Rock, Paper, Fire

by Marni Jackson

  What was obvious was that I was happy out here. That my mind and body loved the rhythm of the rising and falling sun. That sleeping ten hours didn’t make me a lazy slob. That humans weren’t necessarily designed to know what day of the week it was. That our community’s habit of labelling grueling climbs, chattering teeth, and lightning storms as “suffering” was nothing more than a flair for the dramatic. Suffering, my ass, I realized. Out here ideas drink from inspiration like tree roots soaking up spring melt. This is thriving.

  But I couldn’t stay out here forever.

  I WINCED with each lightning strike on the ridge just above us. I took another tentative step upward. Then another. I’d lost the trail completely.

  “At this rate we are going to spend the night out here,” I said. My thoughts had turned to spoken words.

  “Not here. Not tonight,” Becca answered steadily.

  I took another step forward. The blanket of snow hid what was a mess of jagged talus. I slipped again. A few minutes later, Becca ripped the stitches in her hand. Our progress slowed. We needed a path. We needed a trail.

  I waited for the smallest gap in the clouds, hoping to orient off the Matterhorn, the same mountain Jack Kerouac had summitted with poet Gary Snyder on a cold October day and made famous in The Dharma Bums. I hoped they had better visibility. No break came. I moved forward simply because there was no other clear direction. I stabbed with my ski pole.

  Then, like a gift, the tracks appeared. Right in front of me were the unmistakable hoof prints of a deer. They ended four feet ahead, as if the animal had been plucked from the storm. From the tracks’ position it should have been standing right in front of me.

  I stopped.

  “Follow the tracks,” I muttered to myself. “Trust this animal’s instincts. It will lead you.”

  I took another step forward, looked right and then left for the shadowy form of a buck. I think I even looked up toward the sky. Nothing.

  I motioned Becca on to investigate. I stepped two feet to the left to make room for her and right onto the relatively uniform ground of the trail we’d lost earlier.

  “I’ve got the trail,” I said, surprised. “What do you think?”

  Wordlessly we both answered the question. Go.

  Each step became more decisive. When the trail became obscured or switchbacked, the buck’s tracks appeared. We were moving quickly again, steady, with sure footing beneath us. Forty-five minutes later we paused briefly atop the pass to appreciate the force of the wind. Squeezed by mountain walls, it accelerated through the pinch and wiped away any signs of the deer’s trail. The cloud ceiling lifted to offer a momentary view of the path into and out of the next valley. We were leaving Yosemite. We reminded one another to pause, to take notice of the snowflakes’ unique patterns before they melted on our jackets. Cold, wet, and physically exhausted, we were speeding toward our lives in the flatlands. Even days like this can be gifts. Then the shivering started, so we walked.

  The day moved forward in the sharp resolution that comes with heightened concentration. I will never forget the booming concussion of the string of lightning strikes as we crossed the second pass. Or nervous amusement of watching Becca covered in rime and snow and clinging to tree branches in the third-class cliff systems we’d accidentally wandered into. Over the course of that day, we drew upon every tool we’d gleaned from our decade of adventure together. But whenever it got really bad—when we’d again begin to doubt our blindly staked path and pull out the compass and topo map to begin whiteout navigation—the buck’s tracks would appear. His presence unseen, but felt.

  It would be tempting to imbue these moments with deep meaning, but the more I replay that day, the more I realize that to interpret them as anything other than facts would be to deny their beauty. There was a blizzard. We were dangerously exposed to lightning and cold. We lost the trail and slowed when we desperately needed to move quickly. Deer tracks appeared. We followed them because that seemed like the best option.

  Eventually, the flawless granite turret of the Incredible Hulk emerged through the snow and clouds. Three miles beyond we could see Little Slide Canyon, snowline, and the flat valley below. We lurched downward through 3,000 feet of talus. Knees wavered with exhaustion. Blood trickled from scraped ankle bones. We fell repeatedly. In the gathering dusk, we waded thigh-deep through flooded, stinking beaver ponds and then we collapsed onto a rain-soaked trail lined with sage and hugged each other.

