The Ledge (31 page)

During one visit that summer, I notice Don wearing an Outward Bound USA pin, its crisp blue-and-silver logo incorporating a symbolic rope and compass. I lean in toward him to admire the nickel-sized pin.

“I remember Mike wearing one like that on Mount Rainier,” I tell him.

“Yeah,” Don replies, “this is it.”

After visiting for an hour, I prepare to leave. Don excuses himself for a moment, then returns and says, “Here, this is for you.”

He hands me a smaller Outward Bound pin.

“We found it in Mike’s things, and I thought you’d like it.”

Stunned into silence for a second, I finally say, “Are you sure?”

“Yes, you should have it,” he says.

I begin wearing the pin on special occasions, including a visit to Denver’s Outward Bound office, where I chat with Udall and another of Mike’s good friends, Andy Maeding. Mark notices the pin on my shirt and asks, “Did you do an OB course?”

“No,” I reply, “I always wanted to, but never did.”

“You can only get a pin by finishing a course,” Andy notes reflexively. “How’d you get it?”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know. Mike’s father gave it to me.”

An uncomfortable feeling hangs in the air for a moment.

“I think it’s fine that you wear one,” Mark says. “You earned it.”

FOR MORE THAN
a decade, mountains have provided me with recreation, exercise, and joy. They have been a natural temple for my self-improvement, a calming therapy, and a source of spirituality. But the Mount Rainier experience brought loss, pain, and anguish, so as the
summer goes on, I’m not certain where mountains now fit into my life.

For years, Gloria and I had heard stories about Nepal from traveling friends. We both wanted to visit the mystical land, and since we planned to start a family eventually, we decided we’d better go soon. In the spring of 1992, before Rainier, Gloria and I had already been considering an autumn trek in Nepal. On Rainier, I told Mike about our Asia plans, and I could tell he was envious.

“Man, I’ve always wanted to climb in Nepal,” he said. “Even if you can’t climb on this trip, you should go.”

Mike had repeatedly told me tales about two fun-loving and mischievous Sherpa friends from Nepal he worked with at Outward Bound, Dawa and Phurba. Dawa had even come to Mike’s memorial service. In the late summer of 1992, I realize I can visit Nepal and see Everest for myself and, in a strange way, on Mike’s behalf, too.

I train and test myself gradually on summer hikes, usually with Gloria. Being in the mountains feels good—still fun—even though I don’t tackle anything technical. I’m still not sure I’ll ever climb seriously again.

With that in mind, Gloria and I hesitate about whether to visit the mountains of Nepal. We decide, finally, to go—mostly for ourselves, partly for Mike, and, hopefully, for some peaceful healing. Afraid that I will spend my life mired in sadness or negativity, I yearn for a way to shed some of the burden, to unshackle myself, and perhaps free Mike’s spirit. In my pleading journal letter to the mountain gods, I write:

“For my friend Mike, I have several requests. Allow his spirit to be peaceful, but allow it to roam free. Let him race up and down the slopes with the wind, let him trickle slowly through the canyons, let him spread completely and gracefully across the land with the setting sun. Michael deserved many things in this life he did not get, but he most assuredly deserves these things.

“Of myself, I ask only that you give me pieces of insight that will allow me to try to make something positive of all this. I must pick up the positive and the energy that we both carried, and continue to carry it forward into my life.”

On September 21, 1992, precisely one seasonal click after the Rainier accident, Gloria and I set off for Nepal.

KATHMANDU BLENDS THE
mystical and the mundane, the profound and the profane. Ascetic holy men wander among slick hucksters hawking trinkets to overwhelmed tourists. Families commit the ashes of their loved ones to the sacred headwaters of the Ganges River, while discarded trash fouls the riverbank.

Gloria and I arrive excited, and enormously relieved to be safe: Two commercial airliners crashed into cloud-shrouded Nepalese mountains in recent months. I’m not in the greatest shape; I’m on heavy antibiotics for an infection in my gut and am supposed to avoid strong sun, drink a lot of water, and brace myself for debilitating diarrhea. It’s not the best way to set out on 150 miles of high-altitude hiking and weeks of tent living, but we feel a sense of mission, so we continue.

I want to initiate a Buddhist ceremony in Mike’s honor, though I don’t want to force anything—especially in a land of delays and the unexpected. I hope for the best but tell myself not to try to control what happens, just to let it all unfold. That’s the exact opposite of my natural tendencies. Already this journey is forcing me to grow.

