Searching for Matthew Greene

I thought about him often as the first snows began to fall, the soft, cold flowers of winter drifting down from a grey, imposing sky.  They fell with an innocent laziness, no purpose or agenda, merely frozen water driven by wind and gravity.  The snow clung to the edges first, the crevices, shunning the smooth open faces.  The chilled needles of the pines up high were ready, the trees' sap already long retreated into their cores.  The summits of the high peaks lay cloaked in heavy cloud, the rocks and crags catching frost feathers and ice.  The pikas and marmots had given up for the season, driven into burrows deep in the hard jumbled talus, the pale granite, the dark tortured splinters of metamorphic rubble.  Save for a few tough, masochistic souls, the Sierras were vacant, the hikers and tourists and mountaineers mostly content to stay where the snow is scarce, the sun warmer.  There's a fireplace, a friend, a lover, a glass of wine.  Why go up there?  Matthew was up there.  He's up there still.  He never came down, but he stays with me, creeping into my thoughts, a breeze off the ridge above, a smile I can't quite place, eyes that look back at me with a certain knowing.  I understand those eyes, that smile.  Matthew Greene and I have never met, but I know him just the same.

No doubt Matthew was frustrated.  His faithful Subaru, after so many trips, had blown a head gasket.  Marooned in Mammoth Lakes?  He left the car at a shop and stayed at the Shady Rest Campground near town, paying day to day in anticipation of getting back into the mountains, the peaks and spires that filled the skyline around the remote ski town.  He was itching to get back up there.  On July 16^th, 2013, Matthew called his father and sent a text to a friend.  It was the last anyone would hear from him.

Days passed.  His car was fixed.  Friends and family wondered where he was.  We still don't know.  Matthew loaded up his pack, took his hiking gear, left his remaining equipment at the campground, and vanished into the backcountry.  A strong man, almost forty years old, he was no stranger to adventure and long distance travel.  Friends say that thirty miles of hiking in a day wouldn't worry him.  He was as strong as he would ever be.  The mountains were warm, the sun high in the summer sky.  As far as anyone can tell, he hiked into the rugged Ritter Range, a wild fractured saw blade of dark peaks, spires, and needles of often loose and unforgiving volcanic rock.  We can imagine his quickening stride, the pack settling onto his hips and shoulders, the creak of the straps, dust rising up from his boots on the trail.  He was tall and lean, almost six feet, one hundred and fifty five pounds of energy and forward motion.  A brilliant smile spread across his strong face, intense blue eyes scanning the trail ahead, the high country of his intense longing.

This is how I like to think of him, alive, humming with the thrill of adventure, the pounding emotions that draw us to wild places.  I know Matthew Greene.  I am Matthew Greene.  I've lived those same moments when nothing in the world was more important, more exciting than lifting the pack onto my back and seeing what lay beyond that next ridge, climbing exposed ridges, vertical walls, heart in my throat, afraid sometimes, but using that fear, working with it to find those still points within, moving inward to discover, above, a sense of calm, a feeling that everything suddenly makes sense, that up there, in the thin air and sharp stone that not a single moment has been wasted.

In my early twenties, my right knee still recovering from a pulled tendon, I packed up my classic 1972 white Plymouth Valiant, the small block V8 model, and left the coast of California, bound for the High Sierra, alone.  The big engine rumbled across the miles, the hot August air of the Great Central Valley blowing in through the windows.  I don't recall if I told my parents where I was going.  All that mattered to me was that I was going.  The high country had me in an unbreakable tractor beam, and I went.  For this mission, the mightiest range, the Palisades, called the loudest.  I hadn't climbed many of the 14,000 ft. peaks of the Sierra, so Mt. Sill was on the agenda, perhaps some others.  I had days of food.  Even with the wounded knee, I was strong, having built up a solid base of extreme hill running, climbing, cycling.  I knew I'd make it through, somehow.

