Adventures with Max and Louise (31 page)

“You want them pretty snug so you can feel the rocks with your feet.” Wolf bends down and squeezes the toe of my shoe. His hand lingers on my foot. His eyes meet mine for a moment before he jumps up. “That’s fine, they fit really well. Good, okay.” He hoists an enormous rope-covered backpack onto his shoulders. “We’ve got an hour hike in. Hope you ate your Wheaties.”

“Just penny candy and coffee.”

He offers his hand to help me across a narrow bridge leading to the trail head. “Breakfast of champions,” he says, waiting for me to pass.

I take a moment at the USFS sign to consider the slips of paper where you’re supposed to write down where you are going and how long you’ll be gone. Wolf doesn’t bother, and as I look down at the dense, blackish brown mulch of the forest floor, I have to agree. By the time anyone looked in the message box, we’d be dead anyway. The morbid thought is actually cheering: we’re miles from anyone, striking out on our own.

After a few steps, I take the lead, climbing into the dense, dripping forest with an eagerness I haven’t felt in years. This is much better than running.

We hike mostly in silence, pausing only when Wolf stops and points into the woods at a rare woodland flower or trilling bird. The birds dart in and out of the dense canopy of forest as though traveling their own private freeway. A woodpecker hammers away with alarming speed over our heads.

I remember mom coercing dad into joining us on camping trips. “Oh come on, it’ll be so much fun.”

He hated it. He’d bitch and moan about setting up camp while slapping mosquitoes and rubbing smoke from his eyes. “Only a moron would leave a house one mile from Lake Washington to put up with this. Dang!”

Mom led us on treasure hunts for rare flowers, gathering trilliums and ghostly Indian pipes while dad turned the fire service map upside down.

“Well nature girl, I don’t know where the hell we are.”

“Who cares, it’s pretty!” mom laughed, promising dad an early morning fishing trip by himself. “We’re going to climb that ridge before sunrise, right girls?” she’d cheer, pointing her finger upward.

Trina would roll her eyes. “Um, no, no and then again, no. I’m hitting the beach.”

Denise and I would go along with mom every time. We saw so many amazing things: hidden waterfalls, sleeping fawns, nesting eagles. Her enthusiasm for the woods broadened our world.

An hour hiking with Wolf passes in the blink of an eye. We reach a clearing in the woods where a boulder shoots out of the landscape so suddenly it looks as though a giant dropped it. I search for signs of more rocks but the only other boulders lie scattered like pebbles at the base.

Wolf unloads his pack, pointing up at the sheer face of the boulder. “If you look really closely you can see the anchors from other climbers set into the rock.”

Sure enough, when I squint, I can see tiny hooks embedded in the surface. “On the weekends there’re twenty people hanging off this thing and thirty more at the base waiting.”

“So it’s not our little secret?”

He gives me a strange look. “No,” he says, seriously. “It’s not.”

While I am busy putting on my shoes, Wolf extracts the climbing ropes from his backpack and begins testing them by hanging them from an anchor in the rock and swinging from them. Then he gives them a few violent tugs for good measure. He tests the harnesses, the pulleys and the network of stanchions in the rocks. I find some daisies and make a chain, put it in my hair. It’s amusing for a little while but then I feel like a bored first grader. I’m nervous about climbing.

“Having fun?” Wolf smiles at me as he tugs on a rope.

I smile wanly. “It’s not as warm as I thought it would be.” Wolf flings his coat over my shoulders and strips down to a tightly fitted black sweat suit.

“Mmmmm-hmmmm. The man can fill out a track suit,” Louise murmurs and chuckles. I feel my face flame. I’d been thinking the same thing.

After a few brief stretches, Wolf dips into a bag of chalk on his belt, rubs his hands together, and takes a deep breath. “Almost ready.”

He turns to the rock, lifts his hand, and begins to climb the sheer face of the cliff, finding toe- and fingerholds where none exist. I am transfixed. His body, held by nothing more than muscular tension to the side of the rock, is poetry. I wait at the bottom of the boulder, admiring the way his legs and arms tense, muscles etched in deep relief as they haul him from one toehold to the next. At one point, his entire weight is held with one curled hand as his toe searches the side of the cliff for purchase on the surface.

