Finding Jim
Authors: Susan Oakey-Baker
SUSAN OAKEY-BAKER
For Joe
“There is no preferred point of view in the universe.”
â
ALBERT EINSTEIN
TWENTY-TWO
Return to the Queen Charlottes
TWENTY-THREE
Out of the Mouths of Babes
TWENTY-FOUR
Back to Kilimanjaro
TWENTY-FIVE
Don't Waste a Crisis
TWENTY-NINE
Mother Earth Can Take It
THIRTY
Drawn Back to Kilimanjaro
THIRTY-TWO
Beginning a Year To Heal
THIRTY-THREE
Moving Through Spring
THIRTY-EIGHT
Do What's Good for Sue
THIRTY-NINE
Drawing from the Heart
There are times in my life when I remember being scared: parachuting from a plane, failing my first exam at university, watching a grizzly sow and her three cubs rip through my campsite.
But nothing prepared me for the news that my 41-year-old husband had been killed in an avalanche.
Why would I be prepared? I believed that with hard work I could achieve my goals. I followed the rules, had everything I was supposed to have: nice friends, good grades, a recession-proof job teaching high school, a loving husband, a beautiful mountain home in Whistler. In return I expected special exemption from the hand of fate. This was the deal I subconsciously concocted: civil obedience, loving kindness for no loss, no pain.
But the impossible happened.
Getting used to my husband's death has taken me 10 years, 30 journals and this book, and it's still a work in progress. At times in my life, fear has kept me alive. At other times, fear has made me feel alive. The intense fear I felt while grieving, however, paralyzed me.
BEFORE
Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
And they flew.
â
CHRISTOPHER LOGUE,
“COME TO THE EDGE,”
NEW NUMBERS, 1969
BEGINNING
(1982â1993)
Jim Haberl first kissed me on a commercial sailing trip in the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, in 1982. He was 24 and part of the crew; I was 16 and a passenger. After the trip, he wrote postcards to me from all over the world. We drifted apart, and the next time we connected, I was 26. Jim was working to complete his International Mountain Guide certification, and I was teaching languages full time at a high school in Vancouver, while working part time on my master's degree. I had just spent many months breaking up with my boyfriend, who I once thought I would marry. Silently, I vowed I would not get into another relationship for at least a year.
Over the course of the next year, Jim and I went backcountry skiing, backpacking, rock climbing and kayaking. We watched sunsets at the beach together. We teetered on a tightrope. We were friends, but sometimes we were lovers.
One evening we went for Mexican food in Vancouver. My hands dripped with chimichanga sauce when Jim lowered his gaze. “I've been asked to join a Canadian/American expedition led by Stacy Allison to climb
K2
.”
“Where's
K2
?” I chirped.
“In Pakistan. It's the second-highest mountain in the world. No Canadian has ever reached the summit. I'd be gone three months, next summer. And Dan Culver will be going.” He leaned forward on the edge of his seat. “What do you think?”
“It sounds like an amazing opportunity for you, an incredible adventure. I think it sounds great. And it's a good time in your life, no real ties.” I nodded my head up and down to convince myself.
Jim and I had slept together. I had dangled from his climbing rope and gone five days without a shower in a tent with him. Still, I would not put my heart on a chopping block and admit that we were tied together.
The
K2
team interviewed Jim in Seattle, and Jim accepted their offer.
We continued to see each other. Two months later, at Christmas, Jim invited me on a backcountry ski trip to Rogers Pass with some of his friends. It was â30°C and howling. At a rest stop, Jim brought his face close to mine and yelled over the wind, “How's it goin'?”
I wiggled my fingers and toes and pawed at the icy stream coming from my nose. He ungloved his hand and wiped the half-frozen goo from my upper lip with his warm fingers and gave me a reassuring smile. As cold as I was, my body became still, and I stared at Jim as he strode back to the front to break trail. He's so strong, I thought. So together. So confident. So caring. That night, when he asked to share my bed, my heart pounded. I was falling in love.
The next morning at breakfast, Jim's friends peppered him with questions about the
K2
expedition. How long would it take? Three months. Would they use oxygen? No, they had made a decision as a team to go alpine style â without oxygen. When did they plan to summit? The beginning of July. Who would he climb with? He hoped to climb with Dan, but that would be Stacy's decision. How technical was it? It is the second-highest mountain in the world but considered by many to be the most dangerous because it is more technical than Everest.
I didn't say a word. He wouldn't be using oxygen.
K2
is more dangerous than Everest.
At the end of our trip, Jim drove to Canadian Mountain Holidays' Bobbie Burns Lodge near Golden to guide heli-skiing, and I returned by bus to Vancouver to my teaching. My older sister, Sharron, picked me up from the bus station, and I sat in the car only half listening to her news as my body inhaled and forgot to exhale.
I burst and gushed out how I had fallen in love with Jim Haberl, how he was kind and generous and honest and brave and strong, yet gentle and inspiring.
For the next five months, before Jim left for
K2
at the end of May, we spent as much time together as possible between my teaching and his guiding jobs. Our letters and phone calls intensified with that free-fall abandon of young, threatened love.