Fourteen Months or "the last climb"

Fourteen months. I’m living in a tiny apartment in downtown Denver with my mother - We’re just a short walk from the hospital where I’ve spent the majority of my time since being diagnosed with an aggressive form of Leukemia fourteen months ago. There was a brief moment of overcoming and joy following a successful bone-marrow transplant in February. During the initial weeks post bone-marrow transplant I was so weak that a walk around Cheesemond Park in Denver was enough to bring me to my knees and I remember pissing thick bloody clots of tissue for days on end and vomiting from the pain… I remember watching my dad cry, helpless as I lie in a ball on the bathroom floor amid my own blood, urine, and vomit. 

Although it takes years for the body to recover from the lethal doses of chemotherapy involved in a transplant, I was back on the sharp-end just forty five days post transplant, and what a sight I must of made huffing and puffy my way up sandy 5.7 bolted routes at Garden of the Gods… In the coming months my recovery remained steady and it wasn’t long before I was climbing 5.10 trad routes again and pining for a real adventure.

By summertime I felt well enough to climb easy multi pitch routes at Lumpy Ridge. The short approaches and moderate terrain was perfect rehab and I enjoyed several pleasant days out climbing with friends or soloing, literally rejoicing in my good health and good fortune. But still I longed for a real adventure and a return to my beloved high-country. When the bug bit it was easy enough to find a partner in my friend Kent, a top notch individual and a fine person to boot. I was keen to step away from our usual RMNP stomping grounds and climb something remote and unique. The S. Buttress on Haimovie Tower, deep in the Indian Peaks Wilderness bordering RMNP’s West Boundary seemed like a fitting objective and Kent (ever patient) was happy to oblige me. We met at the trailhead late in the afternoon and hiked the steep and endless trail towards our bivy beside an alpine lake at the foot of our chosen peak.  What a joy it was to be humping heavy packs and talking shit with an old friend. We enjoyed a picturesque bivy in a meadow beside a lake which was coming alive with feeding trout. In the time it took me to pitch my sexy little tarp-shelter in conjunction with my even sexier carbon trekking poles, Kent had chilled a six pack of Dale’s in a little stream and we settled in beside a delightful little twig fire as the stars invaded the night sky. We shared a small meal, sipped our cans of beer, smoked our cigarettes, and talked about life - about cancer, stem-cells, women, and of course women. We would have made fine cowboys, I like to think.

A warm morning greeted us and we took our time rising, brewing cup after cup of delicious coffee. I was already tired as shit from the previous days approach and knew my ass was about to get worked over. We racked up in camp and approached the general line we intended to climb – both Kent and I had forgotten the topo – and a broken buttress of endless granite lay before us. We intended to simul climb the route with myself leading most of the pitches. I set off on some foreseeable line and enjoyed excellent stone and position up the buttress. It felt wonderful to be climbing in the mountains again. My chosen line was more difficult than I had expected, so I climbed slowly to compensate, following various corners and cracks through brilliant folds of granite with the occasional section of choss. There were a few sections that felt steep and challenging in my weakened state and I had to commit to solid moves on suspect rock high above my last gear. These were wonderful moments and they reminded me of all the routes past, all the previous times when I’d overcome my apprehensions and committed in confidence to the moves that lay ahead of me. It’s these fleeting moments of focus and control that draw me to climbing and always have.  By mid-route I was exhausted and passed the small rack over to Kent. We followed a beautiful ridgeline for several more pitches of excellent scrambling and low 5th class climbing, ending on top of the tower by noon. We snacked and enjoyed a fine view of Lone Eagle Cirque and the greater Indian Peaks Wilderness. Big gracious shapes, storms building to the west, the sound of our hoods rattling in the wind – time to go home. I am elated repacking in the meadow, but the hike back out kills me. A week later I’m planning a solo adventure in the same vicinity. I’m mulling over a map at a bar in Fort Collin when I go to scratch my beard… a large chunk of hair detatches from my face and glides in slow circles to the ground. Something is wrong. My stomach twists into a knot and deep down I know that it [the cancer] had returned. 

On Death

Death has been on my mind for over a year now. Most days I feel like I’m merely observing life from a distance, watching the steady movement of clock arms and the shapes of passing clouds from my bedside window. There is no risk involved in my actions, I lie in this bed all day everyday with no real life to lose, surviving from one blood or platelet transfusion to the next… instead it feels like death is ready to swallow me whole. It surrounds me and fills my days – death – death is the space that I am eroding away into. I’m a hoodoo in the badlands waiting patiently for the rain and wind to wear me down to the ground. I suspect that I will welcome death when it comes because I will no longer have to think or feel. I'm bald, my skin is ridiculously pale, and my cock is limp and useless. I no longer look at woman with lust or longing or wonder - This Is Death - there is no passion in death, it is simple clean and pure, it does not discriminate and it does not judge. Death is like big sky country on a moonless night. Death is simply space moving in.

On Feeling Ancient

On Feeling Ancient

From the top of the hill, fifty square miles of sage flats. Watching the shadows of passing clouds rolling along the hillsides, over the mountains, the forests, and rivers. Fifty square miles of nothing except for an odd ranch or oil derrick, the sagebrush shining silver in the sunlight. To the west the Flattops are rising white against an impossible blue sky. Nothing on the air but a slight breeze and the rustle of aspen leaves, the gurgle of a distant creek.