“Makes Spiderman look like a pussy,” Louise quips.

I hardly hear her. I don’t realize I am holding my breath until Wolf finds a toehold and moves up the boulder, his hands firmly rooted to the rock. When he reaches the top, he hauls himself up and removes the rope strung around his neck. He loops this through an anchor and throws down the two sides. My safety rope, I think, realizing that every climber who dangles from a mountain has someone who climbed first.

As I watch Wolf standing at the top of the cliff, squinting into the sun, I notice how effortlessly and tirelessly he’s assumed the burden of my safety. He doesn’t belabor the fact that he’s just climbed a mountain for me, doubtlessly spending more time last night checking and rechecking the ropes for my benefit. The moment he steals now at the top is the first time he’s stopped for himself, after the work is done, after my needs have been met. He didn’t spend time aimlessly chatting, laying out his plans for safety. He just did it.

“ ’Course not,” Max jokes. “Bad form to kill a gal on the foist date, innit?”

Wolf slips down the face of the cliff as silent as a bird, rappelling down swiftly, his feet touching the rocks for a second before he pushes off.

I’m startled when he lands beside me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I wave my hand in front of my face as though to clear the cobwebs. “Better than okay.”

“All right then, let’s do it!”

As a kid, I played on a climbing wall where, just when you need a toe hold, you look down and there it was: a plastic blob shaped like a monster’s ear just within reach. This is nothing like it. Wolf holds the other end of the rope tied to my harness, his body providing the anchor for the safety net should I fall. Every muscle in my body strains to hold on as I arch my neck backward looking for that next place to reach.

“Over there, to your right. By the tuft of grass,” Wolf hollers.

“This has to be boring for you!” What has taken him seconds seems to take me hours. I crawl up the face of the mountain with the painstaking creep of an inchworm. Now that I’ve tried this, I just want it to end.

“Not at all. You’re doing great.”

“Liar.” I contemplate faking an injury.

He laughs. “Slow but great; the big thing here is to not give up.”

There went plan B.

My toe feels around for a dent on the ledge, a lump, a nick, anything to help me. I scrape the rocks, causing a small landslide. I can feel Wolf pulling the belay line tight, bracing himself.

“Look up from where your foot is - about a foot. You’ll have to reach.”

But I am already falling backwards, my two hands and foot unable to hold my weight. I close my eyes, waiting for a falling sensation, a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach waiting to bloom. It never happens. Wolf leans back into the harness, holding the belay line steadily with both hands, the ropes wrapped firmly around his body and both hands – double insurance.

He stares up at me with a goofy grin. “The first one feels kind of weird, huh?” I nod. “Play around with it. You can push off. I’ve got you. You’re not going anywhere.”

I glance up from where I am stuck. In one hour I’ve made it halfway up the rock. My toes and hands rest on solid holds from which I have no intention of pushing myself away. The view down the valley, ringed with the Cascade Mountains, is astounding.

“It’s pretty amazing up here,” I call down.

“Wait ‘til you get to the top.”

“You’ll be collecting social security by then.”

“Good, I’ll buy dinner,” he laughs. “Try pushing off.”

Delicately, with great trepidation, I push one climbing slipper against the face of the boulder. It sends my body out a few feet like a swing. The freedom is intoxicating. I do it again, this time further. I feel weightless, alien to earth and all its laws. Each push is like the moment a swing reaches maximum velocity, almost level with the pole holding it, where there is a small moment of weightlessness that, as a kid, always made me wish I could have a moment more before I went gliding back down to earth.

I look down at Wolf, enjoying this as much as I am, smiling like there is nothing he’d rather do on his day off than watch some novice swing from the cliff, making sure she didn’t smack herself against the rocks.

“So this is climbing!?” I grin.

“No. This is goofing around. This is what you do when you take a break. Whole meals are eaten like this when you’re climbing. Reach into that little pouch on your belt and chalk your hands. It’s time to get back on that horse.”

I frown.

“You wanna quit for today?”

“No.” I realize how much fun I am having as I say it. Despite the pain, fear and danger, this is fun.

“All right then,” he grins, obviously pleased. He pulls the belay rope tighter and positions himself in a wide-footed stance, leaning back slightly. “Find a place for your feet first. Okay, that’s right. Just rest your hands somewhere. Perfect. Now reach up as high as you can and find a new handhold with your right. Good. Now pull yourself up.”

