The Art of Holding On and Letting Go

by Kristin Lenz

  “All set. It’s ugly, but safe.”

  “Bring Cara back in time for dinner, and you can eat with us,” Grandma said.

  We waved good-bye and headed out to enjoy the glorious day.

  “So what’s this surprise?” I asked.

  “You’ll see when we get there.”

  We sped onto the highway, in the opposite direction that I had taken with Grandpa toward downtown Detroit. This time, we were heading north out of the city, through the layers of suburbs, until the subdivisions almost disappeared, replaced by trees and open space. Tom looked more relaxed driving than I had ever seen him. His car was a stick shift, and he smoothly switched the gears. He was still a careful driver, fifty-five miles per hour, cruising in the right lane.

  He noticed my smile. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. You. You’re driving great!”

  “Thanks. I’ve been practicing. For you.” He took his eyes off the road just long enough to glance at me and smile. “It took me a while to get the hang of a stick, but I think it makes me less nervous. I have to concentrate on shifting.”

  “Kensington Metro Park,” he said, reading the highway exit sign. “I thought about going down to Belle-Isle in Detroit, but I know my way around here better.”

  “What’s Belle-Isle?”

  “A big park along the Detroit River. It’s really pretty. Not what people expect when they hear Detroit.”

  “Next time.”

  He reached over and squeezed my hand.

  We drove along the curving roads inside the park, passing green lawns, signs for hiking and biking trails, a sparkling lake.

  “Have you ever been to Lake Michigan?” I asked.

  “Sure. Sleeping Bear Dunes, Petoskey stones, pasties.”

  “Pasties?”

  “Little pies stuffed with meat and veggies. Yum.”

  “Pupusas and pasties. I’ve been missing out. Nick said we could all go to his cottage on Lake Michigan this summer.”

  “You’re gonna love it.” Tom pulled in a parking lot and grabbed his backpack out of the backseat.

  “What do you have in there?” I asked.

  “Picnic essentials. You up for a little hike?”

  “Sure.”

  A magnolia tree, bursting with blooms, marked the entrance to a trail. We passed through the sweet, spring perfume and followed the dirt path, up a sloping hill.

  “I can’t believe we’re the only ones here,” I said.

  “It’ll be more crowded in the summer, but it’s so big, you can still find your own private spot.”

  We walked a little further until the path leveled out.

  “This way.” Tom slipped his hand into mine and led me off the trail, over to a small gathering of pine trees.

  “Is this the perfect picnic spot or what?”

  I sat down on a blanket of pine needles, always surprised at how soft they are. I leaned back on my forearms, gazing up at the canopy of trees encircling us. The branches were like outstretched arms, the sun glittering through the fingers.

  “Mmm, this would make a great campsite.”

  Tom lay down next to me, propped up on his elbow.

  “It’s sylvan. Ha, SAT word.”

  His sandy, hazel eyes were more green than usual; spring was showing up everywhere.

  “I wanted us to get away before basketball camp starts up. I won’t have as much free time then.”

  He pulled a rolled-up magazine out of his backpack. “Jake asked me to give this to you. He marked a page for you to look at.”

  I sat up and spread the magazine across my lap. It was the May edition of Climbing opened to the listing of competitions and rankings. Jake had highlighted one name in several of the junior competitions.

  “Becky!” I blurted.

  “That’s how he said you’d react.”

  “I can’t believe it! Third place, second place,” I scanned the list. “First place!”

  “So what’s her story?” Tom said.

  “She’s … she’s just not that good!” I sputtered. “At least she never used to be. She’s not in tune with nature, like I bet it would never occur to her to think there’s energy in rocks.” I tossed the magazine over my head. “Her family creeps me out. They just want the spotlight.”

  “Looks like she’s got the spotlight now.”

  “Worse, she’s taken my place on the podium,” I said.

  “You gonna take it back?”

  I looked at him for a moment without answering. “What did Jake say?”

  “He said you’re going to kick some butt. And he wants to go with you.”

  I grinned and pushed his shoulder.