  Three miles of flat, wide trail remained. Becca took the lead and, for the final time, tapped into the unseen, shared reservoir of energy from which we’d been drinking liberally on this trip. Too tired to ask questions or even formulate a sentence, I followed in her slipstream. An hour later, we staggered into a massive campground and wandered, lost, among the darkened forms of hundreds of slumbering RVs. We had returned to a day-to-day wilderness that no map or compass could lead me through.

  Jan Redford

  END OF THE ROPE

  ISTAND AT the base of El Capitan, my hands flat on the warm rock, straining my neck to stare up three thousand feet of granite. A thin red line of nylon climbing rope lies against the blank face and disappears up out of sight.

  Jake throws his backpack on the ground and starts to dig out the gear.

  “How high are we going?” I ask in my most laid-back voice.

  “About eight, nine hundred feet. Don’t worry. We’ll be up and down in a couple of hours.”

  “I’m not worried. Just wondering.”

  Reaching into my shorts pocket, I pull out my tin of Copenhagen. I take a pinch of the tar-black tobacco, tuck it into my lower lip, tamp it down with the tip of my tongue, and spit out a few floaters. The nicotine buzz spreads through my body, calming my nerves, heating and numbing my mouth.

  Jake stops sorting gear. “You’re not going to spit that down on me, are you?”

  “Why, am I going first?” Even though I’ve never ascended ropes, somehow following feels safer, even though dead is dead if you fall from 900 feet.

  “Yeah, I’ll come up behind—clean the anchors and drop the extra ropes.”

  We’re not here to rock climb, just retrieve ropes, but at least I’ll get to hang off the most famous hunk of rock in the North American climbing world. Jake and his partner Mike spent the last three days on Horse Chute, then they used the bolts on this blank wall to rappel back down, leaving the ropes behind. They were planning to ascend the ropes and finish the climb after re-stocking their food and water, but Mike copped out. Now the ropes have to come down.

  I spit a long, dark stream of tobacco juice into the rocks.

  “That’s a disgusting habit.” Jake sounds irritated, not his usual self.

  I learned to chew snuff two years ago in Wyoming on a three-and-a-half-month outdoor leadership course where I also learned to rock climb—my big dream come true. At first I chewed to gross everyone out and to prove girls can do anything guys can do, but now I’m addicted, in spite of my terror of mouth cancer and the fact that Copenhagen smells like pig shit and gets stuck in my teeth.

  Jake hands me a tangled pile of nylon slings and two yellow ascenders.

  “Here’s your jumars. We’d better get going. We’ve got less than three hours of daylight left.”

  He steps back, his arms crossed over his chest like a teacher. Except I’ve never seen a teacher with forearms the size of my calves. Rock climbing half the year and ice climbing the other half has turned him into a scruffy, red bearded, dark-eyed Popeye.

  After I scoop out my tobacco and take a swig of water, I attach my jumars to the rope and clip an etrier—a six-foot ladder made from webbing—into each.

  “Okay, I’m ready.”

  Jake studies me through narrowed eyes. “I thought you said you’d used jumars before.”

  “I have. I jugged up a tree once to hang the food.”

  Jake shakes his head. “Shit.” He grabs two pieces of nylon webbing that are curled up at my feet. “You forgot your daisy c
hains.”

  Daisy chains? He slips the webbing through my harness in a girth hitch and attaches one to each of the jumars hanging from the rope. “That’s your lifeline.”

  Looking down at the mess of gear hanging from my harness, I can see that the daisy chains are the only thing securing me to the rope. If I let go of the jumars, I’d fall to the ground. This is starting to look more complicated than rock climbing.

  “Your harness is doubled back?” He grabs my harness and jerks it roughly.

  “Yeah, yeah.” I pull away.

  After climbing in Alberta for almost two years, I know how to put on a harness. But when Jake turns his back, I check my buckle, just in case. Right here in Yosemite, a woman leaned off a ledge to rappel and fell to her death because she hadn’t done her harness up properly. One stupid, split-second mistake.

  I slide the top jumar as high up the rope as I can reach, slip my sneaker into one of the loops of the etrier, and step up. But the rope swings me around and my body slams into the rock.