At the trailhead, I hoisted the massive load and hiked up into the dreams of my youth, the Romantic narrative that all mountaineers craft for themselves.  We are the heroes of our own stories, Lord Byrons with ice axes and a taste for steep rock, too easily forgetting the debt we owe to others, the family and loved ones whose hearts we carry with our own.  My parents, my brother and sister, the friends back on the coast, they were stuffed in my pack, too, though I couldn't be bothered to recognize it at the time.  What mattered was up there, and I was young and full of fire and joy and wonder.

Two days later, I crawled from my tent beside the glacier and looked up at the stars back lighting the tremendous crest of peaks above me--Mt. Sill, North Palisade, Mt. Winchell.  Oh, this was the real thing, the drug I'd come for: Fearsome ice gullies, soaring buttresses, fields of talus, a world so beautiful and different from the sidewalks and ballparks of my suburban childhood that I had to know it more intimately.  A vicarious knowledge would never suffice.  I pulled a headlamp over a knit cap, switched on the small, feeble beam, and set out over the frozen snow as the skyline paled to the east.  I carried a helmet, crampons on my pack, an ice axe dangling from one hand until the slope steepened, a small diameter rope for my escape down the steep summit rocks.  Nowhere in the basin, on the peaks, for as far as I could see was another human soul.

Before long I climbed onto the shoulder below the north couloir and into the full morning sun.  Fortunately, the snow was just soft enough to kick steps, so the crampons stayed on the pack.  Breathing hard now, at over 13,000 ft and climbing, I worked on settling into a rhythm, the steady kicking of steps and moving the ice axe.  The snow ramp steepened up into the heart of the mountain, of what mattered most.  A shadowed headwall of broken stone capped the gully.  By 8AM, I stopped to catch my breath at the top of the couloir.  Below, a thousand feet of snow swept out and down to bone-breaking rocks.  No place to slip or lose heart.  Above, a vertical maze of fragmented granite led to a small notch from which I could gain the summit.  The climbing wasn't difficult, but it was steep, the consequences of a mistake absolutely fatal.

I changed into rock shoes and left the heavy mountain boots at the base of the vertical climbing.  With a deep breath, muttering "Don't screw this up!" I set off, grabbing the big holds, avoiding the slippery ice holding some of them to the mountain.  I danced confidently from hold to hold, testing everything that looked suspicious.  Could this one pull?  That one's junk.  Ah, this one is good.  And on and on.  Easy, really.  In only a few minutes, I was at the notch.  I stashed the rope, and lit out for the summit, grabbing fistfuls of granite, moving quickly, almost running.  I couldn't stop myself.  Everywhere around me plunged vast chasms of air and light, most of the peaks below me.  I was a bird, a hawk, a falcon set free.  These movements, this summit were everything.

And then it was done.  I stood on the top of Mt. Sill.  I had no illusions about this being a climb for the record books, but looking out over the Sierra, a scattering of clouds painting shadows across the deep furrows of glacier scoured granite, I connected with something bigger, deeper, older than my small life, and in this connection was more than I had been.  Some might call it God, but I didn't have a name for it.  It just was.  It was light and air and power and the promise of my youth.

I sat for a time on the summit blocks, watched the clouds drift above, and eventually made my way back to the notch.  Carefully, I put a sling over a stout horn of rock, slipped the rope through, and smoothly lowered myself back to my boots.  All that remained was some simple down climbing and sliding of the snow gully.  Well before noon, I was back at my camp, the small stream, shelves and slabs of white granite surrounding the tent.

I had done it.  I would live to hike out, drive back to my home, hug my parents, continue with my college courses, earn a couple of degrees, get married...the long chain of challenges, events, triumphs and tragedies that stretched out into the future because I came back from my solo climb of Mt. Sill.  Matthew Greene had a future, too, family and friends expecting his return.  Dean Rosnau, a climber and search and rescue expert in the Mammoth area, learned as we did about Matthew's disappearance and took it upon himself to mount a number of searches in the Ritter Range, going out with a few friends and scouring the peaks he sees almost daily.  Dean exchanged messages often with Matthew's father, Bob, who lived back in Pennsylvania.  As a father himself, Dean knew he had to help find the missing son.  Bob wanted to help in the search, and Dean could feel the man's pain and need to be out in the mountains, working to bring his boy home. But Dean knew how difficult such work could be and told the 67 year old what he would be facing.  As Dean put it, "I threw EVERYTHING at him to talk him out of it. This was the beginning of my discovery of who Bob Greene is…and what a father does for a son."

