27 comments/ 42746 views/ 2 favorites Watching Simon Fall By: Munachi They say that when you die, you see your whole life flashing by in front of your eyes. My life as I knew it ended on a sunny Sunday in April. When Simon fell, something did indeed die inside me. And I saw my life, our life. One year, a tiny part of my complete time in this world, and yet it had been everything that counted. I couldn't stop the images, just as I couldn't stop Simon's descent to the ground. I had been condemned to stand there motionless, helpless, and see both, my memories of our time together, and his falling body. He fell thirty metres, and during his fall I relived a whole year, and that year to me had been a whole life. *** It really was a beautiful day. The sky was of a bright blue; the sun had melted the last remains of winter from the earth. It seemed nature was trying to make up for a much too long, much too cold winter. Everything smelled fresh as we walked along the overgrown little path towards the Dog's Head. Simon was walking in front of me, breaking the way through the young shoots of bushes and trees trying to bar our way. I felt like an intruder into this mysterious paradise of bird song and wet grass. Then I saw the rock. It appeared suddenly between the trees, towering high above the forest, bigger than the other rocks in the area. I was surprised I hadn't noticed it long ago. It occurred to me how appropriate that name was: Dog's Head. It looked indeed like the head of a dog with a long snout, twisted weirdly to look right up into the sky, the nose its highest point. I narrowed my eyes, and the rock looked yet more like a dog. I believed to see it snarl menacingly. Quickly I opened my eyes again — it was just a normal, beautiful rock. "That's where we will go," Simon had stopped and pointed up to the dog's nose. "The view is great, you can see everything." I hadn't been out here before, but Simon had. He used to live in a nearby town, and still went here every spring, and the Dog's Head was one of his favourite rocks. He had been talking about it the very first day I met him. I could still hear his voice as if it was yesterday that Cathy and I stood with him in the bouldering area at the City Climbing Centre, and he told us about his planned trip to the area he had grown up in. 'It's not really spring for me, until I climbed the Dog's Head.' I smiled at Simon and nodded. "I can't wait." I hoped he didn't hear the slight trembling in my voice. I was scared, as always. But I was also looking forward to the climb, that was true. Maybe it was that great feeling to be safe back on the ground that made it all worth it, I thought. Better not think about it, I decided. My thoughts wandered back to that day, a bit over a year ago. Who had thought then that I would be here one day, walking through the wild, towards a rock I was planning to climb? Not me, certainly. I had never been particularly outdoorsy. Born in a small town myself, I couldn't wait to be done with school and move into a nearby city where I wanted to go to university. Once I lived there, though, various clubs and parties became much more important than my studies. I attended classes more or less regularly, but didn't invest as much time into them as I should have. An evening job in a pub consumed a lot of my energy. Cathy worked in the same pub, and soon became my best friend. It wasn't rare that we went out after work, and soon I would not even consider taking any classes that started before noon. I felt stuck at university, my parents started asking when I planned to graduate, but somehow I just never found the time to take some of the most important courses. It didn't seem to matter, though. Cathy was two years older than me, and she wasn't even thinking of graduation yet, either. It was Cathy who suggested going to the City Climbing Centre. At first I thought she was crazy. Climbing was about the last thing on my mind, and I couldn't imagine Cathy to be any more interested in that type of exhausting and scary sport. It turned out to be about a guy. Of course. Almost everything Cathy did had to do with a guy she had a crush on, and wanted to see again, or impress. "His name is Simon," she told me. "I met him at that party the other day, when you had to work. He's so good looking, and you can't even imagine the muscles he has and everything. Well he told me he always goes climbing, so I asked him if he could teach me -- I really want to see him again. So anyway, I meet him there tomorrow. Are you coming too?" "But what am I supposed to do there?" We were standing behind the counter in the pub, we had our shift together that day; it was a quiet shift, though. "I..." she blushed. "I can't go there alone... And I told him my friend also wanted to learn climbing." I laughed. Cathy was anything but shy. Usually she just asked the guys she liked on dates straight away. If she was making excuses like that, then there must really be something about that guy. Admittedly, I was curious. "Okay. I'll come, and I'll watch your climbing, or whatever. But I am not getting up any walls myself," I finally said. *** "Isn't it beautiful?" There was pride in Simon's voice, as we reached the place from which he wanted to climb the rock. We let our backpacks slip