Insomnious Blathering

Sometimes the energy required to engage in my daily duties wears me down.  The simplicity of the mountain beckons me and I must obey – else the emotive residual s gathered over the week will fester into something dark and ugly.  So like Alice and the ‘looking glass’ I step through to the other side to share stories with the Walrus about many important things i.e. cabbages and kings.  And the darkness will wash over me as it always does – and I will return renewed.

It is very late.  And I am obviously near delirium.  But the condition of sleep mercilessly evades me (again).  It is my own fault – I have been very remiss in my exercise regimen – so much that I can hardly call it a regimen.  So my mind, fueled by excess blood sugar, continues to process late at night despite my having 'clicked' shutdown.  Hopefully the weekend adventures will rekindle the workout energy, and hopefully the following week’s daily toil will not drain me of the energy needed to climb up onto my stairway to nowhere (the Stairmaster) ---- the end-all, be-all burner of a day’s residual blood sugar.  

Something Wonderful

Reading on the topic claiming that Einstein’s llamda constant may have been correct after all (Einstein considered the theory to be his biggest blunder) has me contemplating space-time-infinity - again.  But to the point of my current thoughts which do not directly relate to llamda – I still only subscribe to the assignment of infinity to Space (the visible Universe and beyond) and Time (the clockwise measurement of existence) – that to attempt discussing a "beginning" (or ending) of either is pointless and absurd.  The notion of limited space or that there is nothing beyond the visible universe is an example of human desire to quantify and understand everything, coupled with the inability to grasp the concept of "never-ending" - infinity.

Discoveries in astronomy and physics indicate (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the visible elements of our universe did in fact begin with the cosmic event referred to as the “Big Bang”, which begs the question: What was existence before the Big Bang?  From a logical perspective, the “nothingness” theory is of course absurd. Spontaneous existence from nothing is not permissible by any sense of reason or rationality.

So we don't know what precipitated the cosmic singularity from which our visible universe ensued.  But we can be damned sure it was something.  Something wonderful.

Granite Mountain

The weekend didn’t exactly turn out as I had expected. I was hoping to make an easy hike on Granite Mountain, find a secluded place to camp, and spend the night in my new North Face Summit Series tent.  But I didn’t get the remaining gear ready so I decided to just do a hike up the mountain and come back. Saturday morning I started up the mountain, and I got about 30 yards up the trail and realized that my new boots were slipping on the heels – not good of course as this kind of misfit leads to severe blistering.  So I turned around and went straight back to where I bought them (Feathered Friends) and traded them in for a different pair. By the time I got all outfitted with new boots (making sure they don’t slip) the day was half over. So I spent the rest of Saturday playing music, waxing my new boots, etc.  

On this crisp Sunday morning, against my body's love of sleeping and keeping warm, I rolled out from under the blankets with all of the vim and vigor of a spry cadaver. It was four a.m., and the anticipation of fresh hot coffee took over where the alarm clock left off, and I managed to stumble into the kitchen with eyelids resisting my will for them to reach full levity. With coffee in transition from dry grounds to the elixir of life at such an ungodly hour, I busied myself with frying a couple of eggs and burning a slice of toast. My day-pack, snowshoes, and other gear were ready and waiting near the front door, and Granite Mountain stood ready for me some forty miles from my river shack life in the foothills of the Cascade mountains. With breakfast and half a pot of coffee warming my core, I laced up my hiking boots, gathered up my gear and headed out.

Driving in the early morning darkness on an uninhabited highway with the intent of exploring the back country of an avalanche infested mountain invokes a curious mix of anticipation and foreboding. I snapped on the radio to chase away the hypnotic white noise of my truck tires whirling along the highway. It was still dark when I pulled into the trail-head parking area, and seemed even darker when I started up the trail at six o'clock, and the shadows of the surrounding terrain danced in unison with the rhythm of my bobbing headlamp as I trudged up the man-made trail. It was raining droplets filled with ice crystals, and continued to do so the first fifteen-hundred feet (about an hour) of elevation. Plodding up the steep trail was grueling despite my Stairmaster and weight training, and even though I was adorned with excellent Gortex outer-wear, I was soaked in sweat by another hour's end, and I had to stop for about ten minutes to cool down and hopefully dry off because the air was getting colder as I ascended.

