You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Spider Monkey.
I saw a spider monkey recently. It was agile, nimble, a climbing predator. It scampered into the canopy as the other climbing primates marveled in admiration.
Where did I see such a creature?
Did I get malaria shots and update my passport to get there? Did I get on a twin prop plane loaded with chickens and citizens with bad health care to see it? Did I walk through a rain forest filled with shades of green so rich, so diverse, there are art classes still debating what color green that is?
Nope. I did not go to Costa Rica or Brazil or Ecuador.
I did not sweat, I did not dodge snakes, I did not get bitten by a piranha.
I witnessed this spider monkey in Portland Oregon, a city known less for its jungle humidity and more for its IPA scores on locally brewed beers.
It’s 27 degrees in Portland. Unusually cold for this time of year I am told.
I am inside an urban warehouse. The temperature is slightly above freezing. I dare not remove my coat.
The warehouse is not filled with boxes or merchandise. This warehouse in the middle of a working class neighborhood, and is filled with faux rocks rising 25 feet into the air.
The rocks are littered with out-croppings and foot-holds and hand-holds in a variety of colors and shapes. There is tape marking various routes through this enigma of bumps and indentations.
I see all manner of people in all manner of Portland garb holding onto the wall, shimmeying up the side, planning their ascent.
Women and men and older citizens stand before the wall that looks like a teen with bad acne. They are attempting a work out, and I’m told exercising the brain, since the wall is not a ladder. It is a series of pit falls and climbing dead ends waiting to happen.
The smallest climber by far is my niece, Sophia. 8 years old, maybe 60 pounds soaking wet. Long hair, dirt from the play ground still under her nails. She is wearing climbing shoes and jeans. She is wearing a sleeveless T-shirt despite the fact I can almost see my breath.
She has steely blue eyes and a resolve that says I can do anything.
She doesn’t know that this is hard. She doesn’t realize that men 4 times her age, 5 times her weight, in excellent condition, are breathing hard, fighting to find the right path to the top.
She is the warehouse spider monkey.
I will watch her pick a rock to start and then like an Apollo rocket, zoom upward.
Rock climbing is as much a cerebral sport as it is a physical sport.
It takes strength to hold onto an indentation 1/2 an inch wide. It takes agility to hold your body weight in place with a big toe. It takes guts to cling to a wall 20 feet in the air with no safety harness or tethers. It takes a cerebral dedication to manuever up a sheer face that often arcs away from the vertical plane of 90 degrees.
I watch my niece climb in awe. I try to snap photographs of her, but even at 8, she hates her picture taken.
“Delete it,” she says with a serious scowl.
But when she is not looking I take pictures, because I am amazed.
She picks a rock to begin, and then she goes. She stops and looks at the path, for a moment. Foot and hand holds are placed indiscriminately. It’s like the New York Times crossword puzzle protruding from the wall. Picking the right hand hold, in conjunction with the right foot hold is imperative to navigating the ascent.
I watch her daddy. Tall and lanky and very smart. He stares at the wall, he contemplates a route. He gets on the wall and hangs, his massive size being pulled by gravity back toward the floor. He stops and meanders and ponders his route. He tries a hand hold to his left, then his right. He digs a big toe into the wall and tests his weight. He is slow like a wooly mammoth. The path is not as clear to him. He weighs his options, tests his path, moves up and then back down to scoot right to go back up.
But the spider monkey is different. She is the youngest athlete in the warehouse. She is nimble and quick and her choice always seems to be the best choice.
She is like a NASA engineer, as she quickly glances at the wall, at her options, and then moves. Sometimes she moves down to go left to go up.
I rarely see her spend more than a few minutes on any particular path.
I wonder if she is taking some kid friendly course. But then I will see a climber 3 times her age attempt the same pathway and it will feel like an eternity to scale to the summit.
So I am impressed by the spider monkey of Portland.
Only 8. Only 60 pounds. Dirty fingernails from a day on an elementary school playground. But somehow blessed with a sagacious ability to see the path where others do not.
In this jungle of rocks and innumerable possibilities, this little spider monkey sees the way.
I leave the warehouse impressed, knowing that some talents are not taught, some talents are just gifts.
The spider monkey has this gift. A vision to see the path that others stop to calculate.
Life’s Crazy™