The wind outside the hut threatened
the paper-thin window panes with each
new gust, causing loose paint chips to
bounce around on the sills like Lotto
balls. A storm had been blowing in from
the northwest all night, rolling across
the Tasman Sea, and chopping waves onto
the coastline of New Zealand. The storm
then climbed the western slopes to the
front door of this abandoned cabin in
the mountains.
The gut of New Zealand’s highest range, the Southern Alps, sprawled in
every direction outside the hut’s crooked entrance. From the soured mattress
inside, I could barely make out piles of mountaintops stabbing up through the
underbelly of a thick cloudbank. And I noticed that near the upper reaches of
the highest peaks, the clouds were beginning to untangle themselves from the
sky, bringing in a wash of silver moonlight. The storm was weakening.
At the first glimpse of a star, I kicked one naked leg from the warmth of my
sleeping bag and stuffed toes into a stiff climbing boot. Digging them down,
the cold leather groaned, as if annoyed by their presence. My other leg followed,
and soon I stumbled out the door where I hopped around in predawn dimness, gathering
warmth for a pee.
I sniffed the wind, relieved to find the scent of foreignness still in the air,
the same scent that continually reminded me I was far from home, on some remote
island in the Pacific, and was therefore allowed to act out my deepest impulses
of adventure. The scent had given me the ability to climb in the mountains of
New Zealand as if I were invincible, endowing me with a certain strain of confidence
I had never before felt.
It all started the moment I stepped off the plane from Honolulu and waddled past
customs with a new country under my heels. Outside, I noticed the sun was sharp
and hypnotic, and the land itself seemed to vibrate with the movement of far-off
glaciers. A trance-like state gripped me, some outward force latched onto my
common sense, and I was kidnapped for nearly six months while the rest of my
body scooted off to climb in the Southern Alps. After a dozen peaks were conquered
without harm, I was convinced that each successful peak I scaled in New Zealand
would allow me to become more and more invincible, and quite possibly, could
lead to powers of immortality.
Back inside the hut, I choked down wet granola, filled my backpack with an assortment
of vitals: ice axe and crampons, helmet, map, stove, sleeping bag, and bits of
food. The sun was still far off to the east, projecting shadows on some other
distant land.
I followed a vague trail through the mud-choked valley and noticed the forests
beyond seemed to invent new jungle noises: strange chirps, odd whistles, loud
insect sirens that hadn't reached the Amazon yet. And the shape of a mountaintop
came into view, hovering above the beech trees.
It was Mount Oates, one of the peaks I had come to climb during that particular
weekend in late Autumn. Angling away from its summit, I saw a high ridge sketching
a skyline to the west, past unnamed ripples, to where it eventually rose to meet
the mighty haunches of another peak I had come for, Mount Franklin.
My plan was to climb steep portions of snow and rock to the top of Oates, then
traverse across the alpine ridge that led toward the incredible hulk of Franklin.
It was to be a long and difficult traverse with uncertain obstacles. Steep rock?
Obnoxious exposure? A bivouac?
Moving on, I found a snowfield on the eastern side of Mount Oates and hiked toward
it, passing through an invisible line where all things green faded into the grayness
of old rock, schist, and limestone where the sea once sat. I fit crampons over
the soles of my boots and moved onto snow as hard as oak.
After an hour of rhythmic slogging, I found a gully that had been carved into
the mountainside by a century or more of rock slides. I hurried up it before
the rays of a new day could lick the relative safety of frozenness away from
its loose innards, then stumbled onto the summit of Mount Oates.
But there was little time to celebrate. The ridge I had come to explore buckled
down and away and into a cloud soup, poking out once in a while on its journey
to join Mount Franklin. The ridge looked lengthy, perhaps two miles in its entirety,
and had been sharpened by ice age storms and tectonic movements. Glaciers rubbed
against it, perhaps a thousand years later, and left it twisted and serrated
like a busted bread knife. Below the ridge, I could see ancient snowfields lapping
at
its edges. And beyond, all things tall blended into the horizon before dipping
into the Tasman Sea.
I moved quickly past nasty drop-offs, dodging the occasional tumble of gendarme
parts that protruded from the steepled ridgetops. Once again, it was a feeling
of mightiness I could smell, almost taste, on the kiwi wind. And it was my hankering
to find that gift of immortality that kept reality at bay and calibrated my fear
to courage. At the top of a mere bump on the ridge, I discovered that a section
of it had broken off during the last millennia of erosion, leaving me nowhere
to go. I was forced to downclimb until I could skim its base, thus avoiding the
chunk of missing crest. Down there, I found a few goat bones littered across
the rubble, reminding me that I, too, was made of such things.
I needed to regain the ridgetop in order to position myself for Mount Franklin,
but the only way I could do that was to ascend the continuation of cliff that
lay in front of me where hanging boulders and moss parts collected to define
the eastern border of the ridge. The cliff was slick and ugly and looked steep
enough to fall freely from if climbed improperly.
