Go Ahead And Give It To Me // Part Two
We, he and I, are heading up the side of a mountain. We are far from a beaten path. We are deep in the wilderness, like two ants wandering through a pathless sea of granite. We are, by choice, by design, days away from anything that isn’t covered in dirt, anything that isn’t feral, anything that doesn’t rise with the halo of the sun and sink into the slumber of the stars.
This day, like the eight that have come before it, is busy with the toil of the climb: slogging up steep slopes then scurrying down the other side, which we do from dawn until dusk, in rain, in wind, in hale, in swarms of mosquitoes, in bites of horse flies, in stream of sunshine.
Somewhere between one hundred and one million mosquito bites score my skin like chicken-pox scars. My tanned skin, layered as it is in zinc-rich sunblock, marred as it is with swollen bites and speckles of dirt, looks a strange iridescent purple beneath the stark afternoon light.
The pillowy flesh of my palms remain chapped and sore from clenching my trekking poles, from clawing at rock and earth, from tightly gripping the sharp limbs of lonely willows to help hoist myself up steep slopes or break my falls down them. The once white crescents of my fingernails are now black as death. Each tiny crack and fine line is full with mountain sludge. My hairy legs are sick with fatigue and gnawed to the bone. My feet, my darling precious feet, stand as a display of shocking strength; the soles are sore to the touch but, thankfully, miraculously, remain un-blistered. Even the soft skin of my butt cheeks are beat red and rubbed raw from sliding down one too many icy snow shoots on my ass.
We out here, our friend Geoff would say right about now if he were here, if he were alive. And he would be right, by all means.
We out here.
I have nothing against well-trodden and manicured landscapes, and I enjoy hiking established and maintained trails as much as the next person. It’s just that I also love places like this: places that are uncontrollable, too large and too rugged to maintain order in. This pristine part of the Sierra Nevada is wild with a capital W, and rough with capital R. It is controlled by time and time alone; guarded and maintained by the smite of its own elements, by the swiftness of its own hand. Some people mistakenly think that the end of humanity is the end of the world. I do not. If there’s one thing I know for sure it is that mountains will remain long after humanity turns to dust.
Zack is far enough ahead of me, above me, that I no longer see his body moving, no longer hear his trekking poles tapping, no longer find his head bobbing over and under waves of boulders as he gracefully, every so gracefully, hoists, lifts, glides, the weight of himself and his backpack over them. He must already be to the saddle, I think, wishing I were there.
The pale blue of an alpine lake, small and remote, sinks behind me, smaller still as I climb, crawl, rock-hop, higher. It doesn’t occur to me to be afraid of the wilderness. I scare myself sometimes, that much is true, but the wildness of nature does not.
I zig-zag upwards, feeling tall and capable and worthy of these mountains despite the pain they inflict. Cloaked in sparkling granite skin and snowy caps, poised with crooked slopes and saggy grins, they are equally beautiful and ominous. Like rows of jagged teeth, a scatter of serrated edges as sharp as saws, they stand definitive, phlegmatic, quakingly still.
I steal a glance towards the top of the slope, but I can’t see it yet. All I see is bleached rock, the stout silhouette of a spindly willow, the shadowy frame of a bone dry manzanita, and the denim blue sky. The sun breaths down the back of my neck. I don’t dare stop moving.
Focus, girl, or you’ll never get there.
I reel in my thoughts and pull the line of my mind taut.
One, two, three, four….I count to the rhythm of my steps. I lose count. I switch focus. Breathing. I fill my throbbing lungs with the clarity of the thin mountain air. I drag the bill of my hat down to the line of my eyebrows and keep my eyes on my feet. I continue upwards. I sing.
Step by step, Oh baby, gonna get to you gi-i-i-rl.
I’m a little girl again, with frizzy fly-away curls, drowning myself in the largeness of a single moment, keeping time with New Kids On The Block.
Step by step, Oh baby, really want you in my wo-o-orld.
I slip my wrists into the looped fabric handles of each trekking pole to free up my hands and begin to climb a precariously balanced car-size boulder that’s impossible to get around any other way. I lug myself up with a grunt. Hot sunbeams slash at my legs, hands, and ears like whips.
I’ve heard the crashing sound of rock-falls many times, and I’ve watched plumes of dust rise in their wake. I wonder what it would take to make this boulder shake itself to life and fall. And I worry that perhaps I’m what it would take. I’m that little girl again, pulling a shiny red apple from the bottom of the pyramid watching them all collapses at my feet. Would I die? I wonder. Would it be slow or quick? Would I feel each crushing blow? Would Zack see me? Would he be able to find me? Would his adrenaline be enough to lift the rocks off my mangled body? Would I cage my scream or would I let it fly from my lips like a baby bird, shrieking into the wild, as it soars from its mother’s nest?
"HE-ee-llllooooo..oo..." The desperate sound of a haggard voice stilts my dark reverie. It sounds like an engine empty of oil.
What the fuck was that!
My body grind to a halt, save for my eyeballs which rove across the rocky slope, rolling around in the sockets like Cookie Monster’s.
Silence, but for the hum of a cool breeze.
