close to freeing the pitch before his foot slipped off a smear and he was airborne. He lowered, and I could feel that both of us feared Groundhog Day; it was like me in the shop, cutting piece after piece, and making a mistake on an eighth of an inch that would derail the entire effort. Back at the anchor, Danny untied and handed me the rack: “Get us through this pitch, Nat.”
For a succession of moments, as it sometimes goes in climbing, I found my existence simplified into a sequence of moments of upward movement. I improvised when it made sense to, and I wasn’t afraid of failing or succeeding. By no means was it particularly graceful, but it was my moment of completely liberated expression. It was the flower of growth that blooms every now and then, and it is so, so lovely.
From when I stepped off the anchor, to the moments when I was belaying Danny up to me after climbing the pitch, I felt the feeling that I now know I am constantly striving toward. A deep silence had washed over the particularly loud place of my mind. For a moment, as I admired Zion Canyon, I was quietly liberated.
***
After my blunder with the uneven ground, I began to find flow in my bed building. I found myself thinking less about how each tool worked, or how each piece would interact with another. It became thoughtless and active. No longer was I anxious or frustrated. If I messed up a cut, I would examine where I had gone wrong, and try again. I improvised when it made sense to, progressively creating a structurally sound and aesthetically ridiculous bed. Late in the second night of work, without relief, I put the finished bed in my van. Quirks and all, it did exactly what it was meant to do. I put my mattress on top of the bed, and laid down under the blanket of that elusive silence. I lit a cigarette and took a walk through the silent night, quietly liberated.
