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What Am I Doing Here? 2 - 1984
- West Virginia University Press
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237 1984 What Am I Doing Here? 2 What am I doing here? I have to get the hell out of here. I’m at 13,600 feet and the wind is blowing a steady 30 knots. I remember Willi opening his parka and showing me what he had scrawled inside in heavy black marker: “Life begins at 10,000 feet.” I believe him. Life begins when you can look up and all the trees are below you. Life begins when the storm is over and there is still time to summit. But there are other times, other places. Life begins when you can hear the white water before you see it, know that it is there, living in your mind, waiting. And then you turn the corner and you are in it and you know that life begins at the head drop. Life begins when the raft is standing on its tail in the back wave and for a brief moment life is suspended—time is suspended—and there is time to consider many things, among them the grave question as to whether the boat will drop downriver or fall backwards and upside-down Lee Maynard 238 into the hole. While life is suspended, you can consider these things at your leisure. Life begins when the sails go up and the wind snaps them full and the boat takes on a life of its own. Does life only begin in those times and places that make me ask, “What am I doing here?” I am coming down, tired from climbing, running from the storm, the summit far above me. It begins to rain. I make it just inside the tree line and hunker down at the base of a rock overhang, watching the rain drive slanting from a sky I cannot see. The air is alive with the water and now and then it dances into my shelter, misting my face and dripping from my beard. The temperature is dropping so quickly I can feel the skin crinkle on my forehead. It is only a matter of time until the rain hardens, turns to snow, and I am trapped at 1,000 vertical feet above the thin shelter of my tent. It is late in the season. I huddle hard against the stone and bury my head deep within my parka. I know I am alive only because I am breathing. What am I doing here? Usually, the question rushes through my mind at times and places where I can least afford to answer it. What was I doing there, back then, falling off the mountain, on a day full of light and magic and the rushing air of emptiness. It is not true that you scream when you fall. Your throat clenches and not even the crying sound of “God . . . “ will escape before you get to the bottom. What was I doing there, on the river, when the hard swift hand of the rapid took me out of the boat and I was hurtling free and captured through a world in which I could not see and could not breathe, in which survival was nothing more than chance and the world was much too loud [35.173.178.60] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:06 GMT) The Pale Light of Sunset 239 and wet for the question that slipped out of a huddled place in the back of my mind . . . “What am I doing here?” Long spans of sun-streaked days and broken nights in the wilderness. The whipping stings of scorpions. The snapping of bones. Dehydration so severe my eyes stung when I tried to cry. Adrift in a broken boat in a cold sea watching the last lights of a distant shore fade into the night. What was I doing there? For once, here, on the mountain, I have time to think about it. Perhaps I shouldn’t be here? But that is a question I never seem to ask. I put myself into these places. I always seem to make it through and when it is over all I can do is wonder at the thrill and that I am still alive and immediately start to plan for that next place. It is a life I chose to live. Perhaps, I think, it is a life I have to prove. Other than that, I have no answer. The rain grows thick with sleet. I break out a poncho, cover myself, and dig into the...