The View from the Top

(No relation.  Well, only slightly.)

When we left our intrepid, altitudinal heroines, they were nigh the pinnacle of a daring trek.

Essentially:

 

and hoped to stay that way.  The summit was, as expected - and at that point, perhaps, as deserved - spectacular.  Recall that there was a strong wind, so the triumph of attaining the end was mitigated with relief at not continuing to go up, which in turn was cut with a healthy dose of fear of getting blown off a mountain, and sprinkled with trepidation due to looming spectre of the climb... down.

Solid ground never seemed so precious as when there was so little of it to hold on to.

I took some photos with Dad's old manual camera and actually (I admit a bit sheepishly) changed film on the top of this blustery peak.  So we'll see how that turns out in a few years when I get around to developing it all.  Kelly took these, and I'm glad she did:

And this image is not from our moment (wrong light) but it sums up the spirit of the thing:

Dude, we were so high.

Hence, the descent.  In my opinion it was much harder because you had to look and lean down as you went, instead of putting your weight in care of the mountain as on the way up.  I moved much slower this time, scuttling around crab-wise like Gollum but with less certainty.  Again was the strange experience of continually confronting Fear - in this case, a primal deep-in-the-bones fear - and having to decide what to do with that.  Being in the middle of a "hike" as I was, my options were limited:  Keep going.  Or...?  Pee my pants and become too petrified to move that I need to be airlifted down?  No.  I knew it would only get better if I kept moving.  Kelly's mantra for that leg of the journey (which I found very helpful) was "Just keep swimming!"

Kelly and I both being bibliophiles and well aware of the dangers of hubris, we celebrated only after reaching the beginning of the chains again.  And all day thereafter.  Would that I had a dollar for every time she or I would look up into the distance and say,

"Sh*t, I can't believe we did that."  Rough estimates would then project me as a bajillionaire.

Now, let me be clear:  I retain the lessons I learned about hubris.  And I don't believe I conqured a damn thing.  Not that hike, not my fear, not the mountain, nothin'.  If anything, I think I met something up there (and by 'met' I mean something more like a tie game of tic-tac-toe than any more epic battle): Fear in another guise.  "Heights, Falling From" was a form I hadn't known fear in before, but she is a trickster and has many outfits, subtle or gaudy.

I don't consider myself brave to have found her again; foolhardy, certainly.  Reckless, maybe.  When I stop to consider the situation, I realize that in the past three weeks, I have:

• climbed aforementioned peak
• gotten awful close to a scorpion (alive this time)
• searched for a missing hiker
  
• met and said goodbye to new friends (the latter part sucks)
• held a rattlesnake (Hi Michele!)
• handled thousands of dollars in cash 
• slid down a sandstone channel filled with very cold water
  
• And addressed fifty 4th graders for half an hour without a script.

Because it Needs be Done.  That's why.  Because now I have these experiences not as notches on my belt where I have triumphed, but as constant companions to remind me of important things further down the path.  Fear as I have grown to know her is a persistent little demon, but she has some good advice sometimes, and she keeps me from going forward blindly.  In these Western Wilds where so many experiences are vast and novel; and my mettle is new-forged and untested, I could do worse for a co-pilot.

Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?

    - Thoreau, "Ktaadn"