to the ground, and Simon touched the rock's surface tenderly, before he started to pull out his climbing gear from his bag. He inspected everything carefully, he always did. I remembered how that was the first thing he told Cathy and me -- before even showing us what gear we will use, or how to do anything, he told us that we should always make sure everything is alright. Thinking back to a year earlier, I remembered I was looking around at the climbing place rather nervously, watching people ascending to heights that just imagining made me dizzy but also strangely excited. Cathy, on the other hand, had her eyes only on Simon; she didn't care much what he was saying, as long as he, hopefully, would ask her out on a real date soon. We weren't going to start climbing right away, anyway, Simon explained. First we would boulder a bit, so we could get a bit of a feeling for things, before being concerned with heights, and securing someone, and similar problems. He then led us to a wall covered with colourful handles of various sizes, and climbed up a bit there. "What we are going to do right now is called bouldering," he explained, while hanging on to the wall as if that was the most natural thing in the world. I suddenly noticed how well defined his muscles were. It was our turn to try then. Simon explained patiently where to put our feet, how to best hold on to the wall, how to shift our weight and position so we could move with ease, without using up too much of our strength. He liked explaining things. I often teased him later on that he should have become a teacher, and he usually answered that trying to teach me anything was already the task of a life-time. To which I then would giggle and try to kick my elbow into his side or something similar, but he'd catch my arms with ease and hold them away with one hand while tickling me with the other, and well... Things would proceed from there. The thought alone caused a warm feeling inside me, a certain anticipation. I looked at Simon. He was still preparing his gear. This wasn't a good moment, I knew. Right now, he had his mind only on the rock. Afterwards, when we would be back on the ground, and I would be glad to still be alive, and probably feeling like I wanted to sleep at least a year... On any other occasion Simon had difficulties keeping his hands off me, but there wasn't anything in the world that could distract him from climbing -- even less so, if it was the Dog's Head. Had it been anything else he was so much into, I would probably have gotten jealous. As it was, I understood and in a way even shared Simon's fascination. In my own way, though. I can still remember what it felt like, my first climb back in the climbing centre. Simon was belaying me, and Cathy stood next to him, trying to get his attention. Her constant chatter made me nervous. As did the height of the wall I was standing in front of. We were at the easiest route of the whole place; I was tied securely to a rope. Top-rope. Taking the rope up with me was something I was going to learn later, Simon explained. For it being the easiest route, I sweated quite a bit. Simon kept telling me where best to put my feet and hands, what to do next. And that I needn't be scared, that I should just try. If I fell, he had me safe. I wasn't sure whether to believe that or not, but with every bit I made it further up the wall I felt more secure. It was as if I was climbing away from everything. From my parents' constant reminders that I should do more for university. From all the pubs and parties that suddenly seemed old and boring. From a life that I somehow felt disoriented in. It was almost as if for the first time in my life I had a clear and distinct goal: I wanted to get up there, somehow. I was scared, I can't deny that. I stayed scared, every time I climbed. I am an easily scared. Cathy, the few times she did come to the climbing place, laughed about my fear. She didn't worry, she had no fear, she learned everything with ease, yet she didn't care either way, and soon her interest in climbing ceased altogether. For me, on the other hand, it became an addiction. My heart was beating wildly just thinking of the heights I was going into, I wondered if I was crazy, yet I just couldn't stop. I admit, in part that had to do with Simon. The worst was yet to come, the scariest part of my first climb that still went relatively easy. I reached the top of the wall, I looked over it; someone had stuck a little picture behind it, a motivation for the children that were occasionally doing climbing courses here. And now? Simon told me to lean backwards, keep the feet at the wall, but let go with the hands. "Just let them hang down, or hold on to the rope, if that makes you feel safer." I did, and it helped a bit being able to hold onto something. I leaned backwards, and for a moment I thought nothing is holding me. Then I felt the resistance of the rope. "Okay," I shouted with a slightly shaky voice. "You can let me down now." The next moment the resistance of the rope was gone, and my first instinct was to quickly lean forward again, grab the wall, and hold on to it. But I didn't, and then, slowly at first, he was lowering me. When I got a feeling for how to guide myself with the legs so I wouldn't crash into the wall, Simon let me rappel faster, and a few moments later I stood back on safe ground. "Wow," was all I could say that day, and I knew I had to come back. *** "I'm ready. Security check?" Simon stood in front of the rock, the rope tied into his harness. He always insisted on checking each other, whether the ropes were tied in correctly, whether all Karabiners were closed. 