I have been waiting to tell this story for years. It will have to come out all in one piece and I will not be able to edit, I think. I have tried to write it before, but it dies on paper. It wants to be told. It appeared in my dreams, over and over for weeks after the event itself. I tried to shake it, but I could not. So now, here, in this tiny corner of the world we share, I want to try again. It won’t be good writing, but maybe that’ll come later. The story is real.
We met in glacier school. Jeff was a bio-mechanics major, just finishing his PhD. I don’t think we could say he was a great man or anything more incredible than just absolutely and extraordinarily alive. If life was a target, Jeff was living in the bull’s-eye, every day.
He was small, about my size, and Australian. I’m not sure how old he was, but he had a decade on me, for sure. He was green-eyed, and balding and his skin had been sun-burned every year of his adult life, I think. He drank hard on weekends. But never during the week. He was graduating with honors.
Jeff was compact and powerful and determined. Most of all, he was determined. One spring day we met on 13th Avenue, between classes, and he told me he was going up to do the Fool’s Walk. He wondered if I’d come along.
The Fool’s Walk could only be done on full moon. I’d done it once each of the previous summers. There were three volcanic peaks at the center of the state, and one climbed the North one, slogged across the glacier to the Middle, and finished with a long push up the South.
It was the kind of heroics we all loved. Not many people could do it. You had to start out early one day and climb, non-stop til you finished. It took the better part of two days. You could cat nap, but you couldn’t cook or set up a tent. It was meant to be a test of your mettle. Mostly it was a test of friendships. If you went with more than one other person, it was fairly certain one would not be able to do it, and you’d have to decide whether or not to come down. Worst case was damaged pride. The penalty for not making it was that you had to buy beer in town. So, worst case was damaged pride and a really terrible hangover in physics class Monday morning.
Jeff wanted to do the Fool’s Walk in winter. This meant skiing up the volcanic throat of the North peak, and across the glacier field to the Middle and then skiing over the saddle and climbing up the South. The full moon would provide more than enough light on the winter snow on most nights. “Piece of cake,” he laughed, “C’mon.” I looked into his twinkling green eyes, set deep in a weathered face. He had seen firsthand some of the most pernicious ice faces in North America. His small, strong hands reached for my backpack, full of heavy science books, and he slug it over his shoulder, weightless. He smiled and pushed me slightly. “C’monnnn.” I laughed.
I wasn’t much of a skiier but this wasn’t really skiing, anyway. I remembered our last climb when we’d all pitched a tent and watched the Aurora Borealis from a ridge, sharing a bottle of wine. Jeff had drunk too much and had fallen over backwards off a log while telling a story. We laughed so hard we cried.
It was dead week. The following week was finals and I was carrying three classes more than a full load. “I can’t,” I said, “I have to study.” “Noooooooooo,” he protested. “You could pass with your eyes closed. C’monnnn.” I felt myself pulled like a wave to the moon, drawn deeply to his fluid energy and strength. He was playful, but in a most serious way. Jeff had climbed Mt. McKinley and every peak in North America. He had done rock and ice in New Zealand and Europe and was well-respected by all the climbers I knew. He knew his tools and he knew his body, and was in command of both. We’d never climbed alone together and I knew twenty people who’d have given their entire hardware rack for a chance to do it. We’d been off and on lovers for few months and my affection for him was deep. I knew in the long run it wouldn’t come to anything. He was returning to Australia soon and I wasn’t leaving home. Not yet.
But my respect for his power, both mental and physical was a magnet. I looked him in the eye. We stood silent for several minutes. His gaze never left mine. He had the sense to keep quiet. “I..” I could barely do it. “I can’t.” I said. “I really have to study.” “All right then, good on you!” he said, and he slapped me on the back grinning. He pulled my waist length braid, and laughed we walked to the corner. He sat on the concrete table outside the pub and handed me my pack, smiling again. “I’ll do it alone, then.”
I protested. “Get someone else to go. There’s lots of people. Get David or Mick or Jase. They’re all nuts, they’ll do it. They love you.” I teased him. “Nahhhhhh,” he said, shaking his head. He looked at my shoes, worn out old Italian climbing boots. “If you won’t go, I’ll do it alone. Quiet night. Me and my skis. That’ll be nice, don’t cha think?” “I do,” I said, and I meant it.
“All right, then, I’m gone!” He kissed my cheek and I felt his rough hand on my neck. His face was close to mine. He smelled of the sun and the wind and pure determination. He laughed more, and turned to leave. “Come over on Sunday,” he said. “I promise,” I shouldered my bag and headed for the lab.
