Rising Abruptly (24 page)

At the moment, we selfishly overdose on the three powerful Ss of solitude, silence, stillness. For us, the deeper point of mountaineering. No chorus line, only this pas de deux.

The white gas hisses through the blue flame of the stove we have set again on the flat stone on the ground. As rocks and fallen logs are soaking wet, we will eat standing up, tucking away our dehydrated rehydrated elastic bands and Spackle, tonight's delight disguised as beef rotini or chicken primavera. We stand on either side of the stove, watching the pot.

Watching the pot, we conjure up the Assiniboine. A clever people.

Before the white men came with their chattel of metal, the Assiniboine had no cooking pots. So at dinnertime, they dug a hole in the ground they lined with a bison hide. They filled that ingenious pot with water, while they heated stones in a campfire nearby. Then they dropped the hot stones into the pot and added whatever food they wanted to cook. That's a capital invention. No pot to wash after dinner! If we can't always avoid the chore at home, at least when camping we do. By pouring the required amount of boiling water into the pouch of dehydrated food to rehydrate and warm it, and by setting the pouch into the pot of remaining water to complete the cooking process, we save ourselves the hassle of cleaning a dirty pot. How Assiniboine of us.

GIANNA: Yes, it's this cooking style of theirs that made people call them stone boilers, Stoney. Did you know that?

GREGOR: And so, the Stoney and the Assiniboine are one and the same people?

GIANNA: Like the Matterhorn/Cervin/Cervino in Europe, the mountain with too many names.

Our cache of mountain trivia. The crumbs of history sticking to mind, as bits of food lodged between teeth. At moments like tonight, the tidbits we manage to dislodge from a recessed memory lobe with mental floss.

GIANNA: How much of the tidbits of our lifetime together will still float through our memory in the years to come? Will we go blank? Be desiccated minds?

GREGOR: What dehydrated delight will we share tonight?

ANIMAL MYSTIQUE

In our tent after the storm. A sense of loss. Staring down into the dark tunnel of old age.

GREGOR: Okay, showtime! To lighten the mood. Wear your headlamp and shine the beam on the wall of the tent. Good.

And he forms his hands into the shadow of a grizzly bear rooting.

GIANNA: Is the official transformation of the mountains to accommodate the hordes sufficient cause for us to end it all?

The bear on the wall raises its head. Sniffs the air. Stands on its hind legs. Readies itself for the attack.

GREGOR: You mean a double suicide?

GIANNA: I mean for us to hang not ourselves, but our packs and climbing ropes.

GREGOR: And exchange them for what? A time-share in Cancun or Palm Springs?

GIANNA: To escape our harsh, unending winter.

GREGOR: What? No more ice climbing?

GIANNA: We're sixty-five. Our future has never been so close to our present.

The shadow bear vanishes from the beam of light. And appears a she-moose running.

GIANNA laughs, remembering the moose that day along the road: What was the animal running away from? Or was it running because it was dusk and the moose needed to hide for the night, I wonder?

GREGOR: Where do animals go when they die? We rarely encounter a carcass.

GIANNA: We did, one summer. Remember? The mountain sheep by the river.

GREGOR, turning off Gianna's headlamp: Must have been a recent death. Nature's cleaning crew had not found it yet.

PRELUDE TO A FALL

GIANNA: That same summer on one of our outings, I was traversing a narrow, exposed ledge. Many handholds, but you cannot trust the Rockies rock. Crumbly limestone. Portable handholds, the climbers call these rocks. As I moved along the ledge, I tested and retested each rock I grabbed before putting weight on them. Then, I made one move, and one hold stayed in my hand. That sudden release threw me off balance and the momentum caused my body to spin around. Now with my back to the rock wall, facing the void, I saw, really saw, myself falling. I screamed. A brief, strangulated scream. Pure reaction to the prelude to the fall.

Gregor had already traversed and from above, he called my name. The sound muffled as the rock face stood between us. Later, he told me his heart had jumped in his throat. Watching the void, he expected to see my body in flight before hitting the rocky slope below. The great shadow puppets of our years together dislocated before his eyes. Everything over in a flash. Then, he saw nothing. Heard nothing. Called my name again.

I was going down, except that, apart from being crumbly, limestone is also rough. So, my pack caught on a small outcrop of the uneven surface of the wall and that resistance against limestone was enough to stop my forward motion. I corrected my balance. Carefully turned back to face the wall. Resumed the traverse to where the ledge widened to safety.