But there was little time to stall with my conscience. So I began to climb, hand
over hand, foot beside foot, upward, in the usual manner. In fact, I paid little
attention to the space that slowly separated me from the ground. Instead, I focused
on the several hundred feet of exposed climbing I needed to negotiate before
I would be able to flop over the ridge and continue on toward the brawny flanks
of Mount Franklin.
Everything was going as planned: The ground was becoming increasingly blurry
beneath my legs some 50, 100, then 200 feet below; my nerves were staying where
they should; and I was speaking to myself in a low, hushed voice about something
entirely off the subject of solo mountaineering.
Suddenly, and unpredictably, a tiny piece of moss disagreed with my boot placement,
a slight tug of gravity disrupted my composure, and I felt my weight shift.
Before I could prepare myself, I noticed that I was slipping off the rock. And
in that surreal moment of astonishment, I felt something muscle in on the false
front of confidence that had been built over the past few months of climbing
in the Southern Alps. Just when I needed them the most, my thoughts of immortality
began to fade, a silliness from the term invincibility took shape, and I was
left there to fend for myself.
The slip was small in a relative sense, and lasted only a few seconds, but the
message it sent to the rest of my body was in a font every cell understood: If
you let go, you die.
There was clarity in the moment I accepted this as truth, and my life paused
to gather some lost wits. Unfortunately, this did little to help my situation.
With an unexpected abruptness, my knees began to jiggle and then opted to quake,
my fingertips vibrated and threatened mutiny on their grip, and my head dribbled
down off my neck and hung there like an overripe grapefruit. It was as if everything
inside me was about to fold and call on the moment of being airborne.
My mind played a moving image of me peeling off, spinning through the air, and
landing in a heap of compound fractures on the rubble where the goats had already
pioneered such feats.
I begged to be anywhere else in the world than on that mountain. I begged to
be nursing beers with the boys back home on a Monday night during football season.
I begged for the feel of ocean currents, and bubble baths, and swimming pool
lounge chairs. And to rediscover just how great ice cream tasted.
Pathetically, I decided to partake in the number one no-no when dealing with
height-related problems: I looked down. And when I did, I saw that the forces
of death were gathering beneath my feet. I swear I could feel them mulling over
my fate.
I attempted a downclimb, but it resulted in another slip and an unplanned shriek.
There were only two apparent choices here: Hold on until fatigue forced me to
let go or continue upward and face death fighting.
The next handhold was six inches above my left shoulder, a funny-looking piece
of rock that seemed to be attached to the cliff side with kindergarten paste.
I tested its strength, closed my eyes to the point of pain, and cranked on it.
Nothing bad happened. So my feet followed and somehow found holds for themselves.
Then little edges appeared from nowhere as if summoned by my terror.
I continued, always on the verge of slipping, for what seemed like hours, and
in hindsight, it must have been that long. At times I felt like I was about to
go, but each time I would hold on just long enough to find another hidden ledge,
a teetering bit of rock, or chunk of moss with good roots.
I remember the frantic relief that coursed through me the moment I crawled to
safety on top of that ridge. And I remember how my mind searched for an emotion
to fit the moment but found that it had not been given the chance to invent one
yet. During this time of indescribable relief, I noticed that something was glowing
in front of me. When I lifted my head, I saw I was standing above the most beautiful
sunset I had ever seen.
To the west, dusk colors bred with a newly approaching storm, an atmospheric
orgy with glimpses of a turquoise sea off to one side and pink-rimmed mountaintops
poking out from behind. To the east, day-old sunshine blended with the gray-backed
hills of the distant Craigeburn Range, and further on, the mutton-field flatness
of the Canterbury plains conjured up the hues of a late-summer forest fire.
It dawned on me that I had never stopped to extract what this land was really
lending me: the ability to live my dreams and to build an appreciation for the
powers locked in mountains. It was apparent that I needed to live through the
days of New Zealand and come away with an understanding for this power, not pieces
of it. The lap dances with death and missions to conquer peaks were a misinterpretation
of this gift, and I felt silly knowing that just a minute before, I had narrowly
escaped a threshold that could have wiped away all of this.
The Southern Alps aren't a place one goes to die; they are a place one goes to
begin living. To follow their empty paths and travel to their highest holds was
only a part of it. The rest lies in trying to incorporate such beauty and adventure
into the bonds of real-life living.
I had persuaded myself into believing that the immortal qualities of mountains
would somehow rub off on me the more I tested my own mortality against them.
Instead, they proved to me that humans are only capable of living and dying while
mountains are the ones that keep on going. It may be said that flirting with
death while climbing is often unavoidable, but it should never be used as a tool
to discover the true delicacy of living.
The reality of this was staggering, and it forced me to collapse to my knees
where I placed elbows on thighs and cradled a heavy head between my palms. The
only thing left to do was cry. Which I did, in repentance, until the last veins
of orange, gold, and sapphire had disappeared into the western sky. |