Was it a hallucination, an apparition, a haunting? I listen intently, my head tilting quizzically like a dog. Sweat pours down my face as I try to quiet the hiss of my labored breath, and hush the thud-thud-thud of my pounding heart.
Silence. Silence. Silence.
Weird.
Focus, girl.
I leap off the boulder and walk on. Grab your partner dosey-doe, grab your partner dosey- doe, grab your partner dosey-doe. I match the rhythm of the phrase to my breath and step. I take a handful of steps before the ghost returns.
“DoOo yoOu know the way doOwn?" the haggard shriek bounces off rocks, echos down granite walls, then swirls at the basin below like water circling a drain.
I freeze.
What the actual fuck!
I look left then right, up then down. There is raw earth everywhere, that is all.
"Zack!" I yell. My hands cupped around my lips, my voice guttural and loud.
"I’M HERE!” He shouts emphatically, instantly. I hear him but I can’t see him.
"What was that?"
“Keep coming up, E, you're doing great!”
My mind rings with confusion, but he’s right I must keep moving.
"But do you hear something?" I yell as I move.
"Yeah.”
"What?" I stop walking.
“Just keep coming up, E.”
“But is someone up there?”
The failing engine of a voice revs up, “Ca-a-n I talk to yo-ou?”
“Sure.” I hear Zack shout before he yells down to me.“ Keep walking, E, keep coming up.”
And I do, this time singing, what the fuck, to the rhythm of my footfalls.
“Nice work, E, you crushed it.”
The steep incline gives way to the gentle smile of a saddle. Rocks, willows, and even a few silver skinned pines are strew about.
“Thanks.” I say, catching my breath.
“More grueling then it looked, huh?”
“Yeah.” I take a swig of water. “So what the heck is going on up here?”
“I don’t know but there’s people over there,” he says with usual nonchalance. “Somewhere over there.” He points higher up the ridge. “They want to talk to us.”
“To us? They on the high route?” We’re on the high route.
“Assume so.”
“Did they ask if you knew the way down?”
“ Yeah, and I hollered back, ‘Yes, but I’m not going that way.’" he looks amused.
I chuckle.
“Bizzare, hey?”
He agrees.
There are two of them, both middle aged, each with an extremely large backpack pressed to their spine. Their packs look heavy and overly full, painfully bloated with stuff. We could fit both of our packs in one of theirs.
“Yikes.” Zack says as we approach them.
I always feel sorry for people with regrettably large backpacks; it’s hard enough to carry the weight of your own body up these mountains, little own 50 pounds of crap, most of which you’ll be too exhausted to ever touch.
A woman rushes towards Zack as if he is some kind of savior or prophet, some holy being that’s magically appearing before her. Her relief in seeing Zack is so palpable, so desperately clear, that I think she must think she knows him. Maybe that’s what this is about, maybe she thinks he’s a ranger or something familiar like that.
Zack exudes competency and calmness even in the wilderness, and this gives him a unique kind of magnetism that rarely goes unnoticed.
I watch her befuddled steps as she approaches him. They are hurried and frantic, but also ungodly slow. Her pants, some breathable fabric, damp with sweat, swishes and wheezes as she moves. This sound of her stride, coupled with the slowness of it, adds to the look of her desperation. She’s riding very close to the edge of a panic attack.
A man, her companion I presume, trails closely behind her. He too looks haggard and frazzled, but at least he’s smiling. A thick plastic compass hangs from a lanyard around his neck, it swings like a pendulum when he moves.
I look them up and down, no injuries that I can see. That’s a relief. But they appear exhausted, strung out on a heady mix of altitude and solitude.
“Hey.” I say in an careful, even tone.
“Oh. My. God! Hi! Thank. God! “ Big beads of sweat roll down her neck. Her eyes are bulging like a spooked horse. She’s out of breath but she continues to speak anyway. “You’re the first people we’ve seen in 4 days. We’ve been out here, and I’m so much slower than I thought I was, and this is so much harder than I thought was, and your the first people we’ve seen, and we’ve seen not a single person in 4 days, and I don’t think we can get where we’re supposed to go, and I don’t know exactly where we are, do you know where we are? Because this is way harder than I thought it would be, and we have seen not one person the four days we’ve been out here….”
Zack interjects, “We’re pretty much on the saddle of Quartzite Peak.”
She’s like an untied party balloon that’s been inflated then let go of, careening as it deflates itself. “4 days. We’ve seen nobody. I’m freaking out. Do you know where we are.” Her words whirl around me like pollen on a breezy fall day. She is dumbstruck that she hadn’t seen anyone out here for days, and I am completely shocked to be seeing someone. We are, after all, way off trail and deep in the backcountry, where human travelers are rare.
Again: We out here.
“Oh” her buddy chimes in. “Okay. I was looking around like, ‘Where is Quartzite Peak!’ Okay. I thought this was it,” he looks around, smiles, plays it cool and casual, points to the peak on his left. “So this is Quartzite Peak, huh? Great, that’s great.” I see his smiley veneer thinning.
“Nope. Quartzite Peak is that one.” Zack points in the peak in the other side of the saddle.