  “It’ll take a bit to get the stretch out of the rope. Here, I’ll hold it for you.”

  “I can do it!”

  Jake throws up his hands defensively and steps back to watch.

  Fumbling with my etriers, it occurs to me he’s talking to me like I’m an idiot, the way I overhear boyfriends talking to their girlfriends at the bases of climbs. But I came to Yosemite to really climb, not to follow some hot-shit climber around. When I climb with women, we alternate leads. When I climb with guys, it’s too easy to give up the sharp end of the rope. The best thing I could do is swear off men altogether. Become a lesbian. But given my track record, it doesn’t look like there’s much chance of that happening.

  Finally, I’m off the ground. When my weight is on one jumar, I can reach down and slide the other one up the rope. I transfer my weight back and forth like that, slogging upward, as if I’m on some defective step machine at the gym. Not that I spend much time at the gym. My idea of training is ski touring, climbing, or hiking, then drinking beer and doing finger pull-ups on door jams when I have a male audience.

  “You’re doing good, Jan!”

  About eighty feet up, halfway to the first anchor, I have to stop and flex my fingers, stiff from their death grip on the jumars. This gets the scabs on the backs of my hands bleeding again. For the past few days, we’ve been crack climbing, and my jamming technique is less than perfect. I notice Jake doesn’t have one scrape.

  By the time I get to the first anchor—two bolts drilled into the rock—my feet and hands are numb. I shouldn’t be getting pumped so quickly. Not after working ten-hour days on a trail crew in Alberta all spring and summer, and rock climbing or hiking in the Rockies every day off. But going up these ropes seems to use a whole different set of muscles.

  I secure myself to the anchor, unclip my jumars and transfer them to the next rope above me.

  “I’m off!” I yell down to Jake, to let him know he can start his ascent.

  While I rest against the wall, I watch Robbie at the base, starting a climb with a couple of students. He’s on the Yosemite climbing rescue team with Jake. They get a free campsite and showers, and a small pittance for each idiot they rescue off a climb. Business is brisk.

  I check my jumars twice before I unclip from the anchor to put my fate back into these pumpkin-coloured pieces of metal. Slide, step, reach, slide, step, reach. My technique is getting smoother, and after a few minutes, I start to enjoy the motion.

  “Can you speed it up a bit, Jan? It’s getting late.”

  Jake is already near the top of the first rope. As I try to go faster I lose my rhythm. Sweat trickles down my sides even though the sun is gone and I’m only wearing a tank top and shorts. We decided to go light, since we wouldn’t be on the rock long. Not long enough to need food, or warm clothes. Jake has a water bottle clipped to his harness, but we’ve left the packs at the base.

  Jake and I met last spring, on my first trip to Yosemite Valley. He lives here in Yosemite half the year, Alaska the other half. Right now we’re slumming at Camp 4, the climbers’ campground. There are no showers, no hot water, and the toilets overflow daily, but it’s only a dollar a night per person. Jake is camped with the rescue team; I’m at Site 27 with the friends I came down with from Alberta, co-workers at a kids’ outdoor camp near Calgary. I’m sharing Niccy’s tent, but she’s heading back north, so I’ll be homeless soon, and Doc is heading back to North Carolina, leaving me without transportation. Jake invited me to share his tent and I declined.

  Jake is tewenty-five, four years older than me, and has never really had a girlfriend. It shows. He still thinks you get the girl by being agreeable. I told him I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, that it would interfere with my climbing. I considered telling him I already have someone back home, but that would have been stretching it, since I’m between boyfriends. Sort of. Randy was never really my boyfriend, since he already has a girlfriend, though she is living back East. And that little thing with Scottie the night before I left for California can hardly be considered “a relationship,” since I fell asleep in the middle of it.

  Jake is waiting at the bottom of the rope, so I transfer to the next rope as fast as I can and keep going.

  “Rope!” He warns anyone at the base as he drops the first rope, then glides effortlessly up the second toward me.

