Fingertrips
Here’s to 2024: the silent ways we adapted. Internal resettings, quiet calibrations. Small things remade.
2024: The year my finger changed shape.
The last joint on the ring finger of my left hand veers, now, towards the middle finger. Curves inward, when I press my hand flat, unlike its straight partner finger on the right.
My finger’s new shape helps me trust it’s healed. Like a tree shaped by wind, a relatively painless inner revision, a sewing together in a slightly newer way, than how the finger used to be.
The Tale of a Popped Pulley
Spring found me in the Rock Dump, newly squared out through my shoulders. I’d sidestepped the slushy end of Tlingit Aani’s icy February and March by climbing in Mexico.
After Mexico I felt strong. The accumulation of hours and days when there is nothing to do, in the course of the day, but climb. My climbing partner and I woke up, breakfasted, hiked into the canyons, and climbed towering limestone walls all day. At satisfying dusk, we ate as many street tacos as either one of us had pesos, maybe a cerveza con lima. Walked back to the campsite. Showered. I’d pass out in my tent. Repeat in the morning.
By April, when the Dump pulled up the sectional door to welcome in the sweet early sunlight back in Tlingit Aani, I felt made of limestone. Pocketed. But strong.
I climbed with Phoenix, a bodyworker.
Highlight of 2024: Drafting a group of climbing girlfriends in Juneau into a group chat Diana named the Ferals, after I declared I was manifesting a group of feral lady friends -- rarely seen, because they are, much like mountain lions, god knows where any given moment. I think currently we’re spread across Juneau, Sitka, Puerto Rico (C? You back?), an intentional community in New Zealand, and a van life festival in Arizona.
I tied in. “I’ll go up the red, then back down, then do the yellow, then back down. Is good?”
I said it so confidently. I felt perfectly comfortable warming up on crimps -- holds accessed only by the terminal joints, the pads of the fingertips.
Worth nothing: I love crimps. I love what’s (for some reason) called technical climbing (as if every kind of climbing doesn’t have its own technique). I love balance.
Near the top of the red was a little almost-side pull on a sliver of plastic. I settled my fingertips into the sort of crimp I love: the probably.
The probably I can move myself up on just this little. It’ll probably be okay.
This is one of the best ways to climb. Low risk “not sure if I’m going to fall here.”
I tensioned through my left fingertips. I could trust that. My feet were okay. To reach up widely with the right, I pulled on the thin edge of plastic.
The pop was so loud Phoenix heard it from the ground.
The climber on the route next to me: “Oh shit. Are you okay?”
“You know, why don’t you go ahead and bring me down,” I called to Phoenix.
I untied sheepishly. “Pride goeth before… what was it, again?”
“What was that?”
“I think I popped a pulley. Shoot. Well, maybe it’s not bad.”
The Rock Dump had no ice packs but the cheerful friend at the desk let me stick my hand in the microfreezer. I crouched amid the white-dusted coffee mugs and lost canteens, holding my finger to the chemically generated ice, and joked about it. Because what else was I going to do.
A popped pulley is tearing a finger tendon. It sounds like those explosive snaps 90s kids threw at sidewalks. It means discomfort and decreased strength until it heals. It’s an incredibly non-bothersome injury unless you happen to regularly rely on the strength of your fingers, like if you are, persay, a rock climber or maybe a concert French hornist. Tendons have sparser blood supply than softer muscle tissue. There are two groups of people in my life who know this fact: yin yogis and climbers. Altogether now: decreased blood supply means tendon injuries take longer to heal.
On the other (noninjured) hand, their more rigid structure increases tendinous resilience. Tendons can take a whole lot more force than muscles. Tendons in the feet, for instance, can carry eight times a person’s body weight. We carry this superhero girding in our joints.
I’m always reverent of climbers’ hands. In some very strong climbers, knuckle joints look perpetually swollen. We have cultural aesthetic to marvel at muscle, but God, I love those strengthened tendons.
I’ve always trusted the tensile loading in my fingers. This was the first time I pushed past that particular limit.
All this summer I climbed easy. At first it was maddening. I’d never felt stronger in my climbing life, and instead of playing with 5.12s as I’d dreamed, I was trying to campus 5.7s, or climb with one foot. With the exception of penguining my way up easy slab without my hands, gym sessions were just grounding my hyper-high energy, not actually physically channeling it in the hyper-focused way that dispels my kinetic energy and keeps me even-keeled, más o menos. (The penguining actually gave me some excellent information about breathing into my pelvic floor.) I ran reps on easy overhang and turned a lot of this-child-has-been-given-too-much-sugar somersaults on the bouldering pads. (Yes, I’m so-called neurodivergent. Honestly I believe it’s just being a wild animal living in capitalism.) I was in the gym, this place I have had most of my very happiest moments in Tlingit Aani, but barred from preferred habitat, told to feed myself from different forage. I missed tensile balancing.