  “I want to focus on outdoor climbs though, the bouldering comps, putting up new routes. I need to get Jake out on real rocks. Then he’s gonna be unstoppable. I think he can get some sponsors, at least get his gear and some travel expenses paid.”

  “You really think he’s ready?” Tom asked.

  “Oh yeah, definitely. I’m going to steal away your hoops protégé.”

  We were quiet for a minute, and I leaned back on my forearms again, closing my eyes. A whisper of breeze tiptoed across my face. After the winter gloom, everything felt fresh and new. Alive.

  Jake and I had already started planning a bake sale at Planet Granite to fund our travel, and Grandma had agreed to help us make her amazing cookies. If I could get her out of the house to help us sell the cookies too, with all those climbers praising her baking skills —it’d be a win-win.

  “So I guess you’ll be busy this summer too, if you’re traveling to cliffs and competing again,” Tom said.

  I nodded. “I don’t think I could ever play a sport like basketball. It’s so loud. I couldn’t concentrate. Climbing is quiet. It’s all you can think about.”

  “Actually, basketball’s the same way. You have to keep your head in the game. One tiny distraction and you’ve lost the ball. That’s one reason why I never had a girlfriend before. Ann-Marie and her friends would come to the game yelling my name and expecting me to look over and wave or something. But you can’t do that. They don’t understand.”

  I did. I squeezed his hand. “What’s the other reason? For never having a girlfriend.”

  “There wasn’t anyone I liked enough. Until now.”

  A wavy lock of hair flopped over his eyes as he looked down into my face, his grin so irresistible. He trailed his fingertips up my forearm.

  “Back in middle school, everyone started dating. My friends were asking girls out, and then they’d break up a week later. It was so stupid. Finally, in seventh grade, they bugged me enough about this one girl, and I asked her out. It was so weird. We broke up a month later, and she wouldn’t even look at me after that.”

  His fingertip plucked the beaded bracelets on my wrist and stroked along the inside of my elbow. “I liked you so much, but I didn’t want things to ever get weird between us.”

  “You’re already thinking of breaking up with me?”

  “No! I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t know, I think my parents’ divorce kind of messed me up.”

  “Do they still talk to each other?”

  “Barely. My dad picks me up on Wednesdays and waits in the car for me to come out.”

  “Wednesdays at the pupusaria?”

  “He’s working in South America for a whole month. No pupusas for a while.”

  “You could take me instead.”

  “All right, yeah, this Wednesday. It’s a date. You have to speak español though.”

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Nah. Everyone else will though. It’s a bunch of Latino guys eating at folding tables in this Salvadoran lady’s garage.”

  “The pupusaria is at someone’s house?”

  “So delicioso.” Tom rubbed his belly, then laughed.

  “What?”

  “Just picturing you there with all the dark-haired hombres. Kind of like you hanging out with the goth crowd at school. How did that even
happen?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Kaitlyn and I joked that it was destiny.”

  “After Adam’s accident, it was like the earth had tilted. Everything was just a little bit off. I didn’t feel like the same person. But then, you know, time goes by, I was busy with school and basketball and everything. And then you showed up, and the earth tilted again.”

  I had felt it flipped upside down.

  “You looked so lost. Your shiny gold hair, and your deep, dark, sad eyes. Sitting at the goth table. You were like …” Tom paused and grinned. He continued in a dramatic, deep, slow voice, “The Angel of Darkness.”

  “Angel of Darkness!” I squealed.

  We cracked up, and I shoved him onto his back. I jumped on top of him, pinning his arms.

  “I am the Angel of Darkness, and I will haunt you forever!”

  “Have mercy,” Tom cried, struggling to free himself. “Damn, you’re strong.”

  He stopped struggling, and I relaxed my hold.

  “I was worried you wouldn’t come back from California,” he said. “Me too.”

  “I’m so glad you decided to come home.”

  “Me too.”

  I brushed my fingertip over the scar on his lip, then leaned down and kissed him. A deep, lingering, blood-cell-bursting kiss. Our lips parted, and he whispered, “Have mercy.”

