Trembling more from fear than physical exhaustion, too tired to care anymore if I lived or died, I reached out once more from my perch and jammed the fingers of my left hand as far as I could into the groove above my head, my palm facing me—then I stepped away from the cliff face with my left foot, then my right.

The pain was excruciating. Dangling by my fingers, my body shook as a searing white-hot spasm burnt through my left arm and wounded shoulder even as my right hand blindly probed the curl of rock above my head—finding only a smooth, unblemished surface!

I panicked. My fingers began to slip. Unable to locate a second handhold, I had no other choice but to let go, plunge into the surf, and try again—assuming I could survive the fall and find a perch on the cliff face before the ocean dragged me back into its vortex.

I could not see the wave, but I could feel its approach—a deep rumble reverberating from the base of the mountain into my bones.

The thought of being engulfed by the monstrous swell reengaged my adrenal glands. Gripping my left wrist with my right hand, I executed a one-armed pull-up, then flipped upside-down so that my feet were walking on the ceiling of slate. As the stone sliced deep into my fingers, I maneuvered my right leg above the overhang, my bloodied toes inching their way higher along the smooth surface until my heel scraped against a root!

Pressing hard against the root with my right leg, using it as a fulcrum, I snaked my right hand down my left arm and across my groin to my right leg, shifting my weight as I followed my quad muscles up to my knee, calf, my ankle … and finally the root.

Gripping the precious limb, I pulled my gnarled, swollen fingers free of the crevice, grabbed the root with my left hand, and swung my left leg up and over the rounded edge of the overhang, pushing, squirming, fighting to inch my quivering body onto the summit.

And then I was over—just in time to feel the incoming wave barrel into the cliff a hundred feet below, exploding upward in a geyser of foam.

I didn’t care. Stretched out on my back, I stared at a velvet-black tapestry of starlit sky. My fingers and toes were raw and swollen, and every inch of my body hurt, but I was here—wherever here was—and with the sense of satisfaction that I had transcended all physical hardship. Unable to move, I celebrated my victory over the day with an exhausted grin … just as I had with Andie years ago as together we watched the sunrise atop the summit of Buzzard’s Rock.