An Absent Lesson on Presence
Maybe it was the intense, mind
expanding experience fresh in my mind contrasted to the present bar
talk that blurred things; the vodka cran in front of me was too full
to be the culprit. Trying to dust off the difficulty to focus and
absorb, I took in the hodgepodge of wing night around me. My brother
looked happy watching football with his friends. It felt good to be
in his now rare company, as our lives had geographically diverged and
I no longer asked him to drag me along wherever he went. But I
couldn’t shake a numbness. “This isn’t depression. I know my
depression,” I thought. The extraordinary presence I had felt for
the last five days was nowhere to be found; perhaps it was still in
the hills, wondering where the soul that it knew intimately had went.
Why am I feeling like this? It couldn't be me. I wasn't alienating
myself. I just wasn't where I belonged.
I had just come down, both literally
and figuratively from my first experience with a big Canadian Rockies
rig. Two super stokers- Jacky Soong and Kyle Martino, and I asked the
Northeast Buttress of Howse Peak to dance. She obliged. We kept up
with the steps! Our hips were moving despite the dance floor
crumbling beneath our feet! Our belief, and strong desire to live out
our dreams propelled us where skill alone wouldn't cut it: Runouts.
Flying microwaves of limestone. Janky anchors. We were quite
committed and had settled into a communal understanding of what was
expected of each us. The leads were shared with excitement. There was
only positivity and action when the rope was passed, and the winds
helped to whisk along the smell of fear. My mind thanked my friends
Louis and Chris (if you’re reading this, you guys rock!) for
pushing me in the Squamish co-op when my body tension paid off and I
was able to hold an awkward position after a hold exploded in my
hand. High stakes Jenga at its finest!!!!!
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| This guy fights fires! |
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| This guy designs buildings! |
The force of the try hards high
pointed at the tail end of an exciting traverse off the comfort of
the buttress and into the jaws of the peak’s north face. Kyle
brought me over to the wild no man’s land of the north face. The
night before, sounds of rockfall lulled us to sleep below the
glacier. Now, there was no filter. Not the words of another
accounting the crumbling power of the notorious range, not the
glacier. When it wasn’t booming, it was looming. On the surface,
she shouted about killing us, and how foolish we were for asking her
to dance. Listening with my ego, I kept hearing these taunts. After
much deliberation of the next move and quality of the belay, action
was needed. I don’t want to be over dramatic. If the belay was good
enough to hold both our body weights I’m sure it would’ve held a
fall. I’ll admit shamelessly I was quite scared to move off it.
Though it really should, and in time it will- being one thousand feet
up a crudely stacked mosaic of small limestone blocks just doesn’t
offer the same objective perspective as a comfortable couch. I
tiptoed my orange boots on a series of large blocks, and peered
around the corner to an onslaught of water gushing down a wide crack
system. I returned from my reconnaissance and told Kyle that I
thought we should turn around, that it wasn’t our time to climb
this route. Kyle agreed though neither of us wanted to officially
pull the plug. He got the double belay as he went over to deliberate
with Jacky, verbalization of our consensus was soon shouted to me
from the buttress. We committed to descending. After another
thoroughly quivering traverse, I saw my smiling friends again. We
spoke of how there was nothing more we could do; we truly, truly gave
it our all and it wasn’t our time. Our time will come, of that I
have no doubt. With no entitlement to the summit, it would’ve been
foolish to intertwine our desire of standing on it with our
definition of success. In these moments I understood a quote
regarding one of Voytek Kurtyka’s philosophies of climbing: “He
likened the collecting of summits to a profane materialism, where the
climber needs to possess the mountains, rather than accept- and be
accepted by- their mysteries.”1
She howled as we slowly left the
dance floor, and in this long process I realized her shouts were far
from malicious. They were still scary, the way that raw and powerful
beauty is. But no longer did I find myself afraid because the
mountain was out of my control. Besides, how does one attempt to
control a massive piece of rock, and why would one want too? After
all, it is the untamable aspect of the mountains that inspire me to
find, and harness that same quality within myself. The eastern part
of the peak roared with falling rock and snow. Safe, we greeted our
insignificance with Borat quotes and raised thumbs.
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| Jacky Soong photo. |
We took turns throwing ropes into
the darkness, hoping for a ledge or a tree. The east face glacier we
avoided- both out of thoughts of speed and overhead hazard concern,
was a bright, silent, white above us. We squeezed moss water into our
mouths. Kyle caboosed a rappel off a single piton. Jacky’s pack
stumbled off a ledge and into the night. “Off rappel!” became our
alarm clocks for anchor naps. Laughter penetrated a once thought
impenetrable darkness when Kyle shouted with glee that he found one
of Jacky’s crampons in a tree, and then his whole pack on a ledge-
or the valley floor, we couldn’t tell. The Rockies held their cloak
tightly, and we only knew we were off the mountain when our boots
almost stepped into the alpine lake estuary of the glacier’s creek.