'You can never be too careful,' he said, and I agreed. I never completely got over my fear when climbing, in a way it was part of the fun, but when I climbed with other people I often felt less safe than with Simon. Most seemed to think they were experienced enough not to make any mistakes. Simon always double-checked everything, not because he mistrusted himself or me, or was scared, but just because he said that was the way it is supposed to be done. "I'll go up about thirty meters, and build a stance there," he explained. "Then you follow me, alright?" I nodded. In my stomach there was once again this feeling of having eaten too little, or maybe too much, I don't know, like a hole. I felt like that each time we were about to climb, whether it was in an artificial climbing place or out in nature. And the fact that I would have to start by myself, in a little while, when he was up there and couldn't even check I made all my knots correctly, made it worse. Of course, I had been climbing for a year and knew how to do everything, but I was nervous every single time. And yet, I also looked forward to the climb more than anything. It was similar to that time after I first started climbing. I couldn't stay away from the City Climbing Centre after I had been there with Cathy and Simon. Simon had told us he was going to go spend a week in the village he had grown up in, and he told us about the Dog's Head and how he would climb it like every year. There was no way of getting Cathy to go to the Climbing Centre with me as long as he wasn't there, so I went by myself, rented some shoes, and tried to boulder a bit by myself. I watched the other people there, imitated what they were doing, and usually failed miserably, but after a lot of practice there were a short route or two I managed. I was still smiling when I got home hours later, exhausted and sweaty, my arms aching, and longing for a bath more than anything in the world. I went there twice more that week, bouldering a bit and watching the climbers. I wanted to go up there again, I had almost forgotten about my fear now, just remembered the feeling of having made it, of having safe ground under my feet again and looking up there, thinking that I made it. *** I could see right away that Simon had climbed this rock before. He tried to take a different route each time, he told me, but still, he seemed right at home, and climbed with a speed that made it difficult to take up the rope quick enough. I tried to watch closely what he was doing, I was by far not as good a climber as him, and probably could use some ideas of how to best get up there. But my thoughts kept wandering all the time that day, I just couldn't focus. Now I sometimes wonder why I was thinking of all these things just that day, of how I met him and how I started climbing. Did I suspect something? I don't know. Maybe it was just the fact that it had been almost exactly a year. Back then, Cathy had called me one day to tell me that Simon was back from his journey, and that they were going to the movies the next evening. "He asked me if you were coming along too," she said, in a tone that was difficult to interpret. I hesitated. "Well, would you want me to?" I asked eventually. "No, not really," she said. "I'd like to spend some time alone with him, maybe that will lead to something." "Well then I won't come along. I don't really have time anyway," I said and hoped that the little pang of jealousy I felt didn't show in my voice. Cathy had always been the one that got more attention from guys, and who went out with more guys. I occasionally had boyfriends, there had been one serious one in my last year of school, but somehow I didn't meet men as easily as Cathy did. I never minded. Occasionally Cathy tried to set me up with friends of her boyfriends, in one or two cases that even lead to relationships between me and that friend that lasted longer than the one Cathy had with her guy. Still, I was too busy enjoying life, partying, and avoiding my studies, to think much about anything serious. Cathy, on the other hand, suspected each new guy to be the one. Until, a few weeks later, it was the next one's turn. This was the first time that I felt jealous. I hadn't thought too much about it until that moment, but each time I went to the Climbing Centre, I secretly hoped Simon might have returned from his vacation, and might be there too. I spent the next evening in front of the TV, with various types of chocolate and ice cream. I didn't have to work, and I didn't feel like going out. Of course, I usually went out with Cathy anyway, but a few of my other friends had called and asked to join them in the pub. I didn't feel like it though. I couldn't help thinking of Simon, of the patience with which he had shown us climbing techniques, of his encouraging smile. And of Cathy, with him. *** "Safe!" Simon's voice tore me out of my