J. Lennon - Castle

In a few moments, I had reached the monumental stone. Its face was nearly sheer; it was smooth, and cold to the touch. Its composition was utterly unlike the brittle shale that comprised most of the local landscape; rather, it appeared to be nothing less than an enormous granite boulder, a massive foreign ship that had sailed here, fifteen thousand years ago, on a sea of glacial ice. I pressed my body to it and tipped my head back, enduring a wave of nausea and pain. The swollen knot on my forehead throbbed.

Between the trees and the rock I could make out a blinding blue strip of sky, which a small white cloud slowly traversed. The wall was very high, and footholds were few. There was little chance I could scale it, given my age, lack of experience, and aching ribs. As important as confidence in matters of personal safety is an understanding of one’s own limits, and there was no question that this climb was beyond mine.

I began to walk counterclockwise around the rock, hoping that the southern face would offer a clearer path to the top. For the first time since I entered the forest, the going was easy: the rock’s huge shadow disinclined vegetative growth, and the ground at its foot was flat, dry, and clear. Within a few minutes, then, I could see that my hopes would be fulfilled. The sheer face gave way to a pronounced slant, its angle decreasing gradually as I moved along. When at last I reached the southernmost point of the rock, it became clear that its overall shape was similar to that of a boot, with a low “toe” end sloping upward to a steep “ankle” at the north. I would likely have little difficulty until I reached the ankle — indeed, I was able merely to lift my foot and hoist myself directly onto the “toe” without even using my hands.

Nevertheless, I took my time, alert to the possibility of further injury. Here on the lower end of the rock, there were deep fissures where lichens and hopeless maple and pine saplings grew. Smaller boulders were seemingly held to the face by will alone, and I was eager not to upset them; depressions in the stone held pools of slimy green water in which I made certain not to slip.

As I rose up out of the woods, the air seemed to clear, and I breathed more easily. I was still underneath the long morning shadow of the trees, but the sky was full and blue above me, and my aches and pains receded in a wave of enthusiasm and hope. And a further detail caught my attention: a conifer, as tall as thirty feet, which appeared to be growing directly out of the solid rock. It was the last major feature before the rock arched skyward at the “ankle,” and I made my way toward it, eager to discover how this natural wonder had come to be.

A few moments later, I stood before the tree. I am no arborist, but it appeared to me to be a member of the family Pinaceae, a common pine, with broad flat boughs of short, sharp needles, and large, woody cones. It stood in a wide depression in the rock, which in defiance of the odds had developed its own miniature ecosystem — a bowl of humus-covered soil rich with mosses and smelling strongly of vegetative fecundity. There was even a small subdepression, perhaps three feet in diameter, partly attached to the main one, that was filled with rainwater. The water looked extraordinarily clean, rippling gently in the breeze and reflecting sky, and I had to resist the strong (and probably dangerous) impulse to kneel down and drink deeply from it. Instead, I removed my canteen from my belt and took a few sips.

I walked slowly around the tree, marveling at its singularity, until I noticed something incongruous lying half-buried in the compost, something small and yellow and unnaturally straight. I crouched at the edge of the depression and pulled it from the soil. It was a pencil.

Specifically, it was an inch-long stub, the sharpened end blunted by use, the eraser end missing entirely. It was the kind of pencil you might find at a library, in a cup on top of the card catalog, or at a miniature golf course. It was aged by the elements, but not much: the process of its subsumation into the earth had only just begun, with the paint still largely intact and the wood only beginning to grow soft. As I had upon escaping from the pit, I stood up straight and looked around suddenly, as if someone might be watching me, assessing my reaction.

Of course, this was silly. The pencil might have been dropped here at any time in the past few years. It could even have been left by a crow. And while these woods were fairly remote from any large town, they lay bounded by paved roads, in the middle of an inhabited region of the state. In fact, I should have been more shocked, on this little expedition, not to have encountered some human artifact. But given my solitude over the previous twenty-four hours, and for that matter over the preceding several weeks, coupled with the alarm and injury I’d suffered in the pit, it was only natural that a hint of paranoia should once again steal over my consciousness. I chuckled at my all-too-human reaction and slipped the pencil into my pocket. Then I turned to the “ankle.”

It was a monolithic chimney of solid rock, rising about seventy feet from where I stood; and while its face was hardly as imposing as the north face of the rock proper, it still presented a considerable challenge to the amateur climber. I breathed in and out, assessing its surface, plotting a path of ascent. Its angle was approximately seventy-five degrees, a not inconsiderable grade, but surmountable. The stone here had suffered more from the elements than its northern counterpart, giving me a distinct advantage, in the form of cracks, outcroppings, and ledges. I paced back and forth, examining the surface from every possible vantage point, and after ten minutes or so of consideration, a clear route presented itself to me.

I pulled on my gloves, changed into my climbing shoes, and fastened my helmet. After a moment’s thought, I laid my pack down on the rock, next to the pine tree. Though I had filled it judiciously, to avoid excess weight, the pack was large, and its absence from my back gave me new confidence. I flexed my fingers, stretched my arms over my head, and took hold of a crack in the rock.

Within a few minutes, and despite my injuries, I had climbed twenty feet into the air. The hand- and footholds I had spied from the base of the wall had proved even more effective than I had dared hope; up close, the rock face was everything a climber could desire. I paused to catch my breath on an outcropping, and, with one hand wedged into a crack, I hazarded a glance over my shoulder. I had nearly reached the forest ceiling. Below me the pine tree betrayed a slight lean to the south; I saw my pack lying forlornly on the ground beside it. The sun was on me now, and I was sweating; the air would doubtless reach sixty degrees today.

But every moment I held on still required an expenditure of energy. And so I continued, finding a hold for my left hand and pulling myself up another few inches.

At this point the going became rough. The rock provided few handholds, and my fingers scrabbled over the surface, desperate for purchase. Several times I had to move back down, pull myself laterally across the face, and seek another route. I had one frightening moment when I was certain I would fall: what I thought was an outcropping on a ledge proved to be no more than a loose shard of stone, and I was thrown off balance when it broke away. But my other handhold was secure, and I suffered little more than a racing heart.

It took the better part of an hour, but soon I realized that I was near the top. The grade dropped off precipitously, and I was able to scurry up the last ten feet on all fours. The sun beat down, warming the weathered stone, and I collapsed upon it, grateful and exhausted. I had reached the summit.