Becoming Chloe (17 page)

“They take skiers up the hill again. So they don’t have to walk back up every time.”

“Maybe we should ride one, just to see what it’s like to fly like that,” Chloe says.

We’re settled into our motel room for the night, and Chloe takes off all her clothes because she’s going to take a hot bath. We’ve been camping in the cold, and there hasn’t been much stripping down and soaking lately. While she’s bathing I read the information about Carson National Forest and Wheeler Peak. We picked up a bunch of brochures right at the desk of our motel.

“This is interesting, Chlo,” I say, loud enough that she can hear me in the tub. “There’s all kinds of stuff in here that I wouldn’t have thought of on my own.”

“Like what?”

“Like I was thinking if we didn’t want to carry water, we could just eat snow. I mean, that’s water. But it says here that it’s a bad idea to eat snow. Melted snow is okay but you have to have some way to melt it. It says if you eat snow, it doesn’t provide that much water. Only about ten to twenty percent. I’m not sure what that means. Maybe it means it melts down to a lot less than you think. And also it brings down your body temperature too much.”

“So we’ll carry some.”

“I guess.”

“What else does it say?”

“Well, it has a bunch of stuff about hypothermia.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s when you get so cold it kills you. It has all this stuff about preventing it. It says that cotton next to the skin keeps the body damp but wool can get wet and still provide insulation.”

“Must be why Randy gave us wool socks.”

“Must be.”

She comes out after a time in her nightshirt and tucks into bed with me. It’s nice to be warm for a change. It’s nice to be in a warm bed and not have to bundle up and to be able to change clothes without freezing. We needed this break. It was a big extravagance, staying in a motel for the night. But we needed it, and I guess I feel like we earned it.

Chloe has her head on my shoulder. “We should bike up to the Taos Ski Valley tomorrow,” she says.

“Why not wait a day or two? Get our strength back from biking up the mountain.”

“My strength is fine,” she says. “I feel fine.”

“The longer we stay here, the more we get used to the altitude.”

“We’ve been climbing this mountain for days. We’ve been getting used to it all this time. I want to climb Randy’s mountain.

We’ll have to buy a camera.”

“I’ll go out in the morning and get bottled water and snacks that aren’t too heavy to carry. And I’ll get one of those disposable cameras.”

We lie there quietly for a while, just thinking. I must be really tired, because I close my eyes and when I open them again, it’s light. It’s morning. And we’re in the mountains in a town called Angel Fire. She rolls over and hugs me good morning.

“Go buy that stuff,” she says. “I’m all ready to climb a mountain.”

We wake up the following morning in our tent, a few hundred yards from the trailhead. We’re fully dressed, each in our separate bags, wearing our ski masks and two pairs of Randy’s wool socks each. The bottled water is zipped into the sleeping bags with us, because we were afraid it would freeze. Because I read in the brochure that the local lakes—Williams, and Horseshoe, and Lost Lake—have no fish because they freeze solid in the winter. And we don’t want that to happen to our water.

I pull on my boots and step out of the tent, and it’s still nearly dark. Nearly, but not quite. I breathe. The air is thin up here and yet there’s something superior about it. Maybe that was the problem with the air in the city. Maybe it was too damn thick.

Chloe comes out to stand with me, and she has her boots on, and a look in her eyes that tells me she’s ready to go. I have misgivings about climbing a mountain in the snow. But then, part of the purpose of this trip is to help leave misgivings behind.

Even if we can’t make the climb. What good were the advance misgivings? How did I improve things with my worry? I take a big deep breath of cold mountain air and throw them away. I won’t say throw them to the wind because fortunately there is no wind. But when I breathe out again they seem to be gone.

I load up the backpack with snacks. Chocolate and string cheese and trail mix and dried fruit. And the disposable camera I bought. We zip most of the bottled water into our jackets to keep it warm. I tie the snowshoes to one strap of the pack, Randy’s sign to the other. I eat a double handful of trail mix.

Hold some out for Chloe and she takes a small handful. But it’s so hard for her to eat when she’s excited. She works off a whole different source of energy.

Then we hit the trailhead and climb.