What followed are scenes of aching poignancy that we can only imagine.   Bob Greene took one of his son's packs, loaded it up with forty five pounds of whatever he could find, and stepped out into the Pennsylvania countryside.  Out of shape, the bulk of the pack bearing down on him like the weight of his loss, Bob Greene walked roads and hills and trails through a hard eastern winter, the force of raw emotion propelling him forward.  Day after day he went out, bent under the weight, and didn't break.  He grew tough and strong and more determined with each mile.  In the spring of the next year, he rented a condo in Mammoth and continued his training as the snow retreated from the high country.  When the time was right, Dean and Bob began a series of treks into the Ritter Range.  They didn't find Matthew.  With his strength and drive, the man could be almost anywhere, but Bob Greene was able to touch the mountains that touched his son, to hike in his footsteps.  There must be some solace in that.

The wheel of summer turns now, heating the rocks where marmots and pikas lounge in the sun.  The good days stack up one after another, but even now the angle of the light has begun to change, and it looks as if another year will pass with no signs of Matthew Greene.  He's up there, of course, waiting, patient.  Perhaps he doesn't want to be found, or perhaps being found is missing the point.  Matthew Greene is part of those mountains now, and he's never coming out, whether they find his body or not.  But we can find his spirit if we choose.  We need only look up to the crest, watch the rocky summits rake the clouds, listen to the creeks bounding down the cliffs, hear the Clark's nutcrackers complain in the pines, turn our faces up to the sun and feel the warmth of another day in the High Sierra.

Matthew Greene:

Climb on, brother.  You were meant for the mountains.

Cracking the Spine: My latest book

 

After much fretting, drafting, and revising, my latest book is finally done and available on Amazon.  Over three months from August to November of 2012, Jodi, Django the Uber Hound, and I pedaled, sweated and grunted our way from Jasper, Alberta--that's Canada, folks--to Mexico, following the heart of the Rocky Mountains.  It was a deeply challenging and rewarding tour, and I hope you like the results.  I think we've finally recovered sufficiently to think about our next big ride, probably in the Mojave this winter.  Stay tuned!

The book is available in Kindle format as well as paperback.

Ride on!

Gravity's Desire

The story below is true.  The names have been changed to protect the guilty.  The photo above was found on the Internet.  "John" and I climbed the buttress directly in line with the shadowed trail, the middle of the wall, its summit blade catching the evening sun.  Middle Cathedral, 2,500 ft. of north facing Sierra granite.

Gravity’s Desire: A True Fable

 

            The mute wall of stone hung over our heads like a dark wave, a shadowed, grey expanse of granite half a mile high.  Called Middle Cathedral, the rock beckoned to the devout, those who worshipped vertical landscapes and found religion on the mountain faces of the Sierras, the Alps, the Andes.  Here, in this famous, often crowded valley, John and I were alone in the hours before sunrise.  No wind stirred the darkness pooled all around us, filling the valley with silence and foreboding.  We were young college students, determined, bursting with romantic visions of glory on the high rocks of Yosemite.  Classes could wait.  Girlfriends could wait.  No one cared if we climbed this wall or not, but it stood central in our imaginations, a symbol of who we were, who we might be, who we hoped to be.

            A confusing mix of dread and excited anticipation burned in our hearts pounding in the slowly slackening gloom.  This was to be our biggest climb together, a serious test of skill and determination to set our course for later in the summer when we would head north to Canada.  This was the big show, two thousand five hundred feet of sheer rock.  The bigger, even more fearsome wall of El Capitan taunted us from across the river.  If we could do this, anything was possible, maybe even the Captain.  We carried a small pack for the essentials, clothing and food.  Ropes were tied to our backs; aluminum hardware clinked and clunked quietly on racks hanging around our shoulders, the elaborate equipment for safety, just in case.  Our strength and training would carry us up the wall.

