Last night we had an amazing dance party in our little house in the mountains. All six of us dressed up, we made dinner and spent a good while sitting and eating and chatting. Then we turned on the sound system and had a proper late night dance party for Eline’s 22nd birthday. It’s amazing to see how different my life looks like since the confinement has started. I rest a lot. Once a day I have a Pilate session with my friend Ann from California. Some days I go for a run or just a simple walk. Sometimes it happens that I do some pull ups (imagine!).
Mostly, though, I just enjoy chatting with the friends I live with, or calling other friends and family on FaceTime. I read more than usual. I work on my French, my English, and my singing. I play Scrabble for hours and hours.
I have this feeling that there will be a “before” and “after” COVID-19 era. I can’t imagine that the world is simply on standby right now and that after a couple of weeks we will go back to the old reality.
To be truly honest with you, and I told you this already in my recent post, the confinement has arrived at a perfect moment in my life. I’ve been struggling over the last few years with certain things that I might rather not face. Now I have the space to think about them.
The world has been moving fast and I haven’t been able to resist its rhythm. I found myself running after every task, restless. I could feel myself becoming frustrated and yet I didn’t know why. I see now that it was related to the way I was doing things, always pushing to do all of the things. I can imagine that during this confinement, some of you are realizing the same.
Up until the confinement no matter what I was doing, I was thinking always about the next step.
Also, I’m in my mid-thirties now and my needs have been changing. I’ve ignored them because my desire to climb hard has always been my top priority. I’ve climbed and pushed myself hard this way since I was 17. I love hard work and giving my best. It has always made me feel satisfied and content.
Since the beginning of 2019, my mind has been consumed by the idea of free climbing The Nose. If you know me just a little bit, you know that the routes I love most are those which are not so famous. I am drawn to routes that are in radical, remote places, new routes, or rarely-repeated, hard old-school classics. Even if I am not physically the strongest climber, I can always rely on my strong mind set to do incredible things.
The Nose is not my style of project, as it is possibly the most famous (and crowded) route in the world. But once I start something I simply can’t stop until I have given it my very very best effort. This is how The Nose became my unlikely obsession. In 2019, I trained almost all year. All my thoughts and intentions were dedicated to this iconic route situated in the Yosemite Valley. I slept with the topo over my bed, and Lynn’s “It Goes Boys” quote pasted on my door.
I pushed myself so hard in training, even though I could tell that my body was getting tired and that my heart was not always in it. Never before in my life had I trained for so long (a full year!) for one single route. When I left Switzerland for California in October, 2019, I knew that I was in the best shape of my life, physically. But at the same time I had never felt so fragile in my mind. Somehow the opposite of “Nina style.”
As soon as I arrived in Los Angeles I had a total meltdown. You can read all about it here in my Nose blog. But trust me, it was rough.
I somehow managed to get my shit together and perform on the Nose like I never had before. At the end, it was not enough and I failed. Failed, yes. Normally I believe that in climbing, there is no failure as long as you tried your absolute best. Plenty of times in my life I have tried a route and not sent. Like for example in 2018 with Melissa in Madagascar. We clearly did not send the route we had come for (Tough Enough), but hell, we climbed our asses off and the trip was a huge success, chain or no chain.
But this time, on The Nose, I felt failure. It has taken some time and reflection, but now I think I know why. My motivation was not from my heart. I climbed the route to satisfy my ego, to prove something to myself and to others. And that’s exactly why I felt failure. I hate to sound so negative. I learned so much from working that route. I grew in so many ways as a climber and I think as a person. But failing to send felt different this time.
On top of that, I fucked up my health, before and during the trip. Since returning to Europe, my recovery has been slow. It took me a couple of months to get rid of my toe fungus and my feet are not the same anymore, they hurt a lot. I lost weight during The Nose project, and now my body is taking back what it needs.
This confinement is a really good opportunity to listen to my body in a different way. It’s not the first time that my body has tried to tell me these things, but it may be the first time I listen. The big challenge to me now is to settle into myself, and to trust in life. I try not to analyse or to judge, and I simply observe.
I cry sometimes because I miss climbing so much. At the same time, I feel like my body is enjoying this break. It is incredible to see how much time climbing takes up in my normal life. I give so many hours to my passion, and I don’t regret a moment of it. I am taking this opportunity to catch up with my other interests, do mental exercises, and enjoy time. However long we are in confinement, there is no doubt that I’m going to climb all my life long.
I can see how challenging this situation is for all of us, and also how much we can learn from it. I truly believe that life will be different “after” the corona virus, and I’m very curious and excited to see in which direction we’re going to evolve.