“4 days! We haven’t seen anyone in 4 days. I can’t believe that. I’m freaking out. I’m trying not to freak out, but i’m freaking out, and I’m just so slow, I had no idea I’d be so slow, I don’t’ think we’re going to make it to where we thought we would, no way. I don’t know what to do. Do you know where we are?” She says this quickly, then takes in a loud gulp of air.
I think to myself, for sure you’re not going to make it where you think you’re going. I ask her where they are heading and she tells me she doesn’t exactly know because she wiped their waypoints off her phone 3 days ago. I think to myself, who uses their phone for navigation in the wilderness where there is no cell service.
“At this point we’re just trying to get down, do you know the way down?” Smiley man says.
“Down as in, a trail?” Zack asks. In addition to wafting competency, he excels at solving puzzles of any kind, and tying or untying knots. Rubik’s Cubes, math problems, necklace chains, rock climbing rope, maps, confusing instructions, lost hikers…He’s a pro.
“I want to go further,” the man boasts, “ but it’s just so hard to see where you're going out here. Like, I wasn’t expecting that, ya know.” He revivifies his smile. It’s a nice smile.
“You’re not that far from the trail you came in on, the best way back is the way you came.” Zack says.
“I have an extra paper map, I’m happy to give you.” I say as I let my pack fall to my feet and search for the ziplock bag that holds our extra set of maps. I carry only a few redundancies in my pack: water purification, first-aid, navigation.
She looks at me as if I were an idiot, a stone cold idiot, then she explains that she has a paper map - duh!- just no waypoints; which is kind of like saying she has a car, but no wheels. On cue, she pulls out her map, draws the accordian fold loose and pulls the ends taut. It is a huge trail map, one that covers the totality of Yosemite National Park. All the sudden I feel like I’ve just stumbled into someone else’s nightmare. Zack doesn’t bother looking at their map.
Smiley explains that they are thinking of hiking down to Obelisk Lake to get on the trail below it. Obelisk Lake is in the basin we just climb out of. I lean in to their map and find Obelisk Lake for them.
What they don’t know, but should, is that there is no trail that way, that the closest trail in that direction is at least 15 miles away. And considering it took them 4 days to go less than 10 miles, 15 miles would take them an eternity.
“There isn’t a trail at Obelisk Lake.” Zack says.
“ Yes there is.” Smiley insists.
“It’s right here!” The woman points to a small line on the far side of tiny blue dot on her ginormous map.
“Our beta says that Obelisk Lake is one of the least visited lakes in Yosemite because it’s so remote. Plus, we just came from there. There is no trail that way.” I say.
“You can’t see the contour lines on your map, but you can on ours,” Zack explains. “There’s a cliff on the other side of Obelisk Lake.” I show them on the our map. “That trail you see on your map is thousands of feet down, at the bottom of a different valley.”
They talk in circles with each other, toiling over whether they should try to get “down” from Obelisk Lake or not. Zack and I, having said our piece and tried our best to assuage their poor judgement, remain silent. A minute passes, maybe two, maybe three. The couple is no closer to certainty.
“ Okay, well, would you like to keep this extra map? It has our waypoints on it.” I say.
“Sure, you can give it me,” she says curtly as she takes it from my outstretched hand. “I mean, if you really need to go right now.” She says this last part as if I were behaving rudely. Yes lady, yes I have to go right now, you caught me right in the middle of something and you clearly don’t actually want my help.
I throw my pack onto my back, cinch the hip belt, pull the shoulder straps tight, and wrap the trekking pole loops back around my wrist.
“If I were you I’d use our map and go back the way you came. That’s your best option at this point. You’ll hit snow if you head near Obelisk.” Zack gives his final plea.
“Snow?” She says.
“There’s still snow? Wow, but look at the sun, it’s so hot!” Smiley’s still smiling.
“A ton of it.” I say, hoping to scare them off. “And it’s real steep. I was terrified.” No I wasn’t.
They look at us like deer in headlights.
Everyone has their own journey to travel, their own set of experiences to learn from, their own wisdom to gain, their own decisions to make. Nobody can navigate the journey for us; nobody can choose our course. Sometimes the only way to get to the wisdom on the other end of a tunnel of an experience is to see it through all the way to the end of the line, all to the edge of the cliff.
When it comes to wisdom, sometimes the long way is the only way, sometimes there is no easy way down, sometimes you have to bail on your plans and fail your own expectations and back track with your tail between your legs. Sometimes the best advice is the hardest to hear.
We say goodbye and good luck.
The woman leans on a rock in a dapple in shade, holding two maps in her tired, lonesome hands: one useful, one not. Which one will she follow?
Smiley plasters another layer of fresh veneer across his mouth and waves goobye. Sunbeams danced across his glossy teeth. The compass hangs as still as a noose around his neck.
We, Zack and I, turn and walk away.
Days later when we’re off the high route and out of the wilderness and eating greasy pizza in some small town, we’ll wonder about them. We’ll wonder how their journey played out: are they still looking for the fastest way down or did they finally accept the obvious, that it was the way they came.