            Warming with the effort, a little winded from scrambling through the dark pines and boulders, John and I at last broke from the trees and stood only a few yards from the base of the wall.  We were a comical duo: he short, compact, I the lanky giant.  We shared a passion for the mountains, and many evenings over beer we talked of climbs and ranges to visit, peaks referred to as if they were beautiful women, the lines and forms we so desired.  The North Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock was to be our shared conquest.  As Lionel Terray put it, perhaps we were “conquistadores of the useless,” but that didn’t matter.  If anything, the craziness of our quest only inspired us to greater effort, bigger climbs, higher risk.  If the rest of the world thought we were fools, it only showed how right we were.  They didn’t get it.  They never would.  It was us against the mountain, and the climb was all that mattered.

            I uncoiled the nylon rope, the symbol and fact of our connection, and didn’t say much.  The weight of the task ahead bore down upon us like final exams, and even though this was a test we were eager to take, there was no denying the tense emotions roiling inside us.   We needed to get into action.  This was all about movement, the dance against gravity and fear, and as with any dance, someone had to lead.  The first lead fell to me.

            Cool, firm, pleasantly rough to the touch, the granite filled my hands and focused my attention.  Even on easy ground, the mundane world slipped away, dropping in steady degrees with each foot of separation from the ground.  Quickly, without my willing it, without my notice, that other world became a long forgotten myth, an abstract mathematical formula without purpose, vague and fading. There was only the pull of gravity and the flow of upward movement.  Reach, grip, work the fingers onto that edge, force the hand into the crack, stem wide with the right foot, shift—careful, easy now—shift the weight.  Ten, fifty, a hundred feet above the rocky base, I followed the vertical puzzle until I was nearly out of rope.  And there, an island, temporary sanctuary, a ledge to stand on.  I slipped pieces of hardware into the rock, testing each for security, tied them together, then tied in myself—anchored.  Time to bring up John.  He followed smoothly, quietly, taking out the gear to be used again for his lead, a series of corners and cracks that would take us further still into the  unknown, away from the safe, familiar world down there where the land was flat, where we could drop things, trip, get up again and move on without fear of disaster.  Up here, all our actions were carried out with elaborate care, the passing of a water bottle, the handing over of equipment for the next lead.  Firm grip, firm response.  “Death grip?” I would ask, looking him in the eye as I prepared to let go of the rack.  “Death grip.”  Call and response, the consequences of dropping the gear too nauseating to contemplate. 

            We loved this part, too, the way even simple acts became significant, loaded with meaning.  Ordinary life could not compare to this life where everything burned through our heightened senses.  Down there, all muddled and mobbed, you could ignore things, forget, let go so much of life.  The great fear was that down there was all there was, the fear of a different sort of death, of boredom, complacency, a slow, sloppy slide towards mediocrity and stifling oblivion.  Up here, nothing was mediocre.  As we lifted up our bodies five hundred, eight hundred, a thousand feet into the air, we hoisted the value of our experience to levels impossible to imagine in life away from the hills.  We became the heroes of our own young lives and looked down on the world from hard-fought Olympian perspectives.  Climbing was simple, intense, focused.

            One after the other, we swung leads, the democratic sharing of risk and reward,  praising and urging each other on:  “Go for it, man!”  “Well done, mate”—the talk of the day mostly business, where to go, how to organize gear, exclamations at the growing exposure, that hungry beast opening its jaws wider and wider the higher we climbed.  Fear and fascination continually pulled our gaze downward.  At our most intense, difficult moments, the void ceased to exist.  The next few inches of rock, a smooth crack, a sinuous ripple of diorite became a universe.  The yoga of ascent allowed nothing else.  We became movement and concentration.

            Almost fifteen hundred feet above the valley floor, I finished leading a huge corner, an open book of ancient rock telling stories, leading upward.  I burrowed behind an enormous boulder wedged into the spine of the book and scrambled, panting, onto the top where I set my anchor and pulled in the rope.  We were cruising, eating up the pitches.  Maybe we’d get down before dark.  As I pulled in the rope, keeping John snug but not too tight, I looked out to the glowing wall of the Captain.  Its smooth, vertical bulk defied imagination.  Who could dream of such a thing?  Three thousand feet of polished stone, a Sierra jewel that blocked out the sky.  Below, the meadows and pine forest took on the feel of a model train set, the cars mere toys.  Soon John arrived, breathing hard, grinning.  It was his lead next, so I could relax for a while.  I took the pack, the follower’s burden, and set it under my knees as I settled onto a rock to feed out the line for John’s lead, a crack system threading a nearly vertical slab to lower angled terrain above.  Since we climbed a north facing wall, shadows cloaked our every move, keeping us cool, the tones muted.