thoughts. He had reached the spot thirty metres above me, where he planned to secure his stance with a quickdraw and then belay from up there so I could follow him. The spot was about half way to the top, to which he again would continue first. I opened the Karabiner I was using for the HMS belay and wanted to take out the rope so I then could attach the end to my harness. "Shit, what is this...?" Simon's voice made me look up again. He seemed to be struggling quite a bit to loosen the figure-eight he had tied the rope to his harness with. I remember wondering a bit, why it might be so tight -- after all he hadn't even needed to sit into the rope once while climbing up. Finally he managed, and the next moment he was leaning back, more and more, much further than the quickdraw he was securing himself with should allow. I saw his feet lose contact to the rock, and he started his journey downward. All this couldn't have taken more than the fraction of a second, but somehow it seemed an eternity to me. I believed I could even see the startled expression on his face, despite him being thirty metres above me, and facing away from me. And at the same moment I believed I heard his voice. He was whispering into my ear: "I think I've fallen in love with you." The words he had first said so many months ago, last year, on a warm day in late spring, as we were sitting on the grass in a park by one of the canals, his arms around me and the taste of his lips still on mine. Cathy didn't know we were there. Even though she was already seeing another guy, I still didn't dare to tell her. From the things she had told me after her first date with Simon, not much happened there. She was convinced he was just shy, but he hadn't seemed like that to me. I kept that to myself, though. Cathy wouldn't have listened to me anyway. And in fact I tried to avoid talking with her about him altogether, since I just couldn't get him out of my head. I kept going to the Climbing Centre. I felt bad -- was I trying to meet him again, behind my best friend's back, to see what my chances were with him? But I enjoyed bouldering and watching the climbers more than I would ever have thought. I wanted to climb again, and signed up for a beginner's course that was held every other weekend. It wasn't cheap, but the more time passed, the more I forgot having been scared, and just remembered that great feeling of having managed to climb up the wall, the feeling of strength. I suppose Cathy noticed that I less often felt like going clubbing after work. I felt healthier than I ever had since I got quite a bit of exercise at least a few days every week, and somehow the amount of alcohol and cigarettes we usually consumed on our nights out started bothering me. One day, then, a few weeks later, I started the climbing course. We learned the belaying method Simon had already shown us, and I felt good, I knew what the teacher was talking about. He had an eye on us as each of us had to climb up in top rope while another was belaying. We went up at a part that wasn't too high, and I got up there too quick to get scared. "That was good!" a familiar voice said behind me after my climbing partner had let me down to the ground again. I turned around: Simon stood there, with a wide smile on his face. I could feel I was blushing, and noticing that made me nervous enough to blush even more. "So you really are getting into climbing?" he asked. "How about we practice together a bit more once your class is over. And..." he hesitated for a moment, "we could have a coffee or something afterwards?" I was still a bit out of breath from the climb, so I needed a moment to be able to answer. "Yes, I'd love to," I said then. * From that day on we met more often at the Climbing Centre, at first by coincidence, then we started arranging our meetings. My climbing skills progressed well, though I must admit, a certain amount of fear was always there, and that actually got worse the better I managed to go up the routes we practiced on. I did my best to hide it; I didn't want to make a fool of myself in front of Simon. Watching Simon Fall Afterwards we usually had a beer or two in the pub by the climbing centre, or a coffee. We seemed to never run out of things to talk about, and it became quite obvious Simon was interested in me. Yet, I made sure to keep a certain distance. I was worried about Cathy. I had mentioned her to Simon that day of my climbing class, and he indicated that he had told her he wasn't interested in anything but friendship, yet Cathy kept mentioning him to me. I had never seen her interested in anyone for that long without that anything had happened between her and the guy. She started seeing someone else anyway, but mentioned to me that she hoped 'it would make Simon jealous.' I doubted Simon even knew she was seeing someone, and if he knew he might just be happy for her. Then, about a month after I first met Simon, on a warm and sunny day in early May, we decided not to go climbing, but just enjoy the sunshine sitting at the canal, watching the people that gathered there at the first bit of sunshine. Some were juggling, others playing guitar, most just sitting there and talking. We were in the middle of the city, but the sound of birdsong, the smell of fresh