Catching Up With CAT: Finding Joy In Balance With Risk

Did you have Fun?

Did you learn something?

Did you do something hard?

Did you suffer?

Would you do it again?

The thirty people in this living room just finished a long, cold day of ice climbing. For most of them, it’s their first time trying a sport that pits humans - with sharp things in their hands and on their feet – against vertical walls of ice. 

Overwhelmingly, the answer to all my questions is yes.

Yes, we had fun. 
Yes, we learned something (about climbing and ourselves).
Yes, we did something hard (learned to walk in crampons, endured temperatures in the low teens, socialized with strangers).
Yes, some people suffered (they were cold, scared, vulnerable, and failed in front of their peers). And yes, despite the difficulty and the suffering, everyone says they would do it again.

This group has discovered a quiet truth: just because something is hard and even if it involves physical or emotional suffering, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. 

It’s worth doing because it’s fun. It’s worth doing because we discover we are capable of more than we thought. It worth doing for the support and connection. It’s worth doing because it “fills our hearts”. The folks on this trip - young people of color, queer folks, young men from a residential shelter, first timers and grizzled mountain folks – come from different backgrounds and carry different struggles. And though we came as strangers, we leave as friends.

Huge thanks to Jeff, Regina, Matt, Matt, Ivy, and Harrison for making this trip possible. We love y’all and couldn’t do this without you!

Why this trip almost didn’t happen:

I’ve been sitting in the Walmart parking lot for forty-five minutes, talking on the phone. I came to buy food for our ice climbing trip. Instead, I’m in the middle of an intense conversation about risk management.
But it’s not what you think – we’re not discussing the risks of climbing on ice, spending hours in sub-freezing temperatures, or driving through a snowstorm to get to Minnesota. Those risks are familiar and expected: we know how to manage them. They’re a part of the job.

Instead, we are discussing if it is “safe” to take a group of young people of color (American citizens) to a small town on the edge of Minnesota. Not because of ice (frozen water) but because of ICE (federal agents). As you can imagine, that distinction is hard to understand in text messages.

We can provide warm clothing, teach them to look for signs of cold injury, remind them to check on each other, and fuel them with high-calorie food (pizza rolls are the best). What we cannot control is whether an ICE agent might decide to detain (or worse) someone in our group simply because their skin is not white.

I speak with almost everyone planning to come on the trip, sharing what information I have and talking through whether they feel comfortable coming. One mom doesn’t want her son to come, but he’s 18 and really looking forward to this. Another mom tells me, “I one hundred percent trust you with my daughter”. Strangely, that does not make me feel any better.

In the end, everyone chooses to attend. And yes, we take precautions. We stay at a house in Wisconsin, instead of Minnesota. We don’t explore the frozen Mississippi River, usually a highlight on the trip. We take the van with the darkest tinted windows and put the white people in the front.

We don’t cancel because, individually and collectively, we decide that fear cannot be the thing that stop us from living our lives, experiencing joy, and doing something that matters deeply to each of us.

The trip goes beautifully (see highlights above), and we see no signs of ICE while we are there. I’m grateful we didn’t cancel but I’m also very sad. Sad that we live in a country where the color of your skin can place a target on your back and dictates if you feel safe in your homes and communities. I know that those of you who don’t live in cities or states targeted by ICE may not fully understand the terror this creates. My hope is that next year when it’s time for this annual trip, that the only kind of ice we have to worry about is the kind we climb.

-Laura