Whisper

 

 

 

November 16, 2020

 Greetings from where you’re needed,

 Outside the tent the wind moaned, wanting to be in with them, pulling at the fabric like a petulant child.  They crouched inside, jealously guarding the warmth, weaving tiny threads of each other into a new cloth between them.

 A few hours before, he was not thinking of the weather, only the peak above him.  He pulled himself over the ledge, arms shaking, dragging his pack behind him, throwing himself onto the shelf.   His breath came in gasps, the thin, frigid air, raw in his throat.  And then he gasped for a different reason.

 There was a woman sitting against the cliff wall in front of him.  Above them both, the escarpment towered, disappearing into mist, the granite was pocked with tufts of snow.

 She was small, her climbing boots seemed outlandish on her, as if drawn on by someone with no idea of perspective.  She was surrounded by a parka, held in place by an outlandish scarf, so only a tiny bit of her face showed, caramel colored skin.   He knelt in the snow, struggling to compose himself, unable to think of anything other than; “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.” She said.  She didn’t move from where she sat, as if she were in her living room, welcoming an expected guest.

 That moment, hours ago, dissolved with first the awkward polite comments, everything compressed by the conditions.  Formalities were thinned down, other than a quick introduction, exchange of climbing credentials.  They didn’t have to ask why either was there.  She said her name was Miharo.  He couldn’t place her accent, but guessed, wrongly, she was from one of the Sherpa families.

 The snow became more insistent, both knew better than to ignore it. She sat cross legged in the snow, and then stood in a single fluid motion, with the grace and power of a ballerina, and began gathering her things.  He unpacked his tent and minutes later they were inside, each settling their own nest.

 “I thought,” he chuckled at himself, “I thought I would be the first here, up this side of the rock.” He watched her through the pale light, trying not to sound like he felt.  “I didn’t see any sign of you coming up.”

“I came a different route.” she said and didn’t explain further.

“The people I talked to at base camp said no one has summited here.  Maybe ever.”

“This old mountain, this old world,” she said quietly, “so many souls here before anyone was keeping track.”  She shrugged, the nylon parka squeaking.  Who knows?

She brought out her tiny stove and melted snow and made tea for them both.  It was dark now, and the tent was lit by their headlamps.  They sat across from each other and sipped the hot liquid and talked, first about climbing, which is what he could talk about.  They traded back and forth for a while, both conscious of the snow sealing in around them. 

“Why do you climb?” she asked, looking over her cup at him.  Her eyes were as dark as the tea, he could see his reflection there, looked away.

He didn’t answer at first.  He talked with climbers all the time, no one ever asked that question.

Then, finally: “My ex-wife said it was to escape from things.”

“From?”

“I don’t know, whatever.  It was her theory.” he said, a little too gruffly.  He tried a fake laugh to soften it.  She sat waiting, letting him come back with something else.

 The two of them sat in their refuge on the ledge, the rest of the world thousands of feet below, vanishing as the sun departed and the air filled with white.   Outside the tent the snow hissed on the nylon, and the cold leeched in.  They pulled out their sleeping bags and drew them around themselves.  She leaned back and looked at him.  Minutes swarmed around them, and an hour formed, neither spoke.  He heard her zip her bag around her, sensed her laying back on her pack.

 He came to the woods, and to the mountains, to find some peace, and it was there.  But he left it there, and that’s what he couldn’t say.  That the moment he set foot on pavement he felt a loss.

“I am disappointed.” he said finally.  “I can’t think of another word.  You know what is going on right now, it seems impossible to create a life without the world providing only frustration.”

 She had turned off her headlamp, so he could only make the shape of her inside her bag, her head just showing from the end.  “I know.” she said.

 “I am disappointed.” he said.  “In people.  Politics and race and religions, it seems like we can’t invent ways fast enough to create reasons to be apart, to be angry.  I keep thinking I will see some better side.  Now I wonder if there is one.”  A long sigh, marked by a puff of white in front of him.  “It’s easier up here, where things are simpler.”

 She put her cup down, looked directly at him. “It is easy to be disappointed.  If you let that stop you, up here,” she waved her hand at the mountain, “you would never climb after the first rockfall, the first snow, the first frayed line.  You are not going to summit here, not now.  Will that keep you from climbing again?”

He felt a twinge of resentment.  Swallowed his first words.  “It’s not the same…”

She chuckled, something deep in her chest.  “No, it’s just simpler, like you said.  Disappointed in the weather, or a bad hand hold, or you lose a sponsor, get denied a permit, that’s easy.  You’re an experienced person, and you can accept it as temporary. You look for the next summit.”

“I don’t see your point.” he said.  But he did.  He watched her sit up, saw her face, eyes gleaming in his lamplight. 

 “Disappointment is a cousin of self-pity; it is a luxury of people who are willing to give up.”  She drew another breath.  “Out here we learned that giving up is not where the sweetness is, there is no beauty in resignation.   There is no summit without setbacks, struggle.   We know if we look for another chance, it is the only way we find what waits for us.  If we don’t carry that lesson back down the mountain, shame on us.  To borrow a quote from Prefontaine, to do less would be to disrespect the gift.”

He felt the truth pierce him.  He looked at her for a long time, heard her whisper something else.  “They need you.”

They sat in silence and he finally turned off his lamp.  They both lay back and zipped up their bags, felt the ice in the air.  The wind assaulted their tiny sanctuary, wailed around them.

“Do you think we are going to die?” he asked.

He heard her let out a soft sigh.  “Definitely.  Probably not here though.”

He dozed again, tried to think of some warm place, felt the ache of the cold, felt the fear.  And somehow in that, he felt something else.  The earth below him felt different.  He thought about asking her if she felt it, and before he could form the words, he was asleep.

 He woke knowing the snow had stopped.  The tent was bathed in moonlight, the storm had moved on.  He felt the brittle cold on his face, turned in his mummy bag to see Miharo, if she was awake.  She was not there.

 Panic seized him, he sat up, his head pushing against the tent, sagging with snow.  He scrambled to the zipper and whisked it up, faced a small drift in front of the fly.  He blinked, pushed out into the snow, his bag still wrapped around his legs.

 The earth was bathed in pure white, the moon proud above the peak.  Around him the ragged edge of the world was made into soft shapes, sensual and graceful, the snow transforming the unforgiving rock into something else.

 There was not a mark in the snow, not a footprint, nothing disturbed the pure surface for as far as he could see.  It was as disorienting as when he first saw her.  Seeing her and not seeing her left him with the same lightheaded feeling.   He sat back on his knees and wondered.

 Above him the stars wheeled, dancing from one horizon to another, keeping the moon company.  In that light he felt the difference again.  He let one thing go and took on something greater.

 Hope this finds you making your way back,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2020 David Smith