Many long seconds later, he spotted the top of my helmet contouring the wall. I scrambled up toward him. He held me tight. That was a close call, I said.

BITTER BREW

Morning light. We crawl out of the tent at eight. Waiting for the pot to boil, we chew on stale bagels and cream cheese. Study the mountain in sunshine.

GREGOR: It's coming into shape again.

GIANNA: It kept me awake all night.

GREGOR: What kept you awake? The stage fright of the climb?

GIANNA: Climbers showing up today. Beating us to the climb.

GREGOR: Stop torturing yourself with things you can't change.

GIANNA: There will never be perfection to the days.

GREGOR: Brace yourself. The same story keeps repeating itself. We're caught in a causality loop.

GIANNA: Our personal causality loop?

GREGOR: There's no way out, Gia. None. No matter how swollen this part is or seized up that part becomes, we must keep in shape. Continue to climb.

GIANNA: The old couple doing the geriatric
assault
of mountains.

GREGOR: Worse yet. No longer able to recall, the old couple
assaulting
the same mountain over and over.

GIANNA: The old couple being assaulted by geriatric deterioration.

GREGOR: Take heart. The mountaineering industry will dream up walkers fitted with crampons.

GIANNA: And anti-gravity boots.

GREGOR: And fusion ice screws for arthritic fingers.

We pour the tea. Sip the brew.

GIANNA: We, annoying baby boomers, now dopey senile boomers.

GREGOR: The Whatever-Something gen can't wait for us to fall off the mountains, so they can have the mall to themselves.

We fill the pot with water again. The Assiniboine come back to mind.

A branch of the Sioux people, the Assiniboine hailed from Lake of the Woods, but were displaced farther and farther westward by the European conquest of North America. As we will be displaced by the hordes demanding resorts and services. More signs, the man from Maryland insisted. Along the way, the Assiniboine tried to escape smallpox and, fleeing, they clashed with other Natives. While we try to escape noisy machines and helicopter tours. On the great prairies and until they reached the mountains, the Assiniboine fought the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy. We're fighting RVS and tour buses on winding mountain roads. Meet the Invincible Indians. Conflicts, killings. Eventually, the rivalry became less deadly in the guise of ritual games. How far will we have to adapt?

In our day and age, the Invincible Climbers wage rivalry and contests over mountain faces, ridges and in couloirs. Sometimes, their drive, ambition, fanaticism cause renewed clashes. And mishaps. And they struggle against land itself. Even with the new gizmos the mountaineering industry continuously invents, even then, the land resists those repeated assaults, and climbers fall. Though, each decade, climbers raise the bar a notch higher, putting ever more difficult routes where, previously, no human thought it possible for the law of gravity to be defied. How far can that go?

We pour more tea into our mugs. Watch the mountain dry itself in the sun.

When first climbed in 1903 by a W. Douglas and his
two
Swiss guides, the North Ridge of Mount Assiniboine was considered a challenge. No doubt was a challenge for Outram when, two years previously, he came down the same ridge, after summiting. Now, the mountain is climbed routinely dozens of times a year. Even in winter. And even in adverse conditions, you can always find Invincible Climbers willing to challenge, to defy, to
conquer
.

GREGOR: And we too must endure.

GIANNA: But the hordes…

GREGOR: You and your hordes!

GIANNA: We will run out of luck. Did you hear? The backcountry trails have reopened. And it's the weekend! They're coming, Greg! They're coming!

GREGOR: To avoid the crowds, we'll bushwhack. Climb at night.

GIANNA: No good. With night-vision goggles on the market, a nocturnal fad will develop. There'll be lineups.

Taking a liking to the mountains, the Assiniboine attacked the Kootenay, the true mountain dwellers, who must have objected to those upstarts from the east muscling in on their territory. In time, the Kootenay tolerated them and the Assiniboine stayed. Cooking their food with hot stones.

GREGOR: Until metal pots caught up with everybody.

GIANNA: And ever since, we've been scrubbing like mad.

GREGOR: Tomorrow, we get up and we climb. The mountain will be in shape.

Another full day and one long night. Waiting. Mountaineering is also about waiting. Anguish rising.

GIANNA: I hear voices.

GREGOR: It's only me mumbling.

Sipping tea in the falling quiet of morning. Will today be fine? Will tomorrow be sweet? Sipping tea. Bitter brew.