growing grass and trees, the water in front of us, which was almost clean, made us feel as if we were out in nature. Simon put his arm around me, and I moved a bit closer to him. When his lips touched mine, for the first time, no thought of Cathy crossed my mind. I knew she was seeing someone else, but it wasn't even that. I had forgotten she existed. Or any of the people around us. There was just Simon and I. Then, his lips and tongue let go of mine, I could still taste him in my mouth though, all I wanted was to lean closer to him, and continue kissing him. But his mouth wandered to my ear instead, and he whispered those words, that almost a year later, at the Dog's Head, I believed to suddenly hear so clearly again: "I think I've fallen in love with you." *** How long does it take for a human body to fall down a distance of 30 metres? A second? Less? I don't know, but to me it seemed an eternity. When I now think back to the day Simon fell, what I most remember and what most surprises me is, how quiet it was. All I heard was the sound of the wind, of the birds. All the normal sounds of that area, of nature. Nothing different, as if no one but me noticed Simon was falling down the rock. As if not even he himself noticed. I didn't scream either. Not on the outside. Only inside my head, there was a scream. A scream of panic, but somehow it mixed with screams of joy, the screams of two voices, Simon's and mine. Shouts of joy from late last summer, when we camped at a little mountain lake for two weeks, and walked up to a small cliff early every morning, and jumped into the water for our morning swim. We were flying through the air, towards the cold water that would make me squeal the very next moment, and then we swam until we were exhausted, and scrambled back onto dry land, and rubbed each other dry with towels, though usually halfway through we started kissing and were rolling on top of each other in the grass, enjoying the solitude of the mountains, and each other's presence. Later on, even more exhausted, but happier than either of us had ever been in our whole life, we would let the sun do the rest of the drying, and keep the warmth in us, that our kisses and closeness had created. The few times I had travelled before had been trips to Amsterdam or Paris or Prague with Cathy and other friends, and the purpose of these trips had usually been to party, and maybe go shopping. They had been exhausting, these trips, in a very different way than my trip into the mountains with Simon had been. They drained me of energy, and in the end the whole weekend or week we had spent there had always seemed like a blur. It had never really occurred to me, though, that camping and hiking would be something that interested me. Simon's passion for nature, for mountains, for hiking and cycling and all kinds of other things just as much as climbing, was hard to resist. It felt like this summer I was discovering more than I had seen all the past twenty-five years of my life. I still couldn't get myself to study much more than before, but I felt like my life started having a direction, somehow. I felt healthier than I had in years, and at the same time, safer, less alone somehow. I had always had lots of friends, and occasionally a boyfriend, but with Simon it was different. I can't really explain it. I think for the first time in my life, I, too, had fallen in love. It had taken me a while to tell Cathy, but eventually I couldn't hide it anymore. It was obvious I was seeing someone. I rarely had time, and occasionally when she called me in the evening to see what I was up to; she could hear there was someone else at my place. For a while I avoided her questions, I was still worried she would see it as betrayal on my behalf that I was seeing a guy she was interested in. Eventually she had stopped mentioning Simon, though, and now talked about her current boyfriend, whom she had met on one of these evenings out that I used to always join her in -- I hadn't that time, because I was staying at Simon's place. When I told her, it turned out she had known. Or at least suspected. Or maybe that was just what she said. I wasn't sure suddenly why I had worried so much. We were friends, after all. Despite of that, our friendship wasn't the same anymore. All of a sudden we had very different interests. I didn't notice it very much during the summer; Simon and I had too many plans. In August he had three weeks of vacation, and it wasn't too difficult to take off from my job in the pub. We decided to spend part of this time in the mountains, camping at a secluded little campsite that very few people knew about, near a beautiful deep lake, and doing smaller hiking excursions from there. The other part of the time we went to Saxon Switzerland, so I could try my first outside climbs on the sandstone rocks there. These three weeks were of the most beautiful of my life. The last morning at our little campsite is one of these moments imprinted into my mind forever. A bright sun woke us up early in the morning, and we crawled out of the tent into a beautiful day. We ran up to the cliffs and jumped into the cold water, swam a race across the lake, dived and tried to catch each other under water. We swam naked, there was no one else around to see