Author and Artist
The Climb
A fictional travelogue; three minute read.
Mount Kilimanjaro. Mount Fuji. The Inca Trail. Half Dome in Yosemite. The Duomo in Florence, Italy.
The Duomo will be my personal best.
By the fifty-fourth step of the four hundred and sixty-three steps to the top, I’m breathing hard. Checking my pulse. Beginning to sweat.
No stopping. People behind me, Crowding me. Pushing the pace.
Turning back is impossible. The stairwell is just inches wider than my body width.
What the hell do I think I’m proving? I’m a high school teacher, not a mountain climber.
When this mountain of a cathedral was built, it had room for thirty percent of the city—the conceptual equivalent of a church in New York big enough to accommodate three million people. Staring down into the nave, 285 feet below, everyone looks the way I’m feeling—puny.
To pull my body upwards as much as to avoid falling backwards, I’m grasping the safety banisters. They’re steely cold.
The massive masonry vault—the largest in the world—took 140 years to build. At my rate of climb, it might take me as long to reach the top. According to my calves, the Duomo measures thirty-eight stories high.
As my ascent gains altitude, I reach a viewing platform under the frescoed ceiling of The Last Judgment. A custodian reads my mind, warning me, “Keep moving.”
Swirling above my head, swooping angels, contorted bodies, religious personages, the damned, cherubs, monsters. A nasty looking Lucifer is on patrol.
The painting shows the seven cardinal sins. I’ve tried them all. Right now, the devil has me entangled in pridefulness and a lust for bragging rights. If there’s a “Done the Duomo” tee shirt, I’m going to buy it.
Lungs aching, I trudge the final few feet to the outdoor observation deck. As I step out into the clear, crystalline air—antiseptic in its distance and detachment from the earthly sins of Florence—I stub my toe on a bit of jagged brick.
Spread out like an Italian brunch buffet, a montage of red tiled roofs, bell towers, pointy church spires, the Arno, more gothic cathedrals, the Palazzo Vecchio. I’m too worn out to bother with the view. I take a look around, then snap a few photos to record my conquest.
A teen boy dangling his cellphone over the parapet is getting a reprimand from his mother, “What do you think you’re doing?” He stares back at her as though he’s never seen her before. “Mom, there’s no warning sign against throwing things off the dome.” I stop myself from high-fiving the kid.
At that age, my smart mouth kept bullies at bay, explained away missing homework and talked myself out of gym class. In the school cafeteria at lunchtime, I was never invited to sit with the jocks. I was in the library reading history books. And, now I’m at the top of the Duomo catching my breath.
“Travel is seeing, tasting, trying new things” is what I tell my students. A pilgrimage of self-discovery.
My discovery is that scaling a steep stairwell that spirals towards a panoramic vista to prove a point is pointless.
I'd rather read about it in a history book.