  In one swift movement, he flipped me onto my back and pinned me. “Ha! Gotcha!”

  His eyes locked with mine, and our lips met again, hungry and searching. The Earth tilted.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A mountain of gratitude to:

  My editor, Jotham Burrello, for ushering my book out into the world. For sharing my vision and for having confidence in my writing and what I have to say.

  This manuscript rode a wave of luck and landed in the inbox of a fellow rock climber, Amanda Hurley. Your enthusiastic embrace of Cara’s story was so rewarding, as was that of the three judges of the Helen Sheehan YA Book Prize, Kelly Jensen, Anne Rouyer, and Meghan Dietsche Goel.

  The rest of the team at Elephant Rock Books: Joe Giasullo, Anne McPeak, Jessica Powers, Christopher Morris and Grace Glander. Fisheye Graphic Services crew: Lee Nagan, Dan Prazer, and designer Amanda Schwarz. I couldn’t have dreamed of a more perfect cover.

  Carrie Pestritto, my energetic and exuberant literary agent whose emails are always filled with exclamation points!

  The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and the kidlit writing and blogging communities. Especially my longtime critique partners and mentors, Tracy Bilen, Lisa Chottiner, Laura Handy, and Nan Cappo, who have been there from the beginning. I couldn’t have grown as a writer and persevered without your support year after year.

  An extra shout out to Lisa for teaching me Yiddish. And Gladys Venegas for correcting my Spanish.

  Edite Kroll: you were the first publishing professional to believe in this novel. In memory of Heather McManus: this manuscript benefited from her hours of careful reading alongside Edite.

  My first teen reader, Elena. Sorry you had to read the super sad early draft.

  Carolyn Coman at the Highlights Foundation Whole Novel Workshop, for rescuing me from the dead-parents canon of YA literature.

  Tim Wynne-Jones for a year of cranky first-draft critiquing / missed deadlines on a different novel via Humber College. Lessons learned.

  Bri Kinney at Planet Rock for answering my questions about the intricacies of teen competition climbing. Any mistakes are my own or a purposeful altering to better suit the story.

  Kathy Gardner, my first rock climbing compadre.

  Cherie and Gerry for sharing their Ecuador travel experience and enduring my picky questions. “So, the market was colorful, but what did you smell? What did you touch?”

  My friends and family who continued to ask about my writing year after year, even when I had little progress to show beyond my own computer files. You are here in my neighborhood, spread across the country, and even overseas. You know who you are, and I’m sending each of you a super squeeze hug.

  An extra hug for my Ecuadorian friend Martha for making sure I got it right.

  Mom and Dad, for always being there and believing in me. For letting me read any book whenever and wherever I wanted.

  My brother, Jason, for all things computer related. You awesome nerd.

  My patient husband, Bob, who marvels that I somehow chose the two worst-paying careers—social work and writing. We have years of memories of camping, climbing, and traveling, and many more adventures ahead of us.

  My daughter, Maya, most of all.

  Elephant Rock’s Amanda Hurley discusses the writing of The Art of Holding On and Letting Go with author Kristin Bartley Lenz. Learn more about Kristin at kristinbartleylenz.com.

  Amanda Hurley: How did The Art of Holding On and Letting Go come to be?

  Kristin Bartley Lenz: I moved from Michigan to Atlanta, Georgia, in my midtwenties and discovered a new world of outdoor enthusiasm in the mountains of Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina: hiking, backpacking, white-water kayaking, climbing. My husband and I followed the careers of well-known mountaineers, and one by one, each of these climbers died attempting epic summits. These were men with wives and children at home. Around the same time, a famous female mountaineer, Alison Hargreaves, died on K2, and she—unlike her male counterparts—was criticized for leaving her children behind. I began to wonder what it would be like to be the child of a famous mountaineer. How would that child’s upbringing be different? And what if both of her parents were extreme mountaineers, not just one? How would this shape her world?

