Gracen’s Climb

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a big boy named Gracen who was always climbing. There was nothing Gracen wound’t climb - playgrounds, hills, trees - one time he even climbed up the hallway in his own house by bracing each hand and foot against the opposite walls and pushing himself up. He got in a little trouble for that one thought because he left hand and footprints all the way up to the ceiling. But even despite that mess and the occasion scrapes he got himself into, Gracen’s mom Zoë was proud of his climbing and called him her little mountain goat. 

As soon as Gracen was old enough, Zoë signed him up for a membership at their local climbing gym. It was a big, tall room where the walls were completely covered with various different climbing holds. Up by the ceiling there were pulleys attached to ropes. Climbers would wear harnesses and clip themselves into those ropes, and in this way they could climb high up onto the wall and take a risk to try a difficult route knowing that if they fell they would be caught by the rope. Gracen’s mom always said that the way we learn and grow is by taking risks, but it’s important to do it in a safe way. 

Gracen loved going to the climbing gym, and after joining they went at least twice every week. Every week that was, until the big storm hit Indiana. Before the big storm the record for snowfall in indiana was 47 inches, which is about as tall as a 7 year old. But one year the snow came down so thick and for so long that in Gracen’s town it was 150 inches deep - that’s 12 and a half feet. That’s how tall a tall grownup would be if they were standing on top of the head of another tall grownup. 

Although it was usual to have snow in the winter in Gracen’s town, it was not usual to have THAT MUCH snow and it took a long time to clear it. The city snow plows had to clear the most important roads first, like the roads that went to the hospital and the grocery store. School was cancelled because it was impossible for parents to get their kids there through the snow, and even if they had there would have been no teachers because the teachers’ houses were snowed in as well. 

Gracen spent the first couple days after the storm helping his family and playing in the snow. For example, he helped to dig a path from the front door of his house out to where the street would have been if it wasn’t completely covered in snow. With friends who lived in nearby houses, he dug out tunnels connecting the houses and even made some caves attached to the tunnels that they used as rooms for hanging out and playing. In the rooms they made chairs, tables and couches out of snow and at lunch time they would bring their lunches there and have picnics at the snow table in the snow cave. 

This was really fun but after a few days Gracen really started to miss climbing. He begged his mom to take him to the climbing gym but she said no. It was too far away, and the road there was unlikely to have been plowed yet. The roads needed to be kept clear for emergencies and for essential trips like people getting groceries or going to the doctor’s office. Gracen’s mom said there should be plenty to keep Gracen occupied with all of the fresh snow. And there was, but for Gracen something was just missing. He wanted to climb. 

Well, the day after this conversation with his mom the snow plow finally came by Gracen’s street. It cleared the street but all that snow that had been in the street had to go somewhere, and where it went was up on the sidewalk. Where before the snow had been the height of two tall adults, on the sidewalk now the snow piled up as high as four tall adults. This gave Gracen an idea. If he couldn’t go to the climbing gym, perhaps he could build one here in the snow. Gracen worked all day building the climbing wall. He carved the hand and footholds by hand from snow, then used water in a spray bottle to make them hard and icy, freezing them solid to the wall which he make stringer by compacting it with the back of a shovel. 

There was of course no rope and harness system at this climbing wall, but Gracen thought of some other things he could do to mitigate the risks of climbing his snow wall. He built up only the side away from the street so that if he did fall it would be away from the street. He wore a helmet plus his thick snowsuit for padding. And while on the wall itself he was using ice to make it stronger, at the foot of the wall he piled fresh fluffy snow to cushion him in case he did fall. 

Because it was the dead of Winter, the days in Gracen’s town during the snowstorm were the shorter than they would be at any other time of the year. Gracen knew that this is because when it’s winter in Indiana the Northern Hemisphere (that’s the top part of the globe where the US, Canada and Europe are) leans slightly away from the sun. It still takes 24 hours for the earth to complete a full rotation but more of that time is spent with the Northern Hemisphere in darkness, so the time when Gracen would see the sun was shorter and the time when the sky would be dark in Indiana was longer. For Gracen, this meant that in those days after the big snowstorm the sun was setting at 5:30, an hour before his family ate dinner. This is how, on the fifth day after the storm, he was able to climb all the way to the moon without being late for dinner. 

Gracen had spent two days building his climbing wall higher and higher and learning the best techniques for climbing an ice wall. On the fifth day after the storm, as the sun set and the moon came out, Gracen looking at it from the bottom of his climbing wall could see that his wall was so high and the moon appeared so low that if he climbed up to the top of the wall he was sure he could reach it or maybe even jump onto it. Knowing that there was no air around the moon, before climbing up the wall Gracen took his astronaut costume from the previous halloween and put it on over his helmet and snowsuit. This way he would be protected from the vacuum of space. 

Gracen climbed the wall, looking up regularly to check on the position of the moon, which grew closer and closer as he climbed. By the time he was at the top of the wall Gracen could almost touch the moon, but not quite. So he climbed back down, filled his backpack with snow, and climbed up again. Once he was at the top he took the snow out of his backpack and used it to build the wall up just a bit higher. He could almost reach it now, but not quite. Carefully he made the trip down off the wal to fill the backpack again. After five more trips like this Gracen had built a nice little step on top of his wall. As he reached up he was finally able to touch the moon, and in doing so he felt that the moon had its own gravity and Gracen knew that if he jumped he would land safely on the moon. He checked his astronaut costume to make sure it was in good condition with no holes and then made the small jump up to the moon. Gracen landed on his hands and knees, and when he stood up with his feet on the moon, since he was standing on the bottom of the moon he was able to see his house appearing upside down, and could reach out and just touch the step he had built on his wall with his hand. 

The gravity on the moon is less strong than the gravity on Earth and Gracen took a few minutes to enjoy this, making big snow jumps and even trying out some flips. Gracen knew that as the night went on the moon would rise higher in the sky and farther away from his wall, so although he was having a great time he soon decided that it was time to head back down. He gathered up a moon rock as a memento and placed it in his backpack then returned to the part of the moon that was closest to his wall, reached out, and did a headstand on the moon, reaching until he could feel his feet connect solidly with the step on top of his wall. He pushed off from the moon and crouched safely down onto his wall. Gracen sat on top of the wall for a long time and watched the moon slip higher into the night sky and out of reach. When his mother called him in for dinner he went in, leaving his astronaut suit and his moon rock neatly on his front porch. 

Over dinner, Gracen told his family about his adventure and about the moon rock he had gathered. After dinner when he went to retrieve the moon rock and show it to his family, someone had taken the moon rock and replaced it with a regular snowball. But although Gracen’s family was never able to touch the moon rock, Gracen would always remember how it looked and felt and what it had been like walking on the moon for those brief few minutes. Ever after that, whenever there was a particularly heavy snow, Gracen would always be reminded of his climb to the moon and of his brief adventure there.