Ascent Revisited
She began struggling soon after they left the trailhead but they had discussed the likelihood of having to stop and rest often, before setting off and they had agreed it would be slow and steady. They rested often of pure necessity. She was not able to push herself at anything resembling the pace they were accustomed to, or thought that they were. Her chest felt constricted, but nothing like the iron-clamped feeling of suffocation of more recent vintage. She could, she supposed, thank the daily Aspirin therapy for that. And as far back as she could recall, at least back when the children were teens, her legs, under physical duress, had become cramped and heavy through a steep ascent. Their youngest child, now a senior biologist with the provincial government in British Columbia had knowingly informed her back then that she was experiencing a muscular build-up of lactic acid. He was the one of their three children whose enthusiasm for mountains exceeded even their own, whose disappointment should they be unable to complete a circuit was acute, who always wrote up the essentials of their climbs at the back of the mountain guide. He was their prod and while concerned lest his enthusiasm push his companions beyond their endurance, seemed to require a successful conclusion. Now he is answerable to no one, and climbs solo through all three ranges in B.C., who thinks nothing of hauling out his kayak, or canoe and driving them to what appeared to them to be impossibly dangerous situations. And while they were climbing this mountain he was off in Sweden at a university-sponsored conference. From there he would go to Italy and stay in Trieste with a friend, then see another friend and climb in the Dolomites. He would also see Florence and Venice, places they had never been to themselves.
Once, soon after their older boy was sixteen and recently diagnosed with the lifelong disease which would radically change his life and theirs, they were all five of them climbing, a demanding, difficult mountain. They had persevered, gone halfway up the mountain to Eagles Cliff, the furthest they had managed the year before. This year they were determined they would reach the top and they were all willing, yet she had a niggling doubt, wondering, despite his good spirits whether their older boy could manage. He did well, he had the body of an athlete, although it had betrayed him. As they proceeded one after another up a slope so steep they blessed the secured wire rope that they pulled themselves along to get through a demanding point, she stopped. Stopped because their older boy, in front of her had halted. The two younger ones continued their haul upwards, not yet realizing something was wrong. Her husband, behind her, gave her a little pat on the backside urging her onward. Her son turned about, his face washed clear of colour, and said in a barely audible voice that he could not continue. So they had all turned back, to sit at the first flat area they reached, uncertain what was wrong, whether they would continue. It was not to be; their older boy, still coming to terms with his illness experience a moment where he met head-on the reality of his mortality. They turned back, abandoned their hard-won height. But the following year they did it, all five reached the apex of that peak. Now his Anglican clergywoman wife shared his adventures.
There was too the memory of a climb where, stopping before a signpost partway up another mountain they read the warning to turn back at the first sign of inclement weather. The sign registered a grim statistic of the number of people who had lost their lives on that summit in years past. They looked at their daughter. She wore shorts, despite their pleas that she dress more sensibly for the venture. Then as now she deferred to no one and would do as she pleased, for it was summer, after all. They did make that summit, blithely ignoring the warning seen below, reasoning that was for winter climbs. Besides which, at this juncture, they considered themselves old hands at the climbing business, felt invulnerable, proud of their climbing prowess. And what had started out as warm rain lower on the mountain was gradually transformed to light snow and finally icy sleet, but by that point they were approaching the summit, and they continued on. At the summit, unlike previous successful climbs they soon saw there would be no view; visibility was almost nil. They did have a few light jackets, but no legware to offer their improvident child. This determined girl, now mother to a nine-year-old girl, herself offering clues to an indomitable personality so like her mother’s. The resemblance was there, and the grandparents should know for they’d given the child day-care since she was six months old and continued now with after-school care.
They forged on, the husband worried about his wife’s obvious difficulties, her constant stops to regain her breath. He did his best not to allow his concern to be evident, and used those occasions to pull out his camera and take the snapshots which she so valued as mementoes. Now they reached yet another of the many ledges so far encountered. They levered themselves, tugged at tree stumps and outcrops, made the ledge and continued up the winding trail. The small black dog crouched to leap the next ledge, but they ordered her sharply to wait. Although she hadn’t seemed to be having difficulties clearing most of he ledges, she was not as agile as she once was. He would lift her over this ledge, fearful of the prospect she might miss and surely slide straight down the mountainside. Then the Apricot toy, 8 pounds of canine testosterone. The tinier dog, facing the prospect of leaping what obviously would appear to it to be an impossible height had already retired some distance behind them, and sensing their intent, stood there, trembling in fear.
A month earlier her husband had been so debilitated from an undiagnosed bladder infection which had thrust his enlarged prostate into frequent, intemperate action they felt certain their expedition would be thwarted. He had suffered the pain, the sleep-deprived nights, certain that this was just a passing thing, that his prostate was ‘acting up’ as it so often did, and would soon be reduced to what he now considered to be normal. Finally, her frantic prodding had spurred him reluctantly to seek medical help, and the consequent anti-biotic prescription had swiftly cleared the condition. That was then; now he offered his outstretched hand, but she refused, seeing him poised so tenuously on the rising rockface. Breathing tightly with each stride she gained short-lived momentum, disciplining herself to observe, to note to memory as many details of the trees, underbrush, mountain stream slipping by them as possible.