THE NIGHT BEFORE
we’re to take a small plane to the remote village of Lukla, deep in the mountains, I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s
Escape from Kathmandu
, then drift off.

Suddenly, I see Mike, dressed in climbing gear, propped against a
wall, lifeless. It appears as though they’ve just pulled him from the crevasse. Rescuers flank him. I approach apprehensively; Mike is dead, but I sense that he is about to speak.

I snap awake in our dingy Kathmandu bedroom, anxious and sweat-soaked. I calm myself, forcing my breaths at more regular intervals, then eventually doze off.

I see Mike again. He’s more lifelike, more animated, as if he’s transformed himself to make me more comfortable. He waves me closer, and I instinctively understand that he wants to make it easy for me to say good-bye to him. I can’t utter the weighty words.

Mike speaks.

“It’s okay, Jim,” he says. “I’m gone now. It’s okay to go—go ahead.”

I can’t speak. He goes on, telling me what to say:

“Say, ‘That’s it, Mike, I’m sorry but I have to go now.’ ”

I jerk awake. Gloria’s sleeping in the other twin bed. I briefly consider getting up to write about the dreams, but I don’t for now. Sometime after a quarter of four, I finally fall asleep again.

Out of sleep’s blackness, Mike appears a third time—more vivid and forceful than before. We talk about the first few minutes after we crash-landed on the ledge.

“Were you in much pain?” I ask.

“Only for a minute,” he says. “Now there’s none. I’m in a good place.”

“Were you scared?”

“A little at first,” he tells me, “but that faded fast.”

“Did you suffer?”

“No, not really,” he says. “You went through a lot, Jim, and you did okay. You did the right thing. I’m glad you made it. It was supposed to happen that way.”

“Did you stay in the crevasse for a while?” I ask.

“Yes,” Mike says. “I tried to help and watch over you. You have
to let it go and move on with your life. Enjoy everything. I am okay now, and you should be, too.”

I awaken suddenly, tense and exhausted. Mike’s visits feel so real, they seem like more than dreams. Later that day, when I chronicle the experience in my journal, I conclude that Mike is trying to ease my mind, trying to encourage me to reclaim my life. That he’s trying to give me some peace by getting me to say good-bye to him. My partner Mike is urgently working to help save the part of me that is still stuck on the ledge.

WE HIKE ALONG
the verdant banks of the Dudh Kosi (Milk River), up through the Khumbu Valley toward Mount Everest. Every day we pass ice-covered peaks that soar two miles above our heads. Looking through Mike’s OM-1 viewfinder, I snap frame after frame, trying to capture the Himalayan giants he’d hoped to scale. I feel that I’m looking through the lens for him.

As I study these majestic peaks, my eyes scan possible ascent routes—even as I remain officially noncommittal about whether I will return to climbing.

By the time we reach the holy monastery of Tengboche five days later, we speak a little Nepali and our guide, Prem Lakpa Sherpa, understands that we wish to have a ceremony, a
puja
, for Mike’s spirit. At twenty-five, Prem Lakpa is young, but as a savvy guide from a strong Buddhist family, he requests an audience with the second-highest lama at the monastery, Lama Nawang Zampu.

Gloria, Prem Lakpa, and I cross an open courtyard and walk along a stone-lined passageway, ducking under the heavy drape that serves as a door and taking a seat in the darkened room where the lama has lived for decades. Flickering yak-butter candles throw dancing yellow light across ancient Buddhist
thangka
paintings. The middle-aged lama has walnut skin, short-cropped black hair, and
calm eyes. In Nepali, Prem Lakpa explains how we want this
puja
for Mike. The lama nods and tells Prem Lakpa to bring us back the next day.

After picking at our breakfast the next morning, we return to the lama’s chamber, where it’s even darker than it was yesterday. From the next room we hear the lama pounding a drum and chanting rhythmically. Eventually, he finishes, then joins us. He smiles and unwinds a newly made string of eleven prayer flags—an auspicious number, he tells us. Impressed, Prem Lakpa explains that the lama hand-printed Tibetan prayers on these flags last night, then stitched them to a connecting string. He is pleased that we seek to hold a
puja
for our departed friend. I touch my index finger to the Outward Bound pin on my jacket.

The lama picks up an ancient metal incense burner and walks back and forth waving it under the stretched-out flags, which are of five different colors, chanting.

“He is blessing them,” Prem Lakpa tells us.

