Climbing Toward the Matterhorn

An ImaRead production · text & illustration by the production line

ImaReadFolio 02 — 02

Two tiny figures pitch a tent on a sandy shelf above a small blue alpine lake ringed by boulders and leaning pines, washed in late golden sun under cool grey mountains. — Arrival at the high blue lake

Ray and Japhy sit shoulder to shoulder at a small campfire holding tin cups, faces warm in the firelight, a thick field of stars above and a path of moonlight crossing the dark lake behind them. — Two men, fire, and the void

On a cold pale dawn, Japhy hops goat-like up a slope of loose grey scree while Ray toils head-down behind him; far below the lake is a tiny blue coin and a hawk circles over bone-colored rock. — Up the scree at dawn

The trail rises through long meadows where the grass bends silver in the wind and the wildflowers nod like little bells nobody rings. Pine and granite smell stronger the higher we go, that cold clean smell that says we are really up in the world now and the city is a thousand miles and a thousand years behind. We come over a ridge and there is the lake, a perfect blue eye set among boulders, with a few whitebark pines leaning over it like old men peeking. We pitch the tent on a flat sandy place above the shore, lay out our sleeping bags to air in the late sun, and Japhy goes down to fill the pot while I gather wood. Everything is simple and good.

By the time the fire is going the stars have come out thick, more stars than I ever thought the sky could hold, and we sit shoulder to shoulder with our plates of rice and beans and the warm coffee in the tin cup, and Japhy starts it off with a haiku. Something about the moon on the lake. Then I make one up about the smell of pine. Then he makes one about a bug on his knee. Then we laugh and start talking about the Void, about how the mountain doesn't know it is a mountain, about how the mind that worries about reaching the peak is already lost before it starts. He talks about the great teachers of the past and how they went into the wilderness to find out what was true, and how the wilderness taught them by not answering back. I tell him about my own small disasters and he just nods and says yes, that is the way, and pretty soon the laughing stops and we are both just looking into the fire with the same kind of quiet. The whole lake is dark now except for the path the moon makes across it, and the silence is so big it feels like another person sitting between us.

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I lie awake a long time that night with my head out of the tent flap, watching the stars wheel slowly, listening to nothing, and a kind of fear comes over me, the good kind, the kind that means you have walked to the edge of yourself and you can see there is more world out there than you will ever fit inside your head. Japhy is snoring softly in his bag and I think how lucky I am to be here with a real friend, a man who knows what he is doing, a man whose bones are made of the same granite as the peaks he loves. I think about all the bars and parties and subway platforms of my life and how far away they are, and how small, like little colored beads scattered on the floor of a giant empty room. The mountain ahead of us in the dark is just a blackness against blacker black, but I can feel it waiting, and I know tomorrow is going to be something.

Dawn comes up cold and clear and we drink hot tea and eat a handful of nuts and shoulder our light packs and start up. The first part is easy going across a long sloping meadow, then suddenly we hit the scree and the work begins, that loose broken rock that slides under your feet and tries to push you back down with every step. Japhy moves up it like a goat, hopping from stone to stone, and I plod along behind him with my head down, my breath coming hard, my heart hammering like a drum. We rest every now and then, sitting on a boulder, looking down at the lake which is now just a little blue coin far below, and Japhy points out a hawk circling, and we both watch it for a long time without speaking. Then up again, higher, into the realm of the real mountains where nothing grows and the rock is the color of old bones and the wind cuts like a knife. I keep my eyes on Japhy heels and I keep putting one foot in front of the other, and somewhere in the middle of all that climbing I stop being a man with a name and a history and a bunch of problems, and I become just a thing moving upward, just a part of the mountain climbing itself.