On Sunday, I biked to Jeff’s house. It was a small, white bungalow, shared with a few people I don’t really remember. I let myself into his room and started to study. The futon on the floor was unmade and there were socks and books and papers everywhere. Climbing gear was stacked neatly in every corner. The only other furniture was a desk and a chair. A copy of his just finished dissertation was on the desk. The walls were covered with photos of Jeff and our friends on many continents, climbing, partying, working. Spectacular views and spectacular men in unbelievable predicaments with ropes and ice axes.
I studied til late in the afternoon. When it started to get dark, I began to get worried. I called a few friends. No one had heard from him. Maybe his old red truck had finally given up the ghost.
We agreed that in the morning, a few guys would drive over the mountain and go to where he’d parked it.
The next day at about 10, Rick called to say they found Jeff’s truck. He hadn’t been there. They’d called the Forest Service and were organizing a search. There was some possibility that they’d find him with a broken leg, so we should be ready.
Hours later, I looked up from my book to see Mick in the doorway. Mick B was big man. His simple presence blocked the light in the doorway and looking down at me, he spoke softly. “I don’t think it’s good. I’m flying over. I’m taking some friends. We’ll call.”
“I’ll go,” I said. “No,” he said. “You stay here. Maybe he’ll come.” “Sure, OK,” I said. Mick was not in a mood for a discussion. He was in town organizing an expedition and he gathered some friends and they flew into the little airport just outside the mountains. He called more friends and by the next afternoon they had pulled together the largest search party for a single climber in the state’s history. The roster of names read like a climbing Who’s Who. The best of the best.
A full day went by. They ordered a helicopter but the weather turned bad and all but a handful of men went down the mountain to the base camp.
The next morning, I woke up, still dressed in my jeans and my boots. Mick was standing in the doorway, holding a blue woolen mitten. It was Jeff’s. His mouth opened, but he couldn’t speak. He handed me the mitten and I saw tears fall down his brown, sun-burned cheeks. “We.. We..”
He sat down on the floor beside the bed. “We couldn’t,” he said. He hid his face in his hands and sobbed.
I was stunned. What did this mean? What exactly did this mean? I was so shocked, I was having trouble forming a simple question. “Mick?” He looked at me. “He’s dead. Jeff is dead.”
All time stopped. All sound was absorbed into the impossible conjunction of those words and the utter finality of their meaning. I couldn’t breathe. I was a climber falling with no rope. There was nothing to do but die. Every detail in the room was crystal clear. One red wool sock lay on the floor near my foot, one chipped cup beside an open book.
The line between life and death was one breathe. Jeff was dead. Mick said so and it wasn’t a joke. All the powerful men I knew had tried, and it didn’t matter. Jeff was dead. Everything else was as it had been, as if paused on the in-breath.
I will not forget Mick B, a man of heroic strength and skill, crushed beneath the weight of the impossibility of saving his best friend. His sorrow shook the room.
I cried. I was angry and I was having trouble reconciling the pieces. People didn’t just die. Not strong people. Not people with steel hard wills and good hearts. Not my hero. Not my only hero. Not a man who had survived every possible challenge on every possible rock pile at unbelievable altitudes. Not the man who saved others, taught us to climb and made us all laugh. I fell back on the bed and closed my eyes. I would never love again, never, never, never, never, never. I would never climb again, never, never, never, never, never.
I slept a nightmarish sleep. Mick slept on the floor, with his coat and boots on.
Later that spring, a small group of climbers returned to the mountain and found Jeff’s body, just as it had fallen, headfirst, into a dark crevasse. He had made it up the hardest of the peaks in fine form, but a chance avalanche had swept him onto the glacier field and about 30 feet down into a narrow, silent grave. He was dead in an instant, they thought. They couldn’t dislodge the body, so they did best they could to bury it. They made a pact not to say exactly what they’d done or where. They brought Jeff’s pack and gear for his family, who came to collect his degree.
Mick Boss and a dozen others said some very nice things. I stayed near the back and cried. I rode my bicycle home and took the chipped cup out of the drawer. I still have it. I still use it every day.
That summer, I tried mountaineering once more, at the insistence of some friends, but I couldn’t do it. The heart was gone out. I took up rock climbing. But even then, for the first few weeks, I’d wake up every night with a start and see Jeff’s face on the horizon, laughing. It took years.
Later in summer, I pulled a climbing magazine out my post box. On the cover was a photo of Jeff on Mt. McKinley. He was scaling a steep ice slope. I felt a surge of his energy and remembered him saying, “I hope I die doing what I love.” The photo was clear and crisp. The sun and wind had carved deep wrinkles into his skin. His lips were blistered. The images of the peaks around him were reflected in the surface of his goggles. His ice axe had just hit the surface chips were flying in every direction.
He was laughing.
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