“Oh, yeah, loik that’s easy as pie,” Max whines. “Nature boy forgets the rest of the world doesn’t hang from ropes all day.”

“Shut up,” I groan. “You’re not even the one doing it.”

“Loik it or lump it, this is a team ascent, luvey,” he chortles. “Team boobie.”

I burst out laughing, falling back again.

Wolf looks puzzled as I dangle in the air. “You all right? I couldn’t hear what you were saying.”

“I’m fine.” I reach to find another starting place, waving my hand in front of my face. “Just a pesky fly.”

He nods. “Okay. Don’t let it bother you.” He tightens the ropes on his hands. “Go ahead.”

I reach for my next handhold. With all my might I pull myself up.

A
FTER
I
SCRABBLE
to the top of the ledge, I unhook myself from the rope and drop it unceremoniously over the side. Below me, Wolf waves and yells, “Congratulations! You made it!”

“Thanks! I’m gonna die now!”

He laughs as he gathers up the ropes. “Go ahead. It’s the perfect place!”

The view is two halves: one green tree canopy below and the other cloud-flecked sky. I flop down on a lichen-covered rock, listening to the birds sing as they swoop and dive into the trees. The pale sun bathes my skin in warmth, the clouds race across the deep blue sky. Lying down, I feel an unexpected elation at completing the climb. I could get used to this place. I have room to breathe, to think.

Thoughts race through my mind as fast as the clouds speeding overhead. Images of Chas on his skis, racing ahead of me, at his cabin, piling pillows underneath my leg, at the television studio chatting with Liz, a smile playing on his lips as she whispers into his ear, on the way to the restaurant to meet Mark and Carry, skipping and laughing like a child, kissing me on the cheek, saying “I love that about you,” confessing how he didn’t stick up for his sister; all this unspools on the movie screen of my mind as I lay watching the sky. A shadow crosses over me. I sit up, startled.

“I’m sorry. You looked so peaceful.” Wolf says..

I twist around, confused by how quickly he’s reached me. He jerks his thumb behind him. “Dirty little secret. There’s a goat trail up the back; not nearly as honorable.”

“Doesn’t seem like such an accomplishment now.”

He sits down beside me, very close. His arm grazes mine. “It is,” he says softly. “You tried something new.”

As he settles in beside me, gripping his knees, his face grows softer. He breathes in the mountain air deeply. “I always feel like when I meet people in the city, they don’t really know who I am. I’m glad you could come with me.”

“Me too.” I watch the breeze play in the treetops and I find myself thinking of mom. She’d like it here.

We sit in companionable silence for a long time, each of us lost in our own thoughts. A lone hawk shifts air streams with a flick of his wings, flying closer to the ground in his never-ending search for food.

Do hawks need love? They need loyalty and companionship but do they need love? Everyone around me is hungry for love and it never ends. Martin and Mario will batter one another into the ground. Denise will choose another artist who needs her support and money until the next Big Thing happens. Trina will peck her loving, doting husband on the cheek on her way to the gym, spinning her legs against the hands of time while her children are fed and dressed by nannies and her husband grows tired of telling her she’s perfect. Angeli might find something with my Indian doctor. But no, her goal has always been to shock her strict Brahmin parents by marrying a WASP, even if it means passing up the perfect Indian man. And then there’s my father, still sleeping on the left hand side of the bed.

As the hawk swoops down, misses, and returns to his hunt, I wonder at the empty promise of love. Look at my father; one wrong turn and the love of his life is gone. Sixty seconds later a life is shattered beyond repair. Death can sneak in through the tiniest hole. I don’t normally allow myself to think about the way my mom died and my role in it but today my defenses are down. There’s something about the climb that has loosened me, physically and mentally. My thoughts swivel around outside of my normal anxieties. Maybe it’s because for the first time in ages, I’m completely relaxed.

“Thanks for bringing me up here,” I say with a sigh. “I can see why you love it so much. It’s amazing.”

I turn to Wolf only to find him looking at me. I can tell by his pensive face that he’s going to tell me something. Don’t let it be about how much he likes me. That’s the last thing I want.