us. I was swimming in deep water when I felt something hold my legs from underneath, and pull me down. It was Simon; he had swum up to me without that I noticed. At first I struggled, laughing I tried to get free. But he pulled me closer to himself, and started kissing me there, underwater. With a few strong kicks into the water we got our heads back above the surface, without breaking the lock of our lips once, and got lost in the taste of each other's lips, the feeling of each other's skin under our hands, the sound of each other's breath. Then Simon broke our kiss. I tried to follow his mouth with mine, to start kissing him again, but he smiled and then sank down into the water in front of me. For a moment I was confused, then I could feel his hands touching my legs, and pulling them apart a bit. Then I could feel his lips and his tongue touch me there, and I closed my eyes. He was sucking on my most sensitive spot, then flicking his tongue over it. I seemed to be floating more on the sensation than the water we were swimming in. Every now and then he had to stop, to get above the surface again for fresh air. When his face once again appeared in front of me, I didn't say anything, but with a smile I pointed towards the shore. He nodded, and without a word we swam there as quick as we could. We fell into the grass at the shore, hugging and touching each other, our kisses almost violent of our need for each other. A slight wind was going over our wet skin, that should have made us shiver of cold, but all we felt was the heat of the other's body. Simon was lying on top of me, I felt his lips on mine, then on my neck, he was biting me tenderly there. I felt his tongue travelling up to my ear, heard his breath, heavy with arousal. And I could feel his arousal. His cock was pressed against my stomach. He lifted up his body with the help of his arms, and I could feel its head touch my sex, albeit not entering me yet. I wrapped my legs around him, tried to pull him inside me, impatiently. I needed to feel him. He waited, pushed a bit into me teasingly and pulled out again, and even that was already enough to make my breathing louder, turn it into moans. When he eventually entered me completely with one thrust, there were again screams filling the valley, echoing from the mountains. * Later, when we were lying quietly in the grass again, my head resting on his chest, there was silence around us. Only disturbed by the quiet splashes of small waves against the shore, and an occasional breeze of wind or a bird's song. *** There was no chronological order to my thoughts that day Simon fell. A fall of less than a second is too short to think a year or a life in words, in film sequences, one picture after the next. They were all flashing in front of my mind's eye at the same time, as if time had stopped, or maybe never existed -- as if it all was happening now. And at that very moment, while Simon fell and the birds kept singing and the rock remained silent, at that moment I thought it would be like this forever. I held on to that belief, that his fall would never end. I didn't want to allow myself to succumb to the fear of losing him. Yet my hands were clutching the rope, trying to hold him, as if it was still my own strength he was relying on. The rope, however, wasn't attached to his body anymore. It was falling down, just as Simon was, but slower. It was lighter and reached the ground fractions of a second after him. The strong grip of my hands was useless; there was nothing I could do. I wanted him to hold me, comfort me, tell me I did nothing wrong; for that was what I feared most, that it was my fault. But he kept falling, silently. * In September I gave up my little apartment and moved in with Simon. In October, we had our first big argument. It was unexpected for me. Simon and I had never argued before, not even small quarrels, I hadn't thought it was possible. Of course, we had moved in together quite quickly, and I hadn't even lived with anyone since leaving my parents' place. Several of my friends had warned me, but everything between Simon and me had been so perfect, I couldn't imagine any problems. I don't even remember what the argument was about. Something insignificant that somehow just grew until I angrily left the house convinced I would never come back. It was October and raining heavily, when I rang Cathy's doorbell late in the evening. We hadn't seen much of each other lately, I had been too busy enjoying the last few sunny days, and then moving. When she saw my tears, she hugged me without asking any questions. The days I stayed at her place seemed the longest I had ever gone through. I didn't go out much, or speak much, or even eat much. And I refused to call Simon or answer the phone when he called. Yet all I could think of was that I didn't want to lose him. Our argument had been my fault, I know that now and knew it then. And I couldn't imagine my life without him anymore. It was Cathy, who eventually talked me into meeting up with him. Once that step was taken, when I saw him enter the café we had agreed to meet up in, I forgot our argument, I forgot being angry, I even forgot we were in a public place -- fortunately Simon remembered that. The winter that followed was cold and long. There