When I close my eyes the sounds and smells permeate my memory and I feel carried off by the chanting. I sense an otherworldliness I have not felt before.

As the lama hands me the prayer flags and silk blessing scarves, called
katas
, I respond as I have seen Nepalese greet other monks: With a deep bow, my palms clasped together before my chest, I say,
“Namaste”
—I greet and honor the divine within you.

This has all gone much further and better than I had dared hope. But the experience is not over. Lama Zampu speaks to Prem Lakpa, who excitedly translates: We can now meet the highest lama at the monastery, the
rinpoche
, who is revered as the reincarnation of a previous great lama. When we arrive at a deeper part of the monastery, we remove our shoes and sit on long benches padded with yak-wool blankets until the
rinpoche
glides in and we stand. He is a slight man, about sixty years old, with a shaved head and
orange robes. After the
rinpoche
sits, Prem Lakpa follows, and finally Gloria and I do, too, careful to mimic our guide’s moves. Prem Lakpa approaches the
rinpoche
with our prayer flags. The revered
rinpoche
takes some blessed rice, blows on it, then sprinkles it across the flags to bless them. He then blows on all the rice in the small paper sack and hands the bag and flags to Prem Lakpa. In the distance, through ancient stone walls, I hear the low, bass murmur of other chanting monks.

After we quietly sip coffee together, it is time to go. Prem Lakpa stands, bows toward the
rinpoche
, and backs out of the room, staying bent forward in reverence. Gloria and I do the same, traverse unlit hallways, then step into the pounding sunlight. We mill about in small circles, stunned by the experience and our good fortune. The three of us take turns touching the blessed flags, rice, and scarves we now have for Mike’s
puja
. Because the
rinpoche
rarely meets with foreign visitors, Prem Lakpa says, “Very lucky for you. Very lucky for me.”

TWO DAYS LATER
, we carry our prayer flags, rice, and
katas
toward a summit. We are at 18,000 feet and the air is half as thick as at sea level, so we plod up the trail. My pulse races way past 120 beats a minute, and I fight off a familiar altitude lethargy I haven’t felt since Aconcagua years ago. With each step, Gloria shatters her previous altitude record of 14,000 feet.

I have picked the rocky summit of Kala Patthar—“Black Rock” in Hindi—as the place for Mike’s
puja
. Resting at the foot of Mount Everest, Kala Patthar overlooks the Khumbu Glacier and the south side Everest base camp, and is surrounded by a dozen peaks more than 20,000 feet tall.

We had left our campsite in Lobuche village before dawn and had seen the rising sun tint the Khumbu Valley the same burnt
orange as the
rinpoche
’s robes. It’s midmorning now, and the sky is deep blue. At the 18,514-foot summit, there are already some piled rock pillars that we could hang our prayer flags from, but Prem Lakpa says it will be better if we make our own. We gather flat rocks, and Prem Lakpa stacks them into raised rectangular piles. With the three of us wearing our
katas
, Gloria snaps photos while Prem Lakpa and I unscroll the prayer flags’ string and secure it to our two rock towers. Each wind-driven flap of a flag sends a prayer up to the gods. Following Sherpa and Buddhist traditions, we set out small pieces of food as an offering to the gods.

I had hoped to feel joy, but I don’t. This blessing ceremony will be my good-bye to Mike. I have been clutching him close to my heart for months now, and today, on this windswept Himalayan summit, I must set him free—for my sake and his. With Everest towering above us, snowy mountains stretching to the horizon, and blessed offerings from Tengboche’s high lamas, it is the best good-bye ceremony I could have envisioned. I want to speak, but I cannot.

Prem Lakpa leads us through the
puja
, standing with his arms raised beneath the flapping flags, chanting in Nepali.

(Later, he will translate his words: “Mike, dead friend of Jim, this
puja
is for you and your spirit. It is a good
puja
as we have very special prayer flags made and blessed by the lamas, as well as the
katas
. You were a good man, and this
puja
is for you.”)

As he chants, Prem Lakpa tosses rice toward the four cardinal directions. I seize the idea to cast blessed rice at each landmark around us. I turn slowly in a clockwise circle and, mimicking Prem Lakpa’s style, flick pinches of rice at the peaks of Everest, Nuptse, and Lhotse, toward the Khumbu Glacier, the Lo La pass, and Tibet, at the summits of Pokalde, Taboche, and, finally, to the west, Cho Oyu.