We still haven’t said a word to each other, or needed to.

The sun gradually comes out to meet us. Gradually shows us where we really are. A kind of slow surprise. It takes us about an hour or an hour and a half to reach the first stopping point, which, according to my little trail map, is Bull-of-the-Woods pasture. I don’t wear a watch, though. I haven’t worn one in as long as I can remember. So I’m guessing about the time.

So far it’s pretty easy going, though according to the brochure we’re now at about 10,800 feet. We’ve hit a lot of patches of snow, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to break out the snowshoes yet, and fortunately we’ve just barely managed to squeak by without them. The surface of the snow is frozen hard from the cold night temperatures, so we can take two or three gentle steps on it before breaking through, sometimes to our waists. But it worries me a little, using snowshoes. Especially since I’ve never used them before.

There are two tents set up in the Bull-of-the-Woods pasture.

People who, I suppose, climbed this far and then camped before going farther. But they’re either back on the trail now or still asleep, because nothing and no one stirs up here.

We drink a little water. I eat some dried fruit and another handful of trail mix. Chloe makes a face and shakes her head.

Then she looks at my face and whatever she sees there convinces her. She rummages around in the pack and finds a chocolate bar, and eats two squares. Eats them like they were medicine.

Then we climb on. We still haven’t broken the silence of this morning.

The sun is more or less up now, the sky a faded white-blue.

We climb through the forest for what seems like a long time.

The altitude is becoming more of a problem. For me. Chloe seems to be doing fine. I haven’t thought of it for years, but when I was a kid, my dad took us to the mountains and it made me throw up. Altitude sickness, which I haven’t heard mentioned since. But I remember it was one more in a long string of demerits I earned on my father’s list. One more incident he could file away to prove I wasn’t him.

I’m breathing harder now, and my head is pounding, and my heart is pounding, and I pray I’m not about to throw up. After a steep mile of trying not to think about it, I drop to my knees in the snow, thinking it’s inevitable. Prepared to hurl my trail snacks into the perfect, untouched whiteness. Chloe gets down on her knees beside me and holds my forehead the way I always used to do for her. But nothing happens. My stomach steadies, and nothing happens, except for my knees getting wet and cold.

“Poor Jordy,” she says. Breaks the stillness for the first time today. We hold still and listen to the words, the voice, settle into the air, slightly changing the mountain atmosphere.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”

I stumble to my feet and we walk on.

After a while, the trail drops, which I was not prepared for.

Drops nearly five hundred feet into an open basin. It’s heartbreaking, because when we cross that basin we just have to ascend the five hundred feet again on the other side. On the other hand, it feels good to pick our way downhill for a change. It’s a break I needed.

When we drop down into the basin, I step out onto the snowpack and punch through to my chest. I’m standing in snow literally up to my chest.

Chloe laughs. “Must be why Randy gave us snowshoes.”

“Must be,” I say.

I wrestle and climb my way back out again, and we strap on the snowshoes and step out tentatively and just stand there looking at each other. I think we’re both expecting to fall through, but of course we don’t. It’s not nearly as bad as I thought. What did I think? I can’t remember. Then Chloe takes a step. Then I take a step. It’s weird. They’re weird steps because you have to keep your feet so far apart. Chloe takes about three more test steps, then laughs out loud and takes off running. Well, maybe running is the wrong word. It’s more of a wild, awkward dance, a spraddle-legged waddle. I’m infected by her joy, so I try it, too, but after ten paces or so the lack of oxygen gets me. I clump slowly along, watching Chloe dance and then stop and wait for me to catch up. Then dance. Then stop and wait for me to catch up.

At the far side of the basin she breaks the still again. She says, “Even if this was the only thing I ever did in my whole life, it would be worth having a life just to do this.”

We zigzag up a series of switchbacks to reach the summit.

Marmots scurry back and forth across the trail, and when we stop for a snack, they come close, begging for a handout. Our only real clue, so far, that this road has been traveled by many others. Of course, I only know they’re marmots because the brochure tells me so. I might have called them groundhogs or prairie dogs, but based on the list of mammals we might expect to see, this has got to be them. Now, weirdly, the brochure said marmots hibernate in the winter. But it also said that if you feed wild animals, they stop acting naturally. Maybe you don’t hibernate when there are trail snacks to be gained. Or maybe we’re just not that deep into winter. Chloe throws them bits of trail mix to avoid eating it herself, and they plow through the snow to claim it.