More long stony crags to mount, and yet more. She recalled when she was so much younger, fearing to walk upright on the long sloping expanses of rock. Then, she hadn’t been averse to advancing crabwise on all fours, ditching any semblance of dignity when push came to shove. And in any event, there was rarely anyone other than her family to witness her fear. Now, she rose steadily, albeit at a pitifully slow pace, completely upright. Stopping often to catch breath as cooling breezes wafted over them, they half-turned to glance behind at the steadily unfolding, breathlessly vast march of mountain tops. Now and then a young couple or a single male or female would pass them, their passage seemingly effortless in contrast to her anguished stops-and-starts. At another time she would have felt embarrassed, but no longer did; age had extinguished pride. As for him, he had never been bothered by that kind of thing, and would always unaffectedly perform to his own standards. She found it reassuring, nonetheless, to note that the young women who passed them also stopped to rest but far less frequently, and for shorter periods, while their male companions waited patiently. Had they embarked on this climb any other day than Sunday they would never had encountered so many others also intent on summitting. But this happened to be the one day of their week away that promised cooler temperatures and they had indeed begun the ascent wearing light fleeces, since discarded and stored in their backpacks.
Although they drank nothing themselves, they offered water often to the little dogs struggling with the effort, tongues lolling. At one juncture a young woman with a yellow Labrador paused briefly on the trail below them to rest. As she resumed her climb and easily passed them the toy Poodle snarled and frantically barked his idiotic and feckless willingness to beat hell out of the Lab. The young woman laughed wryly in response to her observation that people-legs did not rejoice in such unreasonable demands.
There’s scant shade at this elevation, but the little black dog still winds her way for brief rests under the timid shade of scrub oak and spruce growing in stubborn defiance of prevailing winds and cruel winters. When they finally, in a triumph of disbelief, reach the first peak, they stop, shed backpacks, and perch quietly in surveillance of the lofty scene spread around them. They observe the long ribbons of white-grey clouds in the peaceful sky and they breathe pure mountain ozone. Her husband identifies a few of the taller peaks. From her backpack she withdraws doggy treats and prevails upon the lanky black one to abandon her scant shade. The dog accepts a cookie, hauls it to the shade, eats it and wearily repeats this little performance several times. The tiny dog sits beside the woman, devouring one cookie after another.
When they begin the descent to the Col she recalls her bemusement the year before at the spectacle of an elderly, slight, dapper man reaching out his hands to encourage a tall, robust grey-haired woman clad in an ankle-length denim dress and puffy-white tennis shoes. The sight of the drop-off to the trail descending to the Col looks formidable. She descends now carefully, first on her arse, until, gaining sufficient courage, she continues upright again. A short walk on the Col brings them to another ascent, and they rise the remaining four hundred feet to gain the second peak. In the process they file carefully through narrow passages and up winding pathways shouldered by boulders, lungs searing, legs leaden. Then unaccountably a short hike through thick forest where they had seen two very inebriated, giddy young men beside the tent they’d plopped in a scant clearing, two years previously.
At the second summit they look back, down upon the first peak they’d left. They feel happy, and are glad to stop and talk to a muscular young man wielding a hiking pole in each hand who is doing the circuit in the opposite, more difficult direction. The young man appears amenable to the exchange of hiking tales, although it’s more than clear he doesn’t need the rest. He obligingly regales them with his accounts of the really difficult climbs he’s managed through the course of the week, this being the easiest, the last one. They’re familiar with most of the climbs, which they had also managed, years ago. The balance of their day’s adventure will be on the descent, and there is relief in that knowledge. They anticipate the gradual descent of one smoothly massive rock face after another, one switchback following another on the circuit’s completion.
They look for the yellow markers arrowed on the rock, or the rock mounds urging them toward the right direction. They know they’re truly on the descent when they reach the spine, the final ridge with its dizzying fall-away sides. They call to the dogs to stay beside them, which they appear willing enough to do as they carefully search their own way through the many little rocky traps awaiting the unwary. Finally, the plunge into the forest thick with old yellow birch, maple, white pine, large smooth-barked beech, hemlock. The path winds through thickly tangled roots, fallen rocks, the air damp with mould, but not unpleasantly so. Her knees feel wobbly, her footing uncertain. His legs are fine, but his toes have been badly battered. Another hour and they would surely be out, although they’re slightly surprised that their progress is still slow, they’re unable to proceed as speedily as they’d anticipated, going down.
They note to one another the utter absence of wildlife. On rare occasions they have seen red squirrels close to the trailheads in the past, but even these are not to be seen on this occasion. Again they wonder why it is that there are no small animals to be seen. When they’d hiked in British Columbia they had seen picas and birds aplenty. In Georgia they had seen deer. In the Great Smokies they had occasionally seen small wildlife. Even hiking through mountains close to Tokyo they had seen signs in the mountain forests warning of the presence of monkeys, although they had never seen any.
As he scrambles his way down slightly before her, the black dog pacing him, he suddenly shouts, begins to run while calling to her to stop where she is. Bloody damn! They’ve stumbled across a hovering stacked vortex of wasps. How is that possible? While he swoops to lift the dog in a vain attempt to shield her mid-run, the woman lifts the tiny dog and struggles with it off trail to bushwhack alongside the trail. When they re-connect he is still pulling wasps off the little black dog, off his hands and shirt, cursing the determination of the angry swarm.
For the balance of the descent the little black dog runs on with renewed determination, setting a pace they cannot match, obviously intent on maintaining a safe distance between herself and the stingers – nervously glancing back occasionally to ensure her troupe is following the leader.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, November 03, 2005
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