            John organized the equipment.  Everything needed to be in its place.  When the climbing got desperate, he needed to be certain where to find the right piece.  His head covered in a blue bandana, he looked down and carefully studied the bandolier of wires and cords, lumps of aluminum and springs.  The products of climbers and engineers we had never met, this hardware held us to the rock and allowed the breathing space to shut out the implications of a fall.  Climbing was a game of nerve and denial.

At last he looked up and said: “Okay.  On belay?”

            “Belay on,” I said.  “Let’s do it.”

            I fed out the rope as he began moving up the wall.  He leaned hard off a crack, cantilevered his body to the left and up, and paused to set his first piece of gear about ten feet off the ledge.  It looked solid.  He was safe, for now.  He kept moving, using no protection for some distance, twenty, thirty feet above the ledge.  His movements became uncertain, jerky.  A faint crack, a hesitation in his progress, a slipping anxiety crept down the rope and into my hands.  John, time to get in some gear.  You’ll hit the ledge if you  come off.  His right foot was slipping, skating across the stone, but he worked in another piece.  Good man, John.  Keep going.  His control, his physical and mental composure began to give way with his feet.  He was losing it.  “I think I’m going to fall!” he cried.

            “Hang in there, John.  You can fire this thing!” 

            Suddenly the rope was alive, a fat, pulsing nylon nerve that carried John’s building dread down the rock into my sweating hands.  I gripped and re-gripped the cord, prepared to reel in slack and lock off the line to stop his fall.  Do it, man, do it.  “You’ve got it, John!” 

            But I could see he didn’t have it.  His carefully constructed shield of focus and strength, faith in his ability, his youth, the certainty of success bled away into the clear breeze drifting across the North Buttress.

            “FALLING!” he screamed. 

Ten feet above the last gear, gravity won the battle.  A faint scrape as his smooth-soled climbing shoes separated from the stone, the rope going suddenly slack, thirty-two feet per second, per second, the undeniable physics of falling objects mocked his intentions  and every wish.  Plans, agendas, the golden dreams of young men did not matter.  Our longing did not matter.  Only these mattered: The acceleration of a one hundred and fifty pound human festooned with equipment, two contraptions of aluminum and wire wedged into cracks, the rope, and my hands locked into claws.  

I braced for the catch.  John would fall past the top gear, twenty feet total.  But each placement was a gamble, a negotiation between risk and resolve.  How far are you willing to go?  Twenty feet above that last piece?  A losing bet gives the house forty feet and rope stretch.  Do you have the power to stop and place more equipment?  Or do you conserve your strength, keep moving, let momentum carry you to a good rest?  John had wagered on the run-out, going far above his first piece before he placed his second.  It was an all or nothing bet: If the second piece failed, the ledge was his next stopping place at least forty feet below his high point.  I sat gripped in fear at ground zero.

The briefly limp rope jerked into a whipping snake, John’s plummet taking up the line as it ran through the gear.  Time expanded, every detail sharp as it played out.  Here comes the stop.  But only the faintest tug rippled down the rope.  The top piece shot from the crack, spit from its resting place like a watermelon seed—useless.  John began to tilt out and away from the rock, his pants inflating with air as he accelerated.  Dark shadows of the corner, gray brooding stone, a distant patch of blue sky, John hurtling downward, my world, the Universe According to Scott, slammed to a stop as the full force of my friend’s speeding body crashed into me and the ledge.  So this is how it ends?  The anchors have failed. 