By the time we reach what I think is the summit, I confess I’m in bad shape. We’ve been walking this ridge for what seems like hours. I feel like I can’t breathe. I’m stopping to rest every few minutes. My feet ache and my hips ache. The sun is nearly overhead. I think if I have to walk one more yard, I’ll just fall over and die. Or wish I could.

Then we reach the plaque mounted on the peak and it announces that we are actually on Mount Walter. Named for a guy named H. D. Walter, who loved these mountains. Just for a split second I find myself wondering why anybody would.

“There’s the summit up there,” Chloe says.

And she’s right of course. This is a kind of false summit, about twenty feet lower and half a mile short of the real thing. I sit down hard on the rocky ground, fortunately free of snow.

“Want me to go on ahead and put the sign up?” she asks.

“I have to take pictures of you doing it,” I say, barely able to breathe enough to say it.

“Oh, yeah.”

“If this is so close to heaven, how come there’s hardly any air?”

“Well, the closer you get to heaven,” Chloe says, “the less air there is, because when you get to heaven for real you don’t need to breathe anymore.”

I have to admit that makes sense. A strange kind of sense, but sense nonetheless.

“You know,” she says, “you’re getting really good at finding beautiful things.”

“Did I find this?”

“Sure. It was your idea to sell the truck and hitchhike. So you got us to Randy. So you got us here.”

“I think I’m glad,” I say, because I still can’t really breathe.

“You know you are, Jordy. Just because there’s no air doesn’t mean you’re not glad.”

We sit for a few minutes, then walk the ridge to the real Wheeler. I push all thoughts out of my head and do it. And, you know, it’s worth it. It nearly kills me, but it’s worth it.

The view is spectacular, and there’s something about standing on the top of a mountain you personally climbed at great sacrifice.

It means something. The sky is brilliant blue. In every direction we see snowy mountain after snowy mountain after snowy mountain.

Chloe stands with her eyes closed, her head thrown back, as if having a silent conversation with heaven. “Randy is happy,”

she says.

“Good.”

“You can’t point to this joy, Jordy. You’d have to point everywhere at once. And if you point everywhere at once, then you’re not really pointing anywhere at all.”

I look around, breathe, close my eyes. See Randy’s face and experience this briefly for him. Then I look around at the view again. And I realize that for all the joy we’ve seen so far, I’ve allowed it all to remain outside of me. It’s always been over there.

Look, over there. Some joy just went by. A little more just flew by. And when I realize that, I let it into me. And I become the joy. Just for a split second, I think I do.

Chloe says, “What’s that thing?”

She’s pointing to a heavy metal cylinder shaped like a miniature cannon. It’s on the stone under the Wheeler Peak plaque. I open it and find it’s a registry. A guest book of sorts.

“It’s a thing that lets you sign your name so everybody knows you were here.”

“Oh, good,” she says. “Do that, Jordy, okay?”

So I write the date, and then the names in our party.

I write, “Chloe, Jordy the Cellar King, and Randy Banyan were here, with joy.”

I take a picture of Chloe holding the sign and she takes one of me holding it. Then I stamp it into the ground with the heel of my boot, and Chloe takes pictures while I do. It’s hard because the ground is frozen. But the stake is sharp, because Randy knew the ground would be frozen. It goes in because Randy designed it to.

“I wish we could have a picture of us on the mountain,”

Chloe says. “That would be a good thing to have. Not that I won’t remember this anyway. But still, it would be nice.”

I’m thinking of maybe holding the camera at arm’s length and taking a chance on what we’d get. Just as I’m about to try it, we see the first people we’ve seen since yesterday. Two young guys. They’re just there suddenly, sharing the peak with us, out of nowhere. There was nobody on the trail behind us, I know there wasn’t. One of them shouts triumphantly and throws his hands in the air and leaves them there a long time.