I had a great time, don’t get me wrong. I both totally respected the severity of the injury -- I even had to hold a steering wheel intentionally, lest I weight the joint; for a minute there I could only type with my right hand -- and I got to goof off with my friends all summer. I don’t write climbing stories leading to “and then I conquered.” I have literally nothing to conquer. There is not a single summit I give a damn about (outside of existential value). This is it, folks. This is hobbyist climbing. Feeling strong and then not feeling strong and wanting to feel strong again and calibrating, again and again, towards feeling strong. Throw in entropy and you have yourself a poignancy. Throw in curiosity and you have magick. Throw in friends and you have a life.
As a reader and a writer, I’m delighted by symbolism. A thing that tells an entire story in its existence. And because it is a story, it is a fluid thing. What could be drawn from the fact I partially tore a tendon on my left ring finger, specifically?
The witchy hermit in me is absolutely delighted it’s that finger -- seriously? Did I just seal my fate; am I a Gwen Johns, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott -- women who prioritized their inner creative lives and intentionally decided never to marry… because honestly, who has the time?
Or a palm-reader might say the ring finger pointing to the middle indicates devotion towards friends and family — is that what this year wanted to remind me, to orientate toward what I really care about? I would say this is true: in 2024 I finally faced my worst fears of crowds (read: people), and the friends made there felt like a social renaissance.
Or, the ring finger has associations with Apollo, so there’s a whole digression on creativity and beauty and pleasure, all of which flowed through this year.
Or should I borrow from the Tantrikas, for whom the digit is associated with the nourishing element of water? Would a sage tell me the lesson was to temper my fire, that the more yin qualities of water were off-balance?*
(“Not everything has meaning”, a friend said today. This is also true. But the point of curiosity isn’t to wrench meaning from nothing; it is to create, from nothing — for creativity’s own sake.)
A library of lessons, carved into my hands.
I think what I take from 2024 and my new body modification is a stray line I found in a random bookshop I had no plans to be in, leafing through the Tao Te Ching: doing by non-doing.
I had a couple of truly watershed, dream come true moments this year. My book came out. It got national attention. I taught my first yoga teacher training, and it was a sweet and fulfilling thing. I got a job writing in environmental advocacy, which has been my loose plan since college, um, eight years ago. I learned a lot — a lot — about emotional intimacy and evolved past what I thought I wanted.
This is hard to articulate as a positive thing, but for me it is— a grounding of the cosmic star-filled magic with the earthy and mossy. “First enlightenment, then the laundry.” The day my book came out my check engine light came on. Under the table at the recording studio while I was on National Public Radio, I was having an extremely protracted period, my hormones whacked by a medical stressor. Said medical issue meant I just showed up and taught my heart out at my yin teacher training — it wasn’t at all what I imagined, but arguably it was much more yin. All fall there’s been less preparation, less worry, less anxiety over doing. Just showing up and being. And trusting that the vast majority of the time, it’ll probably be okay.
It wasn’t a bad thing at all, a climbing season spent in physical retrograde. I uncovered some weird asymmetrical habits. I got better at footwork. I learned about lateral extension.
“… to all the small miracles you rushed through….” ~ John O’Donohue
And — here’s the beauty — I may not have the fiery LET’S CLIMB FOR FIVE HOURS stoke I had coming back from Mexico, but I feel just as strong in a different way. A slower burn. An acceptance I will probably never actually be a 5.12 climber — or a New York Times bestseller — or a world-renowned yoga teacher teacher — and so what happens if I just savor edges at a lower grade?
The sweet local book signing, where my friends and community overfilled the room.
The yin student who said my classes made her feel like she could pray.
The comments from people who’ve read my book and get it.
Ridiculously fun 5.11.
My hands so overflow with blessings, they burst.
Or, of course, it means nothing.
But I like how I feel in the more tender story.
This entire saga to say: for the last month, the crimp is back. Last night found me endorphin HIGH at repping a fun 5.11 on autobelay (because Friday nights are for bangers.)
I believe that odd new joint is stronger. A broken bone can heal stronger than if it never broke. Empirical data will say tendinous tissue doesn’t grow back stronger, but I question extrapolating that means weakness after injury. Part of healing is integration of the wound — and our bodies are wildly resilient. They’re plenty smart. All I can say is, because I gave it six months of ease to heal, there is a vigor and new coherence in that finger. Greater balance between the edges on crimps, micro-adaptations to distribute the weight through the fingertips.
Here’s to 2024: the silent ways we adapted. Small internal resettings, quiet calibrations. Permanent changes, embodying a year.
*There are different maps of which finger is associated with which element, with some models giving this digit the element of earth. My Tantrika teacher gave me thumb/space pointer/air middle/fire ring/water pinky/earth, so that’s what I’m using here.
I am grateful to live, dream, and create on the unceded lands of the A’aakw Kwáan. Our community would not be so rich without them.