Ramblin' Down Through the World
He tilts his face up toward the ridge line. A bead of sweat drips from his temple, down his cheek, and falls from the edge of his jaw. The skin around his eyes furrows, liquid blue eyes trace the notched edges of the summit. Silence. I know he’s excited without him saying a word. We’ve been out on the fringes of mountains like this one dozens and dozens of times over the years. At this point I can taste his excitement before I ever hear of it; like salt on my tongue.
His eyes are sunny, warm and clear; they hold a certainty that reflects outward, bouncing off the precarious cliffs surrounding us. He looks down and pulls out our maps, his dirt filled fingers trace the contour lines. He looks up once again. Nature seems to push past his humanness and straight through to something more animalistic; altruistic maybe. Like a bear whose nose pushes up into the wind to catch a whiff of a nearby berry bush; like a bird riding the updraft over the clouds with no place to be; like cold water trickling from a snow field, sluicing down a stream; like the colors of the sunrise; like the changing shape of the moon; like spirit; like faith; like joy.
“It’s hard to tell.” he says as if responding to a question.
I know he’s talking to me, I’m the only one out here with him after all; but I don’t reply because I’m not listening; and perhaps he isn’t talking to me after all. His words are part of the invisible thread of language of nature’s wildness, a subtle communication that stretches through time, past the boundaries of skin, beyond reason; an amalgamation of attention, intuition, and memory of past experience. Out here words don’t need ears to hear them; just as meaning doesn’t need words to make itself known. Out here words don’t ask for understanding in order to exist meaningfully; words are just sounds, no superior to the clap of the wind, the thunder of a rock fall, or the patter of paws and feet on dusty earth.
Zack stretches his eyes up towards the summit, scanning, searching; he seeks out the sweet sight of the route over this mountain pass. I watch the skin around his eyes puker even more as he weighs the mysteries of nature. All I can think about is kissing him; the taste of his salty lips, and the warm soft touch of his breath.
We were hiking with two others, but they bailed early this morning. This last slog of the route belongs to us alone, carried on our backs. We don’t mind the weight.
“We’ll have to get a little higher to make out where to get through”, he says unconcerned with certainty.
I move the bill of my hat just enough to let a fresh gulp of wind onto the crown of my head. It’s a blazing hot day and my hair is drenched in sweat and plastered to my scalp. I take a deep breath. The heat of the sun is heavy on my skin. Its a familiar, almost comforting, feeling of discomfort; the closeness of nature.
Zack cuts his attention towards me and gives a whistle to catch my eyes,
“You ready to keep going, E.”
Through the years of cross-country backpacking one learns that questions like this are rhetorical. Why? Because they only have one answer; yes. There is only one option out here; to keep going. If you are not ‘keeping going’ you are dead. And if you can’t hold that truth gently in the palm of your hand like a soft baby bird that has fallen from the shelter of its nest, then you don’t belong out here.
Keep going, that is my only choice and so that is what I choose.
I settle my feet on the hot granite, wrap my fingers a little tighter around the ends of my trekking poles, and take my first step forward.
“Yup”, I say.
Without effort my voice falls into the invisible thread of the nature’s language. A conversation that stretches through time, past boundaries of skin, far beyond the reaches of reason and the need to be understood. Onward and upward, towards the uncertainty of our future and the mystery of our fate.
This is not our first time working towards this summit. It’s our third attempt; third year in a row. This time is different because we are actually finishing the route, and during the first try we were heading up the side that we will eventually head down later today.
It was late November, 2018. The sun set early, 5:30pm; not a good sign when you are exhausted, and scrabbling along a rough mountain ridge. It seemed like only a minute before the sun had been patient, energized, bright, full of promise and possibility. But, with the snap of a finger, the blanket of night pulled back the covers on the day and tucked the Trinity Alps into a deep dark sleep. The beams of our headlamps tried with all their might to light the way, shining from our foreheads like a magical third eye. The nooks and crannies, cracks and crevices between the scattered, stacked boulders were transformed into small seas of pure blackness. The edges of the cliffs blurred. No light, no sight, just inhospitable darkness that swallowed up the way forward.
“I’m pretty sure this is the way,”
Geoff's voice rang out from the blackness somewhere below me.
“Yeah. I think we can get down this way”. He said hopeful and uncertain.
We were supposed to be at the lake a thousand feet or so below this peak before the sunset. As it often goes with off trail routes, human feet move slower than the setting sun. The journey of the day took longer than we’d expected it would; should. A lonely feeling of unease coursed through my blood as I stared down into the nauseating blackness. I didn’t know exactly where Geoff was hollering from, but I knew I didn’t want to take my chances going down there. I sat still; thinking.
Rocks rumbled from below, I heard Geoff’s feet shuffle. His breath got caught in his throat, as the sound of a rock slipping free from the cliff violently bounced down, echoing into the depths of the inky black valley bellow.
“OH FUCK!” he shouted. Exasperated. Breath heavy.
“GEOFF! You okay?”, “YO! You good? “ Zack and I called out in unison.
“ Oh fuck!…..PHEW”, his breath labored, sawtoothed, and scared.“ Oh fuck…..Yeah. I’m good. The rock I was standing on wobbled and fell. I almost fell off this fucking cliff. Gimme a second to catch my breath.”
Silence. Nothing but the sound of breath.
“I don’t think this is such a good idea you guys.” He said.
“No fucking SHIT”, I replied.
Beneath the dark sky we backtracked a quarter of a mile to a big overhanging rock that sheltered a flat patch of ground beneath it. The patch was large enough to fit three lean bodies. We unstuffed our sleeping bags to sleep for the night; three sardines in a tin. Zack on my left, Geoff on my right.
“It smells like shit. There must be rats around here.” Zack said as he looked around.
Silence.
“Yeah. I may or may not have just farted, dude.” Geoff replied.
We all laughed. We needed a good laugh. But in all seriousness, the only thing worse than backpacking with one smelly dude is backpacking with two smelly dudes. I think that the mercy I show these two deserves an award of some kind.
There was no water on the summit, so we had to ration sips of the single liter of water we had left between the three of us. PRO bars for dinner. From the comfort of my sleeping bag the darkness of the sky became less and less unnerving and more and more uplifting. Black was soon replaced by a sky of the brightest stars I’d ever seen, like a sparkling sandy beach in the sky. The next day would prove to be a nightmare, the writing was already on the wall. Still, it felt like a miracle to sleep on the summit that night. Where else in the world would I ever feel so alive and free and part of something larger.
When Zack and I lugged our tired bodies up over the notch of pass last weekend we both thought back to that first night on the route in 2018. We had no idea of the breadth of the route, and the tangles we would get into year after year trying to complete it; no idea it would take us three years, blood, sweat, tears, and a handful of arguments to finally complete it.
Our friends and family always pepper us with questions about the Trinity Alps High Route; what makes it so hard? Why does everyone seem to fail at completing it? What is it like up there?
I always feel at a loss of words to answer them. The truth is, it’s a hard place to explain. It’s an impossible route to understand. Most routes chew you up, and spit you out; one gets pretty used to that. The Trinity Alps High Route does things a little different; it grabs you, squeezes you tight, flattens you out, swallows you whole, then erases any trace of where you came from. It’s hell on earth for most, but for a token few its the closest we get to heaven. It’s an unfriendly place for the faint of heart, but for those willing to dance with the monster of these mountains, and learn their rough and rowdy ways, it becomes a solace of space and a gateway to a wild, open heart.
Tread lightly. Pass with caution. Never underestimate the power of that which is beyond reason.