The impact knocked me back and spun me to the right, towards the edge of the abyss, the darkness deepening against the sunny glow of the Captain.  We were plunging into a hole, a pit without escape, no redemption, no second chances.  Twenty-one years old and it was over.  My eyes stayed open as I rotated on my perch.  There was John, sideways, airborne, pebbles from the ledge joining him in the drop.  His eyes were huge, stunned, disbelieving.  He was still falling, and he couldn’t believe it.

Then he was gone.

A violent jolt ran through my hands as the rope came tight, the lower gear holding steady, my hands clenched still.  Somewhere out of sight, John came to a stop.  Instant knowledge—I wasn’t dead, I hadn’t let go, the anchor held.  An explosion of blood erupted from my head and poured down over my face, over my glasses, a crimson veil.  Electric pain burst from my right thigh, radiating up and down my body.  I let out a gasp of pain and suddenly remembered to breathe.  I looked down in wonder at my hands clenched on the rope.  Death grip.  I yelled into the empty sky:  “John!  John!”

Nothing.  My brain scrambled, survival mode—solve the problem, get it done.  Shit, he’s unconscious.  “John!”  Nothing.  Oh, God, he’s dead.   The silence hung heavy on the line, the weight almost too much to bear.  My head and leg were pounding, blood still flowing. 

Then, faintly, from below, resurrection: “Scott!  Yeah, I’m here!  I’m okay!”

In a rush, the world came back.  The veil lifted.  I peeled off my nearly opaque glasses, the blood already starting to dry, and yelled down:  “Can you climb back up?”

“Yeah, yeah, I can….”  His voice trailed off, and he began to climb.  The wound to my head eased, the blood moving with a slow, steady drip, almost in time to my pulling in of the rope, the blood ties, the heart line.  In moments, my friend’s hands appeared over the edge of the boulder, his shaggy dark hair, then his face, ashen, and then he stood on the ledge, shaken but unbroken.  I looked up at this climbing Lazarus as he stepped forward—straight onto my glasses, the lenses and frame crunching under his right foot.  Oh, this climb was going well indeed.

Continuing was out of the question.  Fortunately, although my vision was fuzzy, I wasn’t blind.  The cut to my scalp was down to a slow, steady drip, drip, drip and almost stopped.  I had no idea about my leg.  It felt broken, and I could hardly move it without intense pain, but no bone protruded in unusual ways.  John could lead the descent, and I could hobble after, weighting only my good left leg.  We had failed at the climb, but we were determined to get down on our own.  Self-rescue was a matter of pride.  We were both so happy to be alive that engineering our escape from over a thousand feet up seemed a reasonable challenge.  We felt we had no choice anyway.    The Cathedral had rejected our advances, the rock declaring in no uncertain terms that we were not welcome.  It felt dangerous, our bodies now weak, uncertain, the exhaustion of hours of serious effort and the lingering fall pulling us down.  We had to focus even more fiercely now.  We both knew most climbing fatalities happened on the way down, and we were determined not to add another number to the statistics.

We attached the ropes to an anchor and threw the ends off the ledge in preparation for the first rappel.  Time and again we would need to find trees, splinters of rock, old anchors, or leave gear of our own to which we could attach the ropes.  We would slide to the next ledge and pull the ropes, hoping, praying that each would pull free and not become hopelessly jammed in some crevice.  To get down safely, we needed the full length of both ropes.  They simply had to clear for use below.  Without the full length, odds were that we could not reach the next ledge. 

So we began, wounded spiders spinning down through the air on desperate thread.  I hobbled and winced, yelped and continued on, following John as he established each new anchor, clearing the ropes.  Every now and then, a small, fresh drop of blood would break free of my matted scalp and stain my pants, the rock, or drift on the air to plunge hundreds of feet to the valley floor.  I would follow the red drop for an instant then refocus on my actions.  No time or place for distractions, however poetic.   At the start of each rappel, I leaned back, the ultimate leap of faith, looked down at the top of John’s head over a hundred feet below, a speck of improbable life in a desert of rock, and followed, sliding down the rope, holding tight.  We were going to get down.  We were going to do it.  After I arrived at each ledge and clipped into the anchor, we both said a silent prayer and started to pull the ropes through the now distant anchor above.  Occasionally, the line would snag, piled on a ledge or wrapped around a tree, but each time it came loose and flew zipping out of the sky, a gravity whip that lashed us on the ledge as we covered our heads and waited for the end to stack up or continue its fall beyond.  My heart roared with the ripping sound of the cascading line, for it was impossible not to momentarily identify with the racing plunge of the rope.

