Several weeks later, Jordan was back at the bottom of the mountain looking up. The sky was clear and the air was crisp. A huge eagle circled overhead, surfing the wave of cold air rolling down the mountain.
Jordan ran over his equipment one last time, a new confidence fueling his need.
“Jordy!” a man called to him.
Jordon looked over at the figure walking toward him. “Hello Grimes, how are you?”
“Fine,” he said with a big, salesmeny grin. “Hey, you never called me.”
Jordon stared mutely a moment. His first meeting with this ‘larger then life’ character seemed so long ago. “Yeah, I got busy with stuff.”
“Wow, that line looks pretty good, been practicing?”
Jordon looked down; a new sense of satisfaction deepened his breathing. “Yeah, I’ve learned some new knots.” He knelt down and picked up a particularly challenging splice. “Like this Kinda-Half Buckle—”
“Wow, that’s great; been climbing a lot myself you know.”
Jordon took in Grimes’ slick climbing suit and cross straps, but complete lack of gear. “Aren’t you climbing today?”
Grimes’ smile broadened. “Sure I am, beautiful day.”
“But you don’t have any line, or hardware, just your harness.”
Grimes tugged at the lone buckle hanging from his cross strap. “This is all I need; it’s the only way to climb.”
Noisily a helicopter flew over the small hill, dragging a loose line through the trees. The eagle, and everything else nearby, flew from sight. Grimes caught the loose end of the line and clipped it to his harness. He handed Jordan another card. “Call me and we’ll climb sometime. Well, I got to get started,” he shouted over the din of the whirling blades above. The chopper tugged Grimes into the air. Dangling over the trees, turning to and fro, Grimes rose quickly up and over the mountain.
Jordan watched him go, glad that he had a full account of line and tackle. He powdered his hands and began his accent.
Halfway up, and higher by three fold then he’d ever gotten before, Jordan ran up under a wide precipice.
His view above blocked, he looked down. He was deep into the rock and touching the edge of snow. He was so far, yet still so far from the top and now faced his most difficult challenge, and out and over climb. Doubt gnawed at his courage. He looked down the length of his line and a strong urge to climb back down, pull out the can of red paint, and start over ran up his spine. He truly was an amateur; he had no business being on that mountain, the naysayers were right.
No, he wasn’t letting himself off that easily, he’d come too far, risked too much. If he was going to fall he was going to fall now.
He pulled his scaling rig from his shoulder and set a carbineer in the looped end. He ran the line out until he gripped the center splice. He held the splice up, prepared to attach his hasp, but line and hardware were mismatched. How had he made so simple a mistake? His hasp was pretty standard equipment, named for its inventor, Irwin Comma, but it wasn’t designed to operate on a splice. A beginner’s mistake, one that he’d made often, perhaps once too often.
He looked up at the ceiling of stone above him. It jutted out from the mountainside at a steep, thirty-degree angle. It was too wide to go around, and going back down was no longer an option. The only thing for it was a free climb, the hardest, and most dangerous free climb that he’d ever attempted.
He returned the spliced line to his shoulder as he could still make two separate but functional lines from it, set a spike as high up as he could reach and attached his safety line. He tested the spike, then released his main line, his lifeline, and began to climb.
His feet dangled eight hundred feet above the valley floor. He swung, and swayed, and sweated, and swore, gradually working his way, hand over hand, out and up to the face of the cliff. Stretching his arm as far as it would reach his fingers caught a narrow edge of rock. He urged every once of strength he could muster from those precious digits, the sum value of his existence now resided in their strength; suddenly all the one-finger pull-ups at Ali’s made sense.
But he was slipping, and his strength was beginning to fade. He kicked at the rock face, his toes searching for a hold. His left boot found something and he heaved against it, pushing his opposite hand to a solid hold in a small crevice. As he heaved himself up whatever his foot was resting on gave way and he dropped. “Oww,” he cried out; his left shoulder burned with the jarring impact. Hanging by one hand, he listened to his safety spike bounce with a metallic ringing to the valley below.
For a moment all that Jordan could hear was the pounding of his heart in his ears. His pulse raced, and panic poured over his senses. His first safety was gone and the next spike was set far below, too far to serve any other use than to smash his broken form repeatedly against the mountain. The pour became a flood. His breathing began to shorten. Sweat ran into his eyes and down his hands. His fingers were getting wet, and slippery. A voice deep inside his mind told him he was about to die.
Then the eagle cried out three times, cries that repeated themselves against the mountain side.
Jordan took a deep breath that hissed with pain, then another. Breathe, that’s what Ali told him, just breathe. His pulse slowed, his senses returned. He came to climb, and that’s what he was going to do. And if he fell at least he’d die climbing, what better death could he ask for?