was more snow that usual, the temperatures kept us inside a lot. We didn't mind, we had each other. But when the sun was shining, it was difficult to keep Simon inside. * Then, finally, spring came, and towards the end of March, the temperatures went up. The sun was shining almost every day, and Simon started talking about his yearly trip to his village, and to the Dog's Head. We had been to the village together before, visiting his parents. The area offered a few good skiing opportunities, which had been a nice change from the dreary city winter. But this trip was to be different. The Dog's Head was slightly more difficult than the climbs I had done before, and while we had gone to the City Climbing Centre's gym at least once every week during the winter, I still wasn't as well in shape as I had been at the end of summer. And the slight fear I had always felt when climbing had increased. I wanted to continue, of course, but somehow there was a hole in my stomach before each climb, a tickling feeling that increased with each bit I worked myself up the wall. Also, the Dog's Head was Simon's rock, in a way. He didn't take just anyone along for his spring climb there -- usually he went with an old childhood friend. That he had decided to go with me instead, felt almost like a test. Simon, however, managed to assuage my fears. He was an experienced climber; he would take care of me. And I was good enough, he said. I would manage the Dog's Head without bigger problems. *** I will never forget the sound that broke the silence of Simon's fall. The sound of a human body hitting rocky ground. A short, dry thump, a crack of breaking bones, followed by a lighter thump of the end of his rope hitting ground. Then it was silent again, just the birds continued their song. And then, finally, there was the scream that had been missing all throughout. My own scream of terror. I screamed his name, and ran towards the motionless body. Simon was still alive when I reached him; his eyes were open and looking at me. I kneeled down next to him, and took his hand in mine. He was lying in a weird, twisted way, there was blood, but the expression on his face wasn't one of fear or pain. I don't know how to describe the look in his eyes. The word that comes the closest might be thankfulness, he looked at me as if thanking me for being there, for that year we had spent together. I had stopped screaming, it seemed almost impossible for me to speak. "I'll... I'll go get help," I choked. He didn't answer, he probably couldn't, but there was a tiny, almost impalpable pressure from his hand on mine. He was squeezing my hand, as if trying to keep me from going, and his eyes pleaded me to stay. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to cry, but couldn't. I wanted him to hold me in his arms and tell me he was all right, nothing had happened. I couldn't go away and just let him lie there, but he needed help; that much was obvious. I was still holding his hand in mine, and I put my other hand on his head, ran my fingers through his hair as I had done so often before. "It's going to be alright, you are going to be fine," I whispered, maybe more to convince myself of it. He moved his lips; the effort seemed to tire him, and no sound left his mouth. I leaned in closer, to hear what he was trying to say. I couldn't. He was unable to speak; he didn't have the strength anymore. Instead, with all effort that was still possible for him, Simon smiled at me, and again there was this expression in his eyes before he closed them forever. *** A year has passed since the day Simon fell. We still don't quite know what had happened, but the fact that the quickdraw for his stance was dangling freely from the bolt, and that in the rope there was a half opened figure-eight knot seem to indicate that I hadn't been the only one who was distracted that day. They say that any mistake that is possible, is bound to be made at some point. Experienced climbers aren't excluded from that possibility, even if they are as careful and thorough as we all knew Simon to have been. It seems that by mistake he secured the other end of his quickdraw into the noose below the figure of eight in his rope, rather than into his harness. A year has passed. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be time to start seeing other guys again. Life has to go on, they say. Cathy wants to introduce me to a friend of the guy she is currently seeing. Life does go on. And yet, all is different. I managed to finish my studies, I don't know how I did it, I suppose in the first weeks it was one way to keep me from crying continuously, and later, well, I had nothing other to do it seemed. A year. I have climbed a lot the past year, even more than I did with Simon. The strange thing is, I am not scared anymore. Sometimes I feel like I can't die anymore, because I already died along with Simon. What I am living now is a different life, I feel detached from it at times. But climbing makes me feel close to him, as if he is still there. Especially when I climbed the Dog's Head today. It was as if he was still there, in the sunshine of a perfect April day, in the song of birds, the light sound of the breeze, and most of all in the warm, rough feeling of the rock beneath my fingers.