How many hours later I could not say, but in the heavy evening shadow before night, John unhooked from the rope and stepped onto the ground, that other world, the mundane plain of existence with its promise of a second chance we had believed lost forever.  And when I, too, unclipped from the rope for the last time, I screamed into the on-rushing night, an inarticulate rage of existence from an unknown place deep inside.  We were alive, damn it all to hell.  We were alive.

            We pulled the ropes, coiled, stashed gear in the pack, and staggered down towards the road.  Frequently, I collapsed and yelled out in pain.  I couldn’t imagine what my blood-caked face looked like, but we had to hitchhike to the medical center because our friends had dropped us off before the climb.  Veterans of our own private battle, we slogged beside the road with our thumbs out.  At last, a climber with a van pulled over and slid open the side door:  “Get in,” he said with a kind of bemused expression.  “I’ll take you to the infirmary.” 

            A partial scalping and half a dozen stitches later, I limped out into a cool Yosemite night.  The scar wouldn’t show once the hair above my forehead grew back, but for now, I sported a fine gash closed by heavy black sutures, an temporary trophy for our adventure.  John would later develop a load of fluid under his left knee that would prove more debilitating than my massively bruised thigh or head wound, but he’d held together for the descent.  That was the important thing. 

            After a few beers, we went back to camp, and I stood by myself out in the heavy dark of the trees and looked up at the grim silhouette of the Cathedral.  I would be back.  I was certain of that, but John and I would not be going to Canada.  His knee would take months of healing.  I later heard from other climbers that he had done this before, climbed himself into situations that he could not control and taken dangerous falls.  Something was missing in his wiring, his ability to gauge his strength and read the rock.  John and I would never again climb together. 

The Cathedral was silent.  It cared nothing for all this, our human frailty, the tenuous bonds we share.  It didn’t care that I trembled, clenched my fists and stared up in the darkness.  It didn’t care at all.

Road trip wrap-up

The miles and adventures, setbacks and discoveries have built up over the weeks.  Jodi has found the climbing often difficult, mostly due to an on-going thyroid issue she is struggling to resolve, and now, for extra delight, she’s been battling a cold, lots of stuffed sinuses and general grog.  By mysterious chance I seem to have dodged her viral bullet.   I’ve been managing my injuries pretty well.  Mostly I’m just thankful to be spending so many days in beautiful places, soaking up the energy of the wild desert under a bright winter sun.  The night sky, too, has been intense with Jupiter on Orion’s flank glaring down upon us.  Once we pull out the binoculars and steady them sufficiently to make out four of the Jovian moons.  What a delight:  Our celestial bodies have celestial bodies!

We spent almost a weeek in Cochise Stronghold, an obscure outpost of granite domes and fins in the Arizona desert near the Mexican border.  Miles from anywhere, the place is supremely quiet.  Even most of the rock climbers seem to be staying away.  As we arrived, Jodi’s cold settled in to dampen our activities.  She slept most of the first day but rallied in the afternoon for a few climbs—all one-pitch affairs where the leader can lower to the ground.  A slow, lazy start to the day, we wandered over to the rocks from our camp about a quarter mile away.  We dropped the gear beneath a well-featured route, rated 5.7 for those familiar with climbing ratings.  This is a climb we’d done a couple of years before and a level of difficulty I’d been very comfortable with for over 30 years.  A cruise.  Django sniffed about the tough oaks along the base while Jodi and I opened the rope bag, racked gear, laced shoes, buckled harness, the rote rituals of ascending vertical terrain.  None of these actions is complicated or difficult to learn, but they must all be done correctly.  Forgetting to double back a harness buckle, not finishing a tie-in knot, these can have disastrous consequences.  We have a firm policy of parking egos and double checking.  Do. It. Right.  Recently, one of rock climbing’s most famous participants, author and expert climber John Long neglected to finish his tie-in knot while climbing at an in-door gym.  At the top of his climb, he let go for the ride…and got a lot more than he bargained for—a brutal compound fracture after a 30 ft. plunge to the mat.  Blood, groaning, paramedics, surgery, pins, sutures, months and months of rehab.  A severely damage ankle, especially for a man over 50?  No thank you.  I cinch down my knot, Jodi puts me on belay, and I head up into a dance with gravity.