  AH: So these essential questions are triggered by a tragedy you observed. Then how soon after did you realize Cara would be the young hero to sort it all out?

  KBL: I sat with these questions for several years and wrote a different novel based on my social work experience. That first novel hasn’t been published, but it was the practice I needed to understand how to write Cara’s story. An article in Outside magazine about families left behind by the deaths of mountaineers brought me back to those earlier questions, and Cara was born.

  AH: You have several different locales for this tale: the mountains of Ecuador, the suburbs of Detroit, the wilderness of California. Why did you choose these settings for Cara’s story?

  KBL: My husband and I lived in California for four years, and the Angeles National Forest was our rock climbing playground for the first year. I could clearly picture Cara and her family living there. I would love to go to Ecuador one day, but for this story I had to rely on research. I wanted Cara’s parents’ expedition to be somewhere other than the Himalayas. Everest has become overrun by commercial operations, and many of the truly dedicated mountaineers are seeking other remote mountains. Chimborazo is unique in that it rivals Everest in height because of its location at the bulging equator—just like Cara’s dad explains in the story. There really was a World Youth Championship near Quito several years ago, and around that same time I had friends who traveled to Ecuador. They took notes during their trip and shared photos and descriptions. And metro Detroit is my home. It’s where I grew up and where I eventually returned to raise my daughter. Through Cara’s story, I wanted to explore this idea of home and what it means to each of us.

  AH: To quote the dust jacket copy—“discovering that home can be far from where you started.” This is the major theme of the novel. It resonated with the Sheehan judges and subsequent readers. My previous question was about place, but Cara learns that the idea of home transcends a physical place.

  KBL: “Home is where the heart is” has become a cliché, but it only tells part of the story. Cara’s heart is in California, but it’s also in Michigan, and there’s a piece left behind in Ecuador too. Home can be what you make it, wherever and whenever you need it to be.

  AH: Cara’s is a soul divided. Between the mountains and the city. Between her old life and new. Why did you structure the novel this way? What is it about Cara’s st
ruggle that makes her story universal?

  KBL: I wrote Cara’s story a few years after I moved from California back home to Michigan. I was struggling with this transition and the losses that came with it: I had left my job, friendships, and a beautiful climate with daily access to nature. I was a new mom, feeling isolated and uncertain in a new environment, trying to raise my daughter. My grandmother died suddenly. I think everyone can relate to this feeling of loss during times of transition. Children and teens especially experience so many transitions as a normal part of growing up: changing schools, changing friends, even their own changing bodies. Even if you haven’t yet experienced the loss of a loved one, I think everyone can connect in some way to Cara’s struggle.

  AH: Cara relies heavily on the wisdom of nature writers. What is your connection to these writers and works? How do you think these works shape or mimic Cara’s journey?

  KBL: I’m not sure when I first discovered some of these nature writers. A friend gave me one of Rick Bass’s books many years ago, and I’ve long been a fan of Barbara Kingsolver. But it was Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that really made me want to incorporate these themes into a young adult novel. Dillard was influenced by Thoreau, and I stumbled upon an old copy of Walden at a used bookstore. When I refer to Walden in Cara’s story, it’s my own beat-up copy that I’m describing— the yellowed pages, the cover that’s held on with tape. These writings have been a respite during stressful or lonely times, especially when I’ve been unable to be out in nature myself. Many of these books are about seeking—either the author or her characters are looking for something, something they’ve lost or something they need to find—in order to heal, to feel complete, content. They’re a window into the peace and depth of wilderness. They’re about discovery and asking big questions. In this way, they were perfect guides for Cara.

  AH: What importance does Cara’s back-to-nature journey have in our current environment of kids and teens who are glued to their iDevices?

  KBL: I didn’t intend to write a book urging teens to unplug, but as the story developed, this theme emerged—how differently Cara’s worldview has been shaped by her immersion in nature rather than electronics. The powerful effects of nature on healing and learning are increasingly researched and reported, and I hope more kids and adults find slices of nature whenever they can, whether it’s a trip to a national park or a simple stroll through their neighborhood park.