With a new determination he shoved the ache in his arm aside and heaved himself up, dragging his weary body over the first, narrow ledge. Pressed to the rock, his feet found a narrow edge and he managed to lean enough weight there to rest a moment, but didn’t feel secure enough to drive a spike. He chalked his hands, drying the sweat, and renewed his slow accent.
He dragged himself up the cliff face like an inchworm. Hours passed as he gained height in millimeters. He pried strength from his body, urging it to go on one pull at a time. At last his left hand crested the top of the cliff. With fingers searching he found a solid handhold, but he hung, stretched out, unmoving for a brief eternity.
He needed to kick his feet free, then find a second hand hold and pull himself up. But what if there wasn’t a second hand hold? What if he was too tired, or his grip slipped? One misstep here spelled certain doom. But at the moment doom was both his impediment and his inspiration so he kicked away.
He shot his right hand up, searching frantically. But nothing was there, not even the smallest crack or crevice. His feet dangled, but still he kicked as if he could magically push against thin air. He grunted and groaned, pulling with all the strength he had remaining in his arm. He prayed that his grip, and the object he gripped, would hold. Muscles straining he prayed that his arm remain attached to his shoulder.
Still struggling, groaning, and begging, his eyes rose over the edge of the cliff.
Ali sat there, atop a dead stump, eating a sandwich.
“Ali, thank God. Pull me up.”
Ali looked at him; her eyes flashed offence and she held up the remaining bite of her sandwich. “I’m eating my lunch.”
“Ali, you’re kidding right?”
She took the last bite. “Mmmmm.”
Jordan’s arm shook uncontrollably. “Ali, please help me.”
“Look at that, my boot’s untied. Now I’ll have to relace it.” In one long stroke Ali stripped her lace from its eyelets.
“Ali,” Jordan pleaded, his voice down to a whimper.
“Now let’s see, under this one, and over this one, then...oh no, it’s the other way. I’ll have to start again.”
Suddenly the anger Jordan had first held for Ali rushed through him anew. Teeth grinding, and cursing her very birth, Jordan dragged himself one-armed up on top of the cliff.
Gasping for breath he curled into a ball and rolled on his side. It took several minutes of deep breathing for him to slow his trembling muscles, and his racing pulse, enough for him to sit up and gulp down a bottle of water. He dragged himself back and leaned against the mountain.
Ali’s stare made him feel like a schoolboy.
“Why didn’t you help me? Why did you just sit there?”
“You didn’t need my help.”
“I almost died, Ali!”
“But you didn’t, did you?”
Jordan looked out over the green valley. “No, I didn’t.” And just then all the fear, and anger, and struggle washed away, replaced with a feeling of accomplishment. From his perch he could see the river, and the creek, and Ali’s cottage. He could see the roof of his own house and the thin line of smoke rising from his chimney, warming and welcoming.
Refreshed, as if he’d had an entire night’s rest Jordan rose and looked up, ready to finish his climb.
“Beautiful up here isn’t it?” Ali broke the silence.
Jordan looked out. “Yes, it is. Even more beautiful than I imagined.” Then a shadow against the horizon caught his eye. “Hey, what’s that?” He pointed.
Ali stared. “What’s what?”
“There, there’s another mountain.”
Ali squinted. “Oh yeah, I see it.”
“What’s its name?”
“I don’t know, I never noticed it before.”
“You never noticed it before. But it’s right there.”
Ali stood and began slipping into her harness. “This is the mountain I’m climbing, so I focus on this one.”
Jordon couldn’t look away from the magnificent mountain before him. It was even more grand, more beautiful, more delightful then the one he was standing on, the one he’d dreamed so long and so hard about. “But that one looks so…so completely awesome.”
“Then you should climb it.” Ali slid into her helmet and goggles, gripping her climbing line.
“But I want to climb this one with you. I always dreamed of climbing this one.”
“This is my mountain, and you’re welcome to climb it if you want, but then the best you can hope for is a second best climb. If you really want to be a climber, then you should climb your mountain.”
Jordan turned and gazed up to the top of that mountain, just as he had done since he was a child. He’d longed to reach the summit, he’d dreamed of it so many times, the way he’d feel standing at the top, the top of the mountain, the top of the world. Then he looked out at the new mountain; it had always been there but he’d never noticed before. It seemed that the world had many tops.
Jordan set a spike deep in the rock face and attached his safety line. Then he set a second, lopped his mainline through it and attached his ratchet. Gripping the line he backed himself out to the cliff’s edge and drew the line tight to his buckle.
Ali was already climbing, now twenty feet above the cliff.
Jordan looked down over his shoulder. He tested the spike once, then leaned his weight back over the edge, the line holding him suspended.
“Hey, Ali.”
Ali turned, her voice muffled through her thick scarf. “Yes, Jordan?”
“Thanks for cutting my line,” he said then kicked away and repelled back down the mountain.
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