Easy, smooth, exactly what I expect, the firm edges of weathered granite greet my fingers and toes.  It’s a “sport” climb, generously bolted for even timid leaders.  I clip each bolt with satisfaction, even relaxation, so different from the intensity of the Superstitions where bad or scarce protection can stress even hardened veterans.  The new, slinky rope trails down through the carabiners.  This is a delight.  A lark!  The climb is almost finished, two bolts and the anchor chains await.  Pop!  I am airborne, skittering at gravity’s whim.  “Whoa!” I yell and bounce to a stop a good ten feet below where I was an instant before.  “I fell!” I say, in shock.  How the hell did that happen?  Jodi held me easily, and she looks up with a grin.  The mighty Scotty has fallen—on a 5.7!  The part of the climb that spit me off was easy enough, although the rock a bit smooth.  Still, the holds were generous, at least for the hands.  I quickly take stock.  The butt of my left hand stings, a touch of blood where it abraded against the stone.  Potentially more worrisome, my left ankle smarts, no doubt twisted somehow on my rapid descent.  Nothing serious, I suspect.  A little shaken, I jump back on the rock and scamper up to the chains, astounded, humbled, a little embarrassed as other climbers have just come up to the parking area.

So what happened?  How did a climber with almost 37 years experience come off an easy climb, one he’d done before, a rating of difficulty he’d ascended hundreds, probably thousands of times?  On the very plus side, all the systems worked perfectly.  Modern climbing gear properly deployed is marvelous stuff.  The meaningful variable here is the leader, the monkey on the chain.  Me.  Perhaps it was that I hadn’t slept well the night before, but the more important cause was my less-than-focused attitude.  As I have always known, even easy climbs demand enormous respect and attention.  That was my sin, the sin of inattention.  Unlike Mr. Long, I had followed through with my knot; my belayer was on her game—bless the lass!—and all my equipment was in proper working order.  But like Mr. Long, I let my focus lapse at a critical moment, and the Earth wasted no time in trying to reclaim my lanky carcass for her own.

From one frame of reference, this was a non-event.  I finished the climb, Jodi led it, I re-climbed it a second time and went on to do two more routes, although my wrist and ankle are still complaining a little.  Every day, on crags around the world, climbers take countless falls.  Indeed, falling off climbs is now common for athletes striving to improve.  If you don’t push until you fall, you don’t know how hard you can climb.  But this minor fumble I view a little differently than someone working a route at his limit.  I was nowhere near my limit.  That’s the problem.  I didn’t fall because I could no longer hold on.  I fell because my head wasn’t screwed down.  For this I am grateful.  This was a low-cost gift from the climbing universe and the law of gravity, a true slap on the wrist to keep me on the righteous path where every hold counts, every knot matters, and every climb requires respect.  I’ll limp a little for the next week or so, but that’s a small price to pay for such a valuable lesson.

A gray sky stretched over southern Arizona, challenging our solar charging system.  Jodi’s cold lay down a homestead, staked out fencing, and planted a garden, a beast preparing to stay a while.  We took a leisurely hike through granite turrets and African-style grasslands, letting Django run free.  I winced now and then at my tender hoof.  We strolled to and fro, made it back to camp for lunch as a cool breeze kicked in and Jodi melted into a chair.  No climbing today, kids.  We read, ete, and lazied away a cloudy day with the ghosts of the Apache blowing through the rugged canyons and cliffs of pink granite.

After another couple of days, we worked our way home, and now we're back in the crib.  School is creeping up on me, a fanged and relentless creature that will not be ignored.  Overall, the trip was not without its challenges, but we rate it a success.  Now it is time to turn our minds to work and home and the life outside the flowing dreams of road trips.  Here are some last photos of the adventure....