  Jake’s among the top climbers in the Valley. I wish I could be drawn to him romantically. We can talk for hours, the way I talk to girlfriends—comparing our screwed-up childhoods, talking about what we want to do if we ever “grow up”—and he’s always giving me things, like a gear sling that’s too small for him or his favourite wool earflap hat. But I must have read too many Harlequin romances in high school, because I have an image fixed in my brain of a hairy-chested guy who’ll scoop me into his arms and rip off my bodice or my harness or whatever, without stopping to ask my permission.

  Someone like Max, for instance—the mountain guide from Alaska. He’s the latest, totally unexpected, complication to my love life. He doesn’t ask.

  At the top of the third rope, I unclip and transfer to the fourth. I let myself look down. How long would it take for my body to reach the ground? Five, ten seconds? A wave of dizziness forces my focus back to the rock in front of me. When I took my first lead fall in the spring, here in the Valley, it was only fifteen feet, but I felt like I was never going to stop. It felt like a rite of passage. Like losing your virginity.

  “Rope!” The next rope slithers all the way down the face to the ground.

  As I slide my jumars rhythmically up the rope, my thoughts stray again to Max—his big dome tent and thick foamy, how he tossed me around like a weightless rag doll. I have to stop to let a shudder travel through my body.

  I didn’t even like him when I first met him. He’s loud and obnoxious and hyper—too much like me. And we look funny together, my five-foot-one-and-a-half to his six-foot-four. But that body. . . He’s lean and dark, with hands the size of dinner plates, a thick mop of black hair, and a bushy moustache under the biggest nose I’ve ever seen that isn’t plastic. He’s so. . . swarthy. So Harlequin. He told me he’d had his eye on me since that humiliating day when I was on my way to a climb with Niccy. I was walking backward, waving at him, and I fell over a log. He said when I popped up laughing, he knew he had to have me. I gave him my usual line—I’m not looking for a boyfriend—the same line I gave Jake, but he just laughed and said, “Bullshit.”

  After a couple of days of fending him off, I gave in one evening while Jake was up on this climb. So my resolution to focus on my climbing and forgo men has lasted approximately two weeks. Something that is becoming a bit of a pattern in my life—if you can even have a pattern at twenty-one.

  The fourth rope goes more quickly, but the whole step/ slide/reach routine is getting monotonous. In spite of the cooling air, I’m sweaty and hot and my mouth is drier than dust. I shouldn’t have had that last chew.

  “Rope!” Jake
drops another.

  “Jake, I need water!”

  I expect him to say, “Just wait there, I’ll bring it up,” in his accommodating fashion, but instead he bellows back, “Just hold on till we get to the top!”

  There’s something different about Jake today, something in the tone of his voice. He’s no longer fawning. His new impatience is almost attractive.

  I start to jug up the next rope.

  At the next anchor, I’m surprised to find that there’s no rope above me. Between my rhythmic jumaring and pornographic fantasies of Max, maybe I’ve lost count. I clip in and yell, “I’m off!” then hang from the bolts to take the weight off my feet. When I look down I see boulders turned to pebbles, and massive ponderosa pine to shrubs, and my bowel constricts.

  When he’s halfway up the last rope, Jake yells, “Why’d you stop?”

  “I’m at the end.”

  “You can’t be. There are six ropes.”

  I look back up at the blank rock.

  “There’s no more rope! I’m at the top of the last one.”

  “Maybe you can’t see it. The last one’s black.”

  “Hey Jake, I’m not blond. I think if there was a rope above me I’d see it.”

  He ascends the last bit quickly, till he’s hanging beside me. He looks up, his face streaming with sweat. “What the fuck?” I watch his colour drain away beneath his tatty red beard.

  “Where’s the rope?” His voice is hoarse with panic. I’ve never seen him unravel like this. He sags against the rock. “Jesus fucking Christ!”

  “Jake, did you drop our last rope?”

  “Jake?”

  Jake pounds the rock with his fists till I’m sure he’ll draw blood. He pounds and curses and there’s nowhere for me to go. We’re hanging off the same bolts. But I’ve been through similar episodes with the men in my family—my dad and brother, one fuelled by Scotch and the other by rum and coke—so I know what to do. I stare off into the valley and let myself detach until I barely register the rage spewing beside me. Tufts of smoke rise from barbeques by the Winnebagos. My stomach growls.