James Sarafin - Shadows on the Mountain

I didn’t look at him or think about anything but the steady toil, where I’d next put my feet or hands. We had trouble getting toeholds in the slick grass, and whenever I slipped I usually wound up grabbing hold of a thorn bush. By late afternoon the air grew still under the clouds, and we were attacked by small biting flies, red bodies showing like dull rubies under flat wings. The only way to swat them, hanging on to the mountain, trying to climb, was to wait until several started feasting on my hand, then smash them against my forehead. The flies stayed with us until the temperature dropped at dusk.

A mountain, I learned, only seems to grow as you climb it; when you think the top is where the mountain disappears above, you find it is only the next crest; and when at last you see the true summit ending in a jagged line in the sky, it is still farther than it looks. Darkness fell, and we finally came to a narrow shelf formed at the base of two marmot holes, and set up the tent with two corners hanging steeply downslope. A coin flip left me with the downhill side.

We had been sweating hard all afternoon and hadn’t crossed a spring or patch of snow since starting up. I took a long drink from my water bottle, and saw him trying not to look.

“Didn’t you bring any water, Rick?” I said. “Do you need some of mine?”

He wanted to say no, but I held out the open bottle and he finally took it. He wasn’t greedy, but between the two of us the bottle was almost empty when he handed it back. Without enough water to cook, we ate dried fruit and candy bars for dinner.

In the tent, the mountain fell away from the narrow shelf right at the middle of my back. I fought that slope to stay in place, hearing him breathe deeper into sleep. And it was like trying to sleep next to her at home, only worse. I tried not to think, but it was too late and I started to. If she heard him breathe like that—did they ever sleep? Next to him—where?

He was six or seven years older than me, around forty, but they say women like older men. I thought how nice it would be to punch him in the nose, make the blood and tears run out of him. But he had three inches and thirty pounds on me; I’d probably regret it. Probably worth it though. He couldn’t mess me up too bad, or he’d have to carry me out of here. Sure put a quick end to this damned hunt.

My mind kept thinking and I couldn’t turn it off. Then I could feel it start to go back home, to our home, getting even worse, so I stopped and brought it back onto the mountain. I tried to think about the stars, imagining I could see them above my face, right through the tent and cloud cover. After a long time it began to rain lightly. I could hear the little drops patting the nylon and I tried to think of the drops as stars, that I was flying through them so fast they blurred like rain.

And a little later, early in the morning, the mountain seemed to tilt back the other way, grew level, and I fell asleep.

We were in the seedy little office I worked out of in south Anchorage, and she was arguing with Dick Miller about me. I was hanging back, just wanting to get in the truck and go to a job. But she was arguing, saying I’d worked for him eleven years now, that I handled most of the tough jobs myself, that my work made the company’s reputation. She was saying I deserved a share of the business, that he should make me a partner. That I wasn’t going to settle for being just a house-painter, working for someone else, the rest of my life.

She had never actually said those things, even to me. But it came to me in a dream that night.

In the morning the most important thing was that a small quantity of rainwater had collected uphill in a fold in the tent. We drank every drop, and climbed that morning sipping from tiny pools on flat rocks, never mind the dirt, until they all evaporated. Now and then we passed ripe blueberries, and I’d pop them and burst them in my mouth, savoring the single tinted drop. The blueberries were probably what kept me going.

Above the bush-line, where the only vegetation left was alpine tundra, we saw the goats. Scattered all across the mountain—white shapes that weren’t there, then suddenly were the next time we looked up. We counted them: eleven, twelve, fourteen. Davis put the glasses on them and grew excited.

“A couple look as good as that one Hayes got!” He let me look and I checked the goats, one by one.

“They’ve spotted us. Aren’t we going to spook them?”

“Goats don’t spook like sheep. They’ll get out of our way, but they shouldn’t go too far.”

There was something about the scene that was spooking me. Every one I put the glasses on was looking straight back, standing or lying immobile among the rocks, eyes glinting like black marbles. The strangest thing was how they had all sprung up at once, in scattered ones or twos across nearly a mile of mountain peaks, all watching us. By the time we reached the top that afternoon they had disappeared.

“Where’s the snowfield?” I asked, as we crossed over to look down at the northern face. All I could see was rock, dirt, and scattered dull patches of two-inch tundra.

“I don’t know.. It should be here.” We re-checked our position against the map. Sure enough, it showed a permanent snowfield filling the ravine below us. Now bone dry. We pitched camp there on the ridge, beside a rock outcropping.

“I bet it was that volcano that erupted last spring,” I said. “It dumped ash all around here. The ash probably absorbed the sun all summer, and melted away the snowfield.”

“Maybe. We can’t be on the wrong damn mountain.”

Neither of us wanted to eat. When you’re real thirsty you can no more think of swallowing food than sand, your tongue feels like a piece of tree bark stuck in your mouth, and your head grows very light. We had to find water before dark, and decided to split up, Davis going west and I east along the ridge.

As I skirted the top of the ravine I saw something out of place below: a twisted hunk of metal that had to be a plane crash. Wings and tail gone, so a bad one. Alaska’s wilderness hides many secrets, some old and some new, more than a few involving aircraft fallen from the sky. It couldn’t be Hayes’s Super Cub, because his note said that it had blown onto the glacier. Maybe someone else’s bones still lay in what was left of the cabin. I was too tired and dehydrated to climb down there to check.

I walked slowly under my near-empty pack so I wouldn’t sweat away more water. The south face we’d climbed began falling off in sheer rocky cliffs. Far below, the stream ran foaming white and cool. Ahead the glacier filled half the horizon, but on the other side of a drop almost as steep. I could see a few waterfalls cascading down the surrounding mountains, but they were even more distant.

As I walked the ridge narrowed, until the north and south mountain faces were separated by less than fifty feet. Water was the only thing on my mind, when I saw a goat standing on the ridge three hundred yards ahead, looking at me. He was in range, but all I could think was that he might lead me to water.

Both of us froze, and as I waited an image sprang into my mind, of a shadowy mountain slope dropping to a wide valley. And a snowfield in a steep ravine just below. The image faded as the goat moved, disappearing over the edge of the mountain’s southern face. When I reached that spot I saw a cliff of ragged, crumbly rock, so steep that if I jumped I wouldn’t have hit anything for five hundred feet. But no sign of the goat, not even, as I half-expected, a white shape smashed in the rocks below.

I looked around, trying to find a scene that matched the image of the snowfield that had filled my head moments ago. I didn’t know if ESP was real, but I’d had hunches that came true. The sun was setting to the southwest, brightly lighting this rocky face, so none of it seemed right. I crossed the ridge to the other side and knew it had to be this way. Though not as steep, shadows covered the mountain’s northern face; but the scene still didn’t quite match that image. A little further—I moved up the ridge until I saw the snow-filled ravine several hundred feet below.