The Wall

Dawn Wall on El Capitan Mountain Yosemite National Park

Never thought I’d have to come up against you.

Looking straight up, your forty five degrees in my view.

You’re not a mountain, you don’t have a place to ascend.

You’re the one thing, the one thing, with I didn’t want to contend.

You’re a wall. I’ve ran into you several times before.

Every time I’ve walked away beaten and sore.

Nonetheless you must not be anymore in my path.

I must get up you and over you, despite your wrath.

“Impossible! It can’t be done,” they all say.

BUT I’ve got something new in my pocket this day!

Look between my thumb and finger, see something tiny, small.

I need the faith the size of a mustard seed, that’s all!

And no matter how many attempts, how many pitches.

I’m going to climb until my upward view switches…

When I stand on top of you looking down below….

Others will see me, my fight with you, and their faith too will grow.

I watched a documentary “The Dawn Wall” this week on Tommy Caldwell climbing the Dawn Wall. It’s on Netflix right now and worth your time to watch. I get that it’s secular in it’s nature and they leave God out. But God won’t be left out! He’s in the types and shadows all throughout.

This rock formation has been free-climbed but never has anyone attempted the Dawn Wall part of it. It basically has a flat and smooth service. The men that attempted to climb it worked for years, months at a time tirelessly going over every inch of the surface mapping the climb out. They hung by their finger tips and toes. 3,000 feet straight up.

Pitches in the poem refer to a climbing term where the climb has been sectioned into parts. So many feet per pitch depending on the difficulty of that particular area. The Dawn Wall climb Tommy Cauldwell did had 32 pitches. So each pitch he’d start to climb. If he fell (caught by his ropes) before he climbed to the next section, he would have to go back to the beginning of that pitch and start over until he could climb that section without falling to the next pitch. Then do the same with each pitch until he reached the top. One particular pitch was 8 ft wide where there was no crevices or cracks to be had. Tommy had no choice but to leap horizontally from where he was hanging 8 ft to the next holding in the rock. He tried for several years to accomplish it. He even built the same scenario on the back of his shed and practiced at home as well.

Take your biggest challenge in your life. I mean an impossible, I’m never going to get past this thing, kind of challenge and look at it with eyes of these men. Go over every inch, find the areas where you can help God and find the areas where God is going to have to take control and give it to Him as you leap 8 feet. And know that sometimes there are areas, pitches that we will have to climb several times before we can climb it successfully.

 

 

 

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