At about twenty-five hundred feet the crunchy rain became snow. At thirty-five hundred feet the manicured trail ended at the edge of the Snoqualmie Alpine Wilderness. The wilderness border presented a large snow field – a perennial avalanche field as evidenced by the bleak absence of large trees and little ones growing at an obtuse angle to the slope of the mountain. My clothes were soaked in sweat and quickly taking on the ambient cold in the stillness of my sojourn on the edge of the wild. Knowing what must be done, I bit my lip and jerked into action, whipping off my pack, boots, outerwear, middleware, and finally stripped the last wet layer off. Naked and wet in thirty degree air is not something a human body can stand for very long. However the last leg of the grueling uphill hike heated me up so that the cold felt refreshing on my steaming nudity. 

I retrieved towel and dry clothes from my pack and proceeded deliberately with the task of dressing as not to allow any rogue chunks of snow or ice inside, and nothing about my activities on this day would be rushed. After dressing, I strapped on my snowshoes and started across the field. Of course this is nothing to attempt after a heavy snowfall, but the level of accumulation this fine Sunday morning was not enough to be tempted by gravity and held firm to the mountain surface. I crossed the avalanche field easily enough, only to find my selected passage to the mountain top blocked by a stream running too deep and wide to forge, so I turned around and made my way back to the avalanche field where I decided that this was the conclusion of my climb. The view across the valley was unobstructed by trees thanks to centuries of avalanche clearing. I trudged in my snowshoes to the top edge of the field to see into the distance from the highest point on the field. On reaching the top, I looked down the long stretch of snowfield below me that resembled a giant white tongue lying flat on the face of the mountain, surrounded by the dark green beard of Douglas fir trees.

That's when I fell.

The ridge of snow at the top of the field on which I was standing collapsed and I tumbled down the forty-five degree slope of the mountain with the rest of the mini-avalanche now in progress. At the instant the snow gave way from under my feet, and I plunged feet first into the whiteness below, I knew that I was going to die. There is an adrenalin pumped feeling of mortification at the moment gravity jerks you down which invokes a reflex reaction that makes you twist to face mother earth, clutching and clawing at her for life, but there is nothing to grab but the frozen powder flowing with you, and you realize that your survival is contingent upon not losing your vertical positioning - that you don't tumble helplessly with the snow, that you must ride high to avoid being buried. 

However, only a few seconds into my ride, the rushing snow all around me dwindled to nothing, leaving just me sliding downhill on my belly, then side, then backside, and twisting to face the mountain again and dig my toes in like I was taught in the mountaineering survival course, to hopefully slow and stop my downhill trajectory. Kick the toes into the snow! Keep kicking! Keep kicking! My ice pick was no longer in my hand, and if along the way down I am not impaled by it, I may survive this ordeal after all.  

Then everything, including me, stopped. I had slid about half way down the four-hundred foot long snowfield. All the snow that fell was just my crumbled ridge – not an avalanche; not even close. I knew this field was too shallow to be an avalanche danger. Being two hundred feet closer to the bottom edge of the field I could see that the slope leveled out to a gentle ten or fifteen degree slope, so I wasn’t going to be dashed to smithereens against the trees at the snowfield’s end anyway. In fact, the ride just made it apparent that this whole snowfield was one big playground. So I trudged back up to the top, sat down, gave myself a push and slid about two hundred feet, again, before slowing to a gentle stop at about two hundred feet from where I started. I played in the snow for a while (sliding down the mountain side on my butt and snow shoeing). The weather changed and snow began to fall, large and fluffy. So I sat and watched the beauty. 

Alone in nature, particularly high in the mountains, true conscious awareness becomes normative instead of the exception, as experienced on a crowded city street. That which was left below seems like a childhood memory, distant as the valley and jagged Cascade mountain peaks beyond. I sat and gazed across this earthly beauty for a span of time I could scarcely estimate, while the snow settled gently on me and everything within my view. Here is where and when my staunch atheism weakens with wondering how all of this could have been an accident. A shuddering moment made me aware of my toes going numb and face feeling frozen. Resisting the chill-chattering teeth reflex with failing determination signaled my survival instinct that it was time to move.

Against the will of my heart to leave, I turned to the downward slope of the avalanche field and began my descent. I got back to my truck before noon, quickened with new life and famished. Home, hot coffee, fire, and a family-size pizza invaded my consciousness to the point of obsession. The roar of my little truck's engine sang in harmony with my growling stomach while the last of the mountain snow left on my boots melted. Despite thawing out, my face remained in a seemingly frozen, goofy smile. Somewhere else on this fine Sunday morning, other people were sitting in church.