~

What have I become, I wonder? Nearly everyday a flight from town into the mountains to read among the pine and aspen, to visit the river and to wade along the deep pools casting flies into the swirling darkness. I walk familiar old trails and visit special places where my history is written. I grew up in this canyon and it feels like home. In the past I always felt rushed, always felt like I had to keep moving. Today was always just a bump in the road before Tomorrow. Now I walk slowly as to observe this landscape with fresh eyes, not the arrogant eyes of youth. I feel both resigned and strangely whole, conflicted yet at peace… I feel ancient. It would be easy I think, to spend the rest of my days hiding here on the outskirts of the living, but time seems to have a way of healing our wounds, or at least numbing us to their pain. Our understanding of things evolves and grows. Life continues to be a work in progress.

Shortly before the Death Meditation, just as I was beginning to feel my body shudder, I waded across the river one September day to a big inviting rock in the middle of the current. I lay there naked on that warm smooth stone, as though I might gain some energy from it. I felt so tired, and after a while I fell asleep to the river’s soothing song, the sun’s warmth on my skin. I spent the next six months thinking about that moment and wishing I had never awoken from that sleep. I wished I had died there on that warm stone because I suspect death may be easy. Now I just want to melt into this landscape, claw my way deep into the raw earth, awake in the Spring with a newfound hunger and thirst.

On Eating Distance and Silence

On Eating Distance and Silence

Long plumes of snow are being blown from the summits of distant peaks, the white cutting across the blue sky like a razor. From the Southern end of the range you can see the west face of Longs Peak almost fifty miles distant. Further West you can see the headwaters of the mighty Colorado River that carved the Grand Canyon and used to run all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Everything is being worn down to the sea little by little.

~

What are you running from? Where do you go? What do you do? I am running from feelings, I go search for the stuff that underlies those feelings, the stuff I can touch, breath, smell, and taste… I eat distance and silence. As the alchemy of poisons fades from my body, my mind clears and I begin to recognize old parts of myself in this flesh of mine. I feel a rewarding burn in my legs from hiking the canyon’s trails and notice the outline of muscles returning all over my body. I always took great pride in my physical form, but now I am wary of it, having learned its flaws and limitations. Still I think, it’s a good body for the most part and the only one I’ve got. As the poisons fade and my hair begins to grow again, I start to feel things I haven’t felt in a long time. The last months of the Death Meditation were completely joyless and music, literature, conversation with friends, all seemed unbearable. Any emotion felt had to be stifled. I learned that hope is a double-edged sword, that to feel anything at all was suffering - The First Noble Truth. I spent so much energy coming to terms with my death and accepting it that I lost my will to live and had to abandon all feelings of joy because a deep sorrow followed closely on joy’s heels.

Six months lying on my own deathbed. Six months of yellow hospital rooms, artificial lighting, the beeping machines, the poison, pain, and loneliness. Now this strange business of returning to the world of the living. Music stirs something within me, I read good books with ardor, a girl shoots me a teasing grin and my heart skips a beat. I learn how to laugh again. All these people, places and things blowing softly on the cool embers inside me, coaxing life back little by little. I feel like one big fresh tender wound, and I’m tired, taking flight when I begin to feel too much. One day I went skiing through the woods deep in the Medicine Bows. It was Spring still and moss hung from tree limbs in the old growth and flowers were blooming on bare patches of grass on slopes exposed to the sun. I was amazed by the silence as my skis glided quietly over the snow, and the moss swung gently in the light breeze - there’s a soothing quality to silence and space. I was still very weak then, but I continued further and further until I realized that I was really alone, not another person around for miles.

On Shame and Shyness

On Shame and Shyness

Far up the canyon a fold of orange rock slices a juniper-strewn hillside in half. Down low the rock fades from orange to gray and then finally green. Here the rock cuts into the river forcing the body of water to swerve drastically as it rounds the bend. The stone is beautiful, carved and polished fine by the flow. Here deep emerald pools form along the cliffs. Sunlight fractures the clear water and illuminates colorful stones and pebbles along the banks where the water is shallow, but the light just reflects off the surface of those deep silent pools, the black water swirling around and around, around for an eternity there in darkness.  

~

I was dying. Some demented form of bacteria was eating away at my body from the inside out and I was shitting blood uncontrollably. They were rushing me off to somewhere in the hospital - another MRI, CT Scan, or X-Ray or something. I remember my mother and father’s faces there above me as I lay in the bed being wheeled down yet another identical hallway, their faces pale and their eyes gaunt. My body was a chaotic free for all where the rogue bacteria battled it out with the cancer cells and chemotherapy. I remember too the young nurse who was along to care for me and even then while dying thought to myself Why?! Why did she have to be so damn cute… to make it worse she was kind, looking me in the eyes with a tender smile, talking about music, what bands do I like? I averted my eyes in shame as I shit more blood into a pan. Just let me die, little miss. Wheel me outside and let me die alone in the sunshine.

Robert Bly wrote that his whole life had been a series of shynesses… and now, in the wake of my Meditation on Death I find that I myself am no longer shy. It’s funny how that goes. I shed my shyness along with my dignity and when it was gone wondered why I should miss it. Women no longer have a magnetic pull on me and my thoughts, I can meet them on an even plain, look into their eyes, eyes like the deep pools of water that form around bends in the river, and the mystery is still there - all that I will never understand about Her remains unknowable - but I could care less about the mystery, I could care less about the hidden treasures, or Fountains of Youth, or the Nirvanas and enlightenments that lay beyond them… I may have become strangely enlightened myself in a way, having found some truth in what the Buddhists believe, that happiness can not be gained by clinging to things - to life, people, our pasts nor hopeful futures. Peace will not be had while hanging on, instead wholeness is found in letting go.