Grappling with fear at heights

Grappling with fear is a familiar concept for climbers. Mount Beauty-based highliner Elise explores her relationship with fear, and how she learnt to move with it, not fight against it. 

Easter was approaching and the word was going around for a highlining gathering at Arapiles. The last time I had been there was my first experience on the line, a midline called D Minor, and it had won me over. I couldn’t commit to standing—the mere thought of my body leaving the line, the only point of “security”, was too overwhelming. I was uncomfortably aware it was just a leash and a small piece of webbing that allowed me to be suspended in this space. As my feet wobbled below me, trying to balance my weight, fear set in. 

Unlike climbing, there was nowhere to wedge in to, no wall to put my hands against, and nothing to cling onto to dampen the shakiness that shivered up through me. I panicked.

I told myself I would keep showing up and sitting with the exposure until I was able to be with it and walk the line.

The upcoming highlining gathering at Arapiles was my opportunity to return to where the journey started, when I had first sat on the line, clinging to it. Since then I had built the courage to roll out and attempt to stand over the crashing ocean waves below in Freycinet. I spent time on a Perma rig, and returned time and time again until I could stand and then walk, and eventually I had sent it across a highline over The Gorge on Mount Buffalo.

The 40 metre, 60 metre and 100 metre lines at Arapiles had been set up. I set out with my friends Rene, CJ and Peter for a sunrise mission. We walked up to King Rat Gully in the dark with harnesses in hand and tea bags in pockets. We shared a tea as we sat in the nook of the rock, witnessing first light appear over the flat horizon ahead. Between moments of conversation, we slipped into our own focus as we each prepared ourselves. When enough daylight for us to see eventually seeped onto the line, we began.

I mounted the line and let my gaze narrow to the width of the line.

The stillness amplified my senses. I could feel every muscle, every toe tense. I could feel my shoulder blades lower and my spine lengthen. In sync with my breath, I stood up and into the expansiveness that lay ahead. 

I stood unapologetically into the freedom the space offered, and I welcomed the fear with arms wide open. We leaned into the exposure as the sun started to expose itself above the horizon, and together we watched the colours spill across the sky. We walked the highline until the yellows and oranges transmuted to blues, until our legs burned with fatigue, and our minds were content from a state of bliss. As I came in from the line, I looked over at the D Minor line sitting below me and reflected on the journey and where it all began.

When I sat there it stripped me bare, the vastness sank right through me. I had no option but to sit through it, feel it and embody it. That exposure exposed parts of myself I hadn’t seen or felt before. Those times fighting the line slowly dissolved as I learnt to surrender. 

Someone had told me when I was wobbling to move with it, not against it. It felt counterintuitive to not try to counteract it, but it works. I swayed with the motion and continued to walk on. I noticed that the advice applied to my emotions and mind too—going against my thoughts and feelings only threw me more off balance. Slowly I stopped battling with the line, with my emotions and my mind, as I learnt to move with the motions, both physically and mentally.

Fear is something that is and will always be present. It will continue to manifest itself as a tight grip and a dry mouth, but I know that fear is there to protect me—an alert to potential dangers, a survival mechanism deep within us. 
I can now allow it to be there, but not to control me the way it did for the eight years I spent in the grips of anorexia. During that time, I became wheelchair bound, tube fed and medically unstable. I was in and out of hospital for months and spent years in treatment. I grew to no longer trust myself or anyone around me. I became afraid to eat certain foods, then afraid to eat anything at all. I began to fade away and the fear that was there to protect me, to preserve life, became the very thing that almost took my life.

After a long period of not eating, running away and being unwell, I began to choose recovery. I started to show up six times a day to the dining table and face it. I went through therapy and not only healed but rediscovered myself. In the process I also discovered I have ADHD. I realised that highlining, as well as the mountain bike riding, trail running and climbing I do, allows me to access a place in my mind of total stillness as flow. For years I had found it so hard to navigate the world with the constant chaos, confusion and clutter in my mind.

It’s where everything slows down, worries fade and I enter a flow state. I become fully present.

Highlining has allowed me to deepen my comfort with discomfort and find freedom within the fear. It gives me a way to access flow state and a stillness in my mind, and to test myself, find new limits and reach new heights. At the Easter highlining gathering at Arapiles we all got to dive to those places within and open up to the exposure. We walked alongside fear, and alongside each other.

The incredible Rose Weller sending iconic Nowra line, White Ladder (33). Image by Michael Blowers.