Three Times Everest
On New Years Day last year I hiked with a couple of friends along the cliffs above a sparkling trout stream. It was an exhilarating way to start the year which would soon betray our optimism at every turn. I probably should have taken it as a sign when I ran into a tree limb that day and gashed my scalp, but instead I just stuffed a tissue under my hat and kept rolling. I don’t really remember how I banged into that branch, but I do remember the exact conversations I had with my friends, the sun on the water, and the terrific blue sky.
2020 has been a year of innumerable disappointments, if not life-changing traumas, for nearly everyone I know. My version isn’t remarkable. Art sales dried up, and a couple of client’s I’d been helping to arrange music for put their projects on hold. Like millions in the fringes of the gig economy, my income went away. So did my wife’s. One by one her clients drifted off, and we quickly drained what little savings we had just to stay afloat. Suddenly we were scrounging the loose change in the bottom of drawers, selling stuff on Craigslist, and having serious conversations about listing the house we’d bought only a few months prior. Around this time I sunk into the deepest depression I’d ever suffered through. I kept hiking to clear my head, but my anxiety was relentless. I lost all interest in art or music, and committed all of my passion to dread. I’d been depressed before, but this time I knew not to gloss over it. I would be honest about the struggle, because this time it did not feel so manageable.
Out of the blue, friends started reaching out to me. Some I only knew from Facebook. Many offered messages of emotional support, some bought prints of my artwork, some helped out with emergency funds. One even gave me a freelance gig. The anxiety that had enveloped me began to loosen.
As the lockdown intensified, I kept hiking. Not only as a way to keep healthy, and to keep my spirit centered, but as a way to be around friends. We were outdoors, six feet apart, having great conversations and exploring the world. I hiked with my wife and daughter. I hiked with close friends. I hiked alone a lot too. After a while it occurred to me that I might be setting some sort of personal record. I’d always kept track of the distance and elevation gains of my treks, but suddenly it seemed like it might be a good idea to set a goal. So after some simple math, I decided to hike seventy thousand vertical feet by year’s end. It seemed reasonable, given my frequency of hikes and their average elevation gains, but it also felt like something I might have to reach for.
On September 2, I did a solo climb of a couple of 13,000 peaks on the Continental Divide. This required more than the usual planning since most of the route was well beyond trail’s end. I had the first mountain to myself on the ascent. It was a sun-drenched day, but winter was already hinting about its plans. On top I ran into a couple coming off the peak. They were a few years older than me, which gave me momentary courage, until they questioned my plans about reaching the second peak, which was considerably farther away and required a strenuous climb. I thanked them for their concern, then double checked my water and food supply. The route to the last peak was long but fairly gentle. The last hundred vertical feet, however, was a snarl of class 3 boulders, crevices, and overhangs. I picked my way carefully up to the summit, which was only big enough for one person. After a quick photo I started my descent, testing each foot and hand-hold carefully. My mind entered that hyper-conscious state where everything seems to be happening in slow motion. I was moving cautiously, but nature still had a lesson for me. Just then, as if to land the punchline to a joke I was in, I stepped on a bolder that rolled forward. My foot slid down its front and the rock rolled up against the back of my leg, slamming my shin into another rock. When I extracted my leg I found it bruised and bleeding, but not broken, so I made haste to get off the mountain as quickly and gently as I could. Adrenaline kicked in, and I began to feel good about the rest of the hike. Enough so that I took a little detour to catch a view of a remote tarn at the head of a canyon that I knew was on fire below in the distance. I saw not another soul for the rest of the trek. Despite the leg wound, I regret nothing about this adventure, and now have a nice scar in exchange for a glimpse of the sublime, or whatever you want to call that spooky, beautiful presence that calls us to high, remote places.
As the Pandemic wore on, my wife’s work began to pick back up. Eventually she was able to hire me as a freelance designer. I took creative direction from her for the first time, and survived. The art sales stayed null, but at least I could see a way forward. Then sometime in late September I hit my goal of 70 thousand vertical feet, but there were still a lot of hiking days left on the calendar, so without much thought I reset my goal for 80K and kept moving.
Despite the limitations of working in a time of pandemic, I got busy working on new music and artwork. The support of my friends and family was what saw me through the challenges of this year. I am both blessed and privileged to be so loved. Sales were still zilch at the gallery, but my creative output felt centered for the first time in ages. Then on October 30th, I reached my 80K goal in an unceremonious way while out roaming the foothills of Denver with a hiking pal. But there were still a lot of potential hiking days left in the year, so I couldn’t resist cheating my goalposts forward one final time. I would shoot for 87096’ vertical. That’s three times the height of Mt. Everest, from sea level. I don’t hope to ever climb Everest, but it turns out its equivalent is relatively easy to attain, even three times over, if you spread it out over a whole year.
On Christmas day, while closing in on my goal with only a few hundred feet to go, I took a hike with my wife and daughter at a close-by mountain park. The sun was low and bright, and the day was surprisingly warm. Our three canine companions each wore a bright satin Christmas bow around their necks, to the delight of the many hikers we passed. But the 2020 trickster caught up with us one last time when my wife slipped on some hidden ice and broke her ankle in two places. EMTs were called to evacuate her on a stretcher from the canyon we were in, and I knew I was done with hiking. My goal was vain anyway, not to mention more or less arbitrary, and maybe a little childish. Who cares about 3 times Everest?
It’s a popular cliché that life should be about the journey, not the destination. But by the time you’re my age, you want to feel like you’ve arrived a few places, even if your goals seem random to others. At least you’ll have some mileposts you can look back on that give your wanderings some shape.
Two days before the year gave out, my wife lay in bed with her leg in a soft cast, awaiting surgery, and urged me to sneak one more hike in. Her procedure wouldn’t be for several more days, and no amount of fretting or hovering over her would change a thing. So together with our daughter and a friend, I climbed my favorite local mountain and shot past my final goal by almost 800 feet. I don’t know exactly where it was on the mountain that I met my goal, because we were lost in conversation, as was fit. I only know that by the time we’d arrived on top I had reached it some ways below. Later that day I learned my gallery had just sold one of my paintings. The first in a year. It was the smallest one they had — one I’d actually forgotten about — but it felt enormous to me. I can’t imagine what 2021 holds for me, but a good deal of it will be my own creation. I do know I’ll be putting one foot in front of the other across lots of rocks. Some on a trail, some not.
