Into Thin Air (1)

 17 July: 12,800 ft.  Near Independence Pass

The mountains of Colorado (and I assume mountains elsewhere) seem to exist without change.  Obviously, they are the same as they were when I went to college here.  Well, except for one mountain in Clear Creek Canyon by Idaho Springs which some company is literally removing in order to extract a mineral and leaving a massive mess of loose gravel in its place.  It would be nice if someone would force the company to "put it back," but two problems would result: 1) HOW?  2) Some poor workers would be set to gluing the bits back together for an eternity, a task I could not wish on anyone except the Ass-of-a-CEO and the derelict and weasely politician(s) who authorized moving the mountain in the first place.

Otherwise, the mountains stay pretty much the same.  They tower in their magnificence and inspire in their majesty (as everyone says).  Yes.  They do.  My experience is that they speak volumes to us at one moment and then, at another moment (perhaps when you most need a perspective, a view on life, some inspiration), they face you with stark indifference.  One person I knew put it this way: "Sometimes the mountains have nothing to say."  A mountain's indifference to us is not a sneer.  It's not malevolent.  It's simply that you are no factor within nature's on-going equations.

But you can get caught in the equation.

They can fall on you or let you fall off of them with no concern over your fate whatsoever.  What seems unbelievable, Ueli Steck, humble carpenter and climber extraordinaire who set 3 "time-climb" records on the north face of the Eiger among many other magnificent feats, fell in April of 2017 from Nuptse, near Everest.  In June 2011, a climbing accident in the French Alps left 6 people dead (men, women, and a teen) after they all fell from a high snow field [Link].  Dr. C. Everett Koop's son also died in a mountaineering accident: a rock fell on his leg, trapping him, and he bled to death.  On 6 Oct. 1979, the day I first made the summit of Long's Peak (14,259 ft.), one climber, Charles Nesbit [Link], died in a fall from Lamb's Slide, a steep snowfield to the left of Long's Diamond Face.  The snow moved — so a ranger told me that day: if Nesbit had been roped to his fellow climbers, they all would have gone.  I remember seeing his friends late that day as they left the ranger station, silent, staring — blank.  And the mountains stand, indifferent to whatever happens to whoever is on them.

Long's: A Serious Presence

A More Trivial Presence atop the Serious Presence
6 Oct. 1979

While hiking in Colorado last week, I thought about the unchanging nature of the mountains — mountains as a constant factor in life's equations.  Yes, over-worn truths offer the usual emotional fluff about spring after winter, that even as winter comes, the evergreens, covered in feet of snow, stay green beneath.  The bright green lichens under all that snow — they will emerge, still green, once again.  The aspen will go into leaf again, the flowers bloom.  But it's the mountains' massive presence that is, for me, the constant.  And their constant includes both their indifference and eloquence.  These are part of their personality.

From under the Snow

But it was while hiking around the Maroon Bells that I had a sudden epiphany, an awareness not of a constant but of change.  It is we who change with that sort of thing Wordsworth spoke of in "Tinturn Abbey" — when, in the moment of writing the poem, he looked back upon "the thoughtless type of youth" he had been, and the man he was years later.

A "Deadly" Marmot at the Foot of Maroon Peak (Very Dangerous Photo: author)

What struck me was how we pass through generational lines without realizing it.  It's like when you read a book you're absorbed in: you look at the clock and three hours have just passed in but a moment.  You live, go about daily stuff, absorbed in it all, and then look up at the clock of life and . . . you've become an older you.  One moment, you're 20.  Then you're 35.  When did that happen?  And then you're 50.  When did that crap happen?!  And, no, you can't go back.  At 19, I trudged up Long's in boots so heavy they should only be used to hold down a house in a tornado.  Today, I can't imagine how it was done.

My Retired Dogs, Weighing a Mere 36 Tons

Somehow we assume we're constant, unchanging.  We look ahead at others, see them a generation ahead of us and wonder vaguely (if we think about them at all) what it's like to be that age, what the "rules" are, and what few prospects for fun are left to them.

The generation ahead?  I remember that when I was very young, I looked at my baby sitter and wondered what it would be like to be so old (she was 17) — unbelievably, she no longer played with toys!  Or I looked at my high school teacher and thought, "man... shouldn't he retire?"  He was, I realize now, only in his 40s.  And my dad: what happened to him?  And I realize I am now the age he was when I had been in college in Colorado and climbing mountains.  And I look up and -- I've crossed the line to that generation.  No one welcomed me or explained the rules, the proper decorum.  I just continued being myself (for better or worse).

1970s: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

1980s: Lookout Mt., GA -- It's Just Not the Rockies

 1990s: Alone in Roosevelt Nat'l. Forest as Seen though the Wayback Machine

Then we see someone younger give us that look — obviously thinking the things we once thought about our elders.  We answer mentally, "don't you DARE think that.  I'm still young, and, yes — a wrinkle here and some grey there — but ... inside it's all the same.  I'm still green under this snow, babe.  Just more experienced."

There's no initiation.  You don't hear a chime on a clock striking the next generation.  You don't see a sign on the mountain trail marking the fact you've reached "50's Peak" — or have perhaps fallen off it.  You just look round and find others reminding you of the fact.  But inside ... you're still 19, still at times Wordsworth's "thoughtless type of youth," but now more careful on the narrows, the peaks, the snow fields.  Where's the right of passage across a generational line?  I don't really care to have one.  The less said....

2000s: 20s or 50s?  Both and Neither

Nearly 2020: Down from the Hornli Ridge, Matterhorn

It was perhaps being in Aspen that made me think of all this (or maybe it was my wheezing away on a trail somewhere above 12,000 feet).  In Aspen, you see a nubile young woman and realize — "no, that woman is actually about 65, just dressed like a teenager."  Or some young buck — "but no, that dude is 70!"  And it's not one, but everyone: men, women, and -- well, no, not children (who somehow dress more maturely than they are, but that's a different blog entry).

Aspen's a place where fighting age is the sport everyone competes in.  Apparently it's a crime to age there.  Cool.  I'd like to live somewhere where people are simply blind to your age.  But that's definitely not Aspen.  Nope.  People there seem to be fighting age because they are too aware of it.  It's a great town for denial, and every clothing, sports, ski, jewelry, or health-product shop will help you with that denial.  While I myself wouldn't "go gentle into that good night" (but rather continue to climb mountains literal and metaphorical), still — I can't try to fool myself that I look even 30.

The mountains don't change.  They are a constant.  They watched me at 18, at 30, at...well, I'm not going to tell you.  But change...?  Change is the constant for humans.  It happens while you're sleeping.  Even so, there's something in us like mountains under the snow: there's still a spring beneath, something that's evergreen.

Age Growing Old, perpetual youth,