CRIMSON NIGHT

We wake around midnight. Summer nights at this latitude are never truly dark. We've been lying in our sleeping bags since eight thirty. We must be rested for tomorrow's climb. Feeling woozy sleepy. Falling into lightning-quick dreams. Hearing the distant rumble of an avalanche.

Eyes closed. Silence broken. Something stepping on twigs. High alert. We feel each other tensing up in our sleeping bags. We try to relax. Grizzlies walk on silent paws. Eyes now wide open, as if seeing helped to identify the source of the sound.

In so many of our deep conversations, we speculate that we would take our life-altering disaster, whether an accident or health failing, with eyes wide open, knowing too well it would not prevent the catastrophic event from destroying who we were. Gone, the full man/woman before the event. If the full personality of the woman/man survived the catastrophe, who can begin to imagine the cruelty of her life? his life? Day in, day out, the long-distance walker immobilized. Day in, day out, the climber paralyzed in a wheelchair.

A long time ago on stage in the Far East, when we were young and our old age was an impossibility, we performed old
Baucis and Philemon
in shadowgraphy and in a wig of white silk hair that came down to the floor.

Tonight, lying on our backs, zipped up in sleeping sheaths on the ground, faces a few inches from fragile textile, we are old Baucis and Philemon, without shadowgraphy, without wig of white hair. We wouldn't stand a chance should one of those silent paws take a swipe. And so tonight, we recall the ancient request of the old couple to the gods.

GREGOR: We have lived our years together in harmony.

GIANNA: Grant that we may die together.

Ears to the ground listening. Twigs breaking. The tent walls shaking. The gods entering our vestibule?

FEMALE VOICE: Howdy, folks. Sorry to startle you, but you must get up. I'm the warden. We're evacuating everybody at first light. It's a precautionary measure.

GREGOR and GIANNA: Fire?

WARDEN: On the other side of the pass. We don't think it'll reach the park. But we must evacuate anyway.

Grim thoughts tumble out of mind when urgency, perhaps that long-anticipated life-altering catastrophe hitting us, together, sooner than we think, jolts us into action. Yanks us out of what strange dreams, we forget.

WARDEN: You have time to take down your tent and pack your gear.

And we hear her walk away. The forest burning? Is that real? On the other side of the pass? How distant is that for a fast-burning fire?

We move. Unzipping sleeping bags. Slipping into pants. Lacing up boots. Grabbing small objects we had brought into the tent last night. Eyeglasses, headlamps, heart pills, water bottles, fleece caps. Unzipping tent door. Crawling out.

On the side of the pass invisible to us, we imagine a world aglow. Acrid smoke stinging eyes, choking lungs. High flames leaping into the starry sky, consuming wood at an astonishing rate, rushing upslope toward the pass. Nothing of the sort. Not even a red glow in the sky. All is quiet and it is later than we thought. Nearly three. We stuff the sleeping bags into their sacks. Empty the air out of the pads and roll them up. Fold the tarp. Take down the tent.

Rushing to retrieve the food bag from the metal cache. A fleeting thought as we stumble over the uneven ground. If we had attempted the mountain sooner, we would be high above in our world of snow and verglas. Would we still be alive to watch the inferno in the distance? Rushing back to the campsite.

We dump our gear into our packs. Shoulder packs, grab mountaineering axes. Hurry downhill toward the creek. Glance back, expecting the blaze now working its way over the pass. The speed of a wild fire can be astounding, terrifying. A lifetime of brain synapses destroyed in a matter of minutes. We pick up the pace. On our backs, the gear weighs heavily.

GIANNA: Should we dump ballast?

GREGOR: Are you crazy!

Stumbling over roots in eerie darkness backlit in pulsating reds and yellows, we imagine, we half-hike, half-jog on the snaking narrow trail circling the lake. The water, pristine and passive, a mirror for the stars. Somewhere, not that far, the blaze lights up the night. Mountains lighting up our lives.

We breathe hard, lungs tightening, and we trot. Trusting the tightness in our chests is lung- and not heart-related. With our packs on our backs and at night in this terrain, we can't run full tilt. Not anymore. In our hell-for-leather days, perhaps. Now, we settle for what the body can still do. If this night were then, we'd be flying across this meadow, finding the epic exhilarating, cutting across danger like cutting across a field of buttercups. There is no reason to rush. We relax our pace. But keep playing mental games. If we had had to flee and abandon the gear. The tent, tarp, sleeping bags and pads would be a brief torch of synthetic fibres, now melted and fused to the ground not unlike a puddle of human cells after the ultimate global annihilation.