It was 3am, 23 hours after we had motored toward the glacier with
Kyle’s phone blasting Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. A
celebratory tea brew was quickly followed by sleep, and then unspoken
suffering between Kyle and I as both our bivi bags failed to keep us
dry when a Rockies storm rolled in. I couldn’t help but smile as I
shivered through the rest of the aging night. I felt alive. Maybe
it’s masochism. Maybe it’s Maybelline.
***
My still soaked bivi bag hangs off
my brother’s porch, and I dryly wrestle sleep inside on a couch.
The lone vodka cran finds comfort in my dehydrated mind and body.
“This isn’t depression. You
know your depression. You’ve just had the adventure of your life.
Your brother just did your laundry! How can you be depressed? You
just aren’t where you’re supposed to be.”2
Something under those lines went
through my head again and again. My sleep was fitful. Once I woke in
anticipation for an alpine start alarm. Another time I woke and was
confused not to see a painting from my partner that hangs on the roof
of my minivan. I felt guilty, and lost. Guilty because I felt like
this in the hospitality of my brother. Guilty because I didn’t feel
like I was honouring my time spent in the mountains. Mostly though I
felt lost. Lost in this quite straightforward position.
Fifteen hours earlier, Jacky and I
were alone on the Fay Glacier. Moraine Lake and its $105.00/hour
canoe rentals were no more than a kilometre or two away. The Neil
Colgan Hut was no more than four hundred metres the opposite way. Our
last interaction with another living thing was when a kind guide
staying at the hut sent us off into the storm with an encouraging tap
of his ice axe and a “you boys got this.” Yeah! We do! I was
spitting at the ground ahead of me in order to get a sense of
definition of the terrain. I asked Jacky to make sure I was walking
in a relatively straight line as I lead us into the unknown. It was a
wild exercise of hope. We revelled in our fears being faced, and the
absolute physical representation of adventure that was each step
forward.
“It’s just you and me out here
buddy!!!!” Jacky exclaimed. I couldn’t see it very well, but I
could feel his stoke through the rope, and I know he could feel mine.
It was the only electricity in this snow storm.
Once, we both partially broke
through into the quiet and ancient world below us; its remoteness
magnified by the glacial blue of its gates being the only contrast to
the rest of our immediate whiteout environment. Hope made the snow
bridges stronger, and eventually the clouds broke to reveal their
work. The storm left the Valley of the Ten Peaks dusted with snow,
more concentrated at the peaks and drifting off into lower
elevations. It was a single stroke of a paintbrush, where the brush
lost its fuel but not its might as it graced the canvas. We stood in
silence, and then whooped to the world. It was beautiful.
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| The clouds that cleared |
In that basement, and the ten hour
drive to Squamish that followed, I remained lost. I wasn’t able to
figure out the ingredient that made one lost and potentially dire
situation incredibly full of joy, and how in the absence of said
ingredient, a similar situation left me mentally stagnant with my
tail between my legs. All I could compute was that I was unable to
feel present, and therefore wasn’t in the right situation. As
repeated, both in my mind and in this piece: You just aren’t
where you’re supposed to be.
Of course, this theory crashed and
burned exactly where I “should’ve” been. I had just been apart
of something beautiful: My friend Mike blended finesse and effort
into a magnificent onsight(!!!!) of the beautiful My Little Pony-
a beautiful roof crack split like a structural weakness in a
castle atop the Cheakamus Valley. Badass people do badass things. It
was my go, and I felt a high from the energy Mike emitted. I tried to
use it to shake the fog that was seeming to settle in for the long
run as I started up, and sort of did for a few moves. But the
culmination of my aimlessness was upon me. It jumped on my back, too
heavy to bear. I completely froze on the route. No part of me wanted
to be where I was. It was if a force was trying to suffocate any
feeling I’d ever had. Climbing was no longer a refuge from this
occasional feeling. I didn’t want to climb; a scary thought for
someone who has devoted their life to climbing rocks. I didn’t want
to do anything; a scary thought for a human being. This lack of
presence led to a gnarly fall adjusting a cam, which miraculously
held. In those moments hanging on the rope, feeling heavier than I’d
ever felt, looking down at my friend who so genuinely wanted me to
succeed, I began to put the pieces together. I began to listen to
what the world was trying to teach me. I’ve been schooled many
times by the mountains. This time, it was their absence that
lectured, and made me more untamed from myself. With my
hypothesis on location being the problem now thwarted, there was one
place left to look that my ego had kept from eyes: within.
I couldn’t blame my lack of
presence on the external present. No amount of joy can be absorbed by
a closed mind and a choked soul. It begins with something that no
outside force can control: Effort, when effort is not easy. Effort
when your mind tries to shout over your soul that you cannot, and
should not. I tried to harness this, and understand the mandatory
urgency to do so. If I did not then, then when? I pulled back on, and
tried to pry off the squeezing hands my mind had wrapped around my
soul. I screamed, and screamed, and wanted to hold on. Synthesized
effort soon evolved into organic effort. I eventually could no longer
hold the pull up and fell to a lifting fog and a happy friend. I
asked Mike to lower me, hugged him, congratulated him, and thanked
him again and again for pushing me in the right direction when I
couldn’t see it myself.
Mike took my thanks humbly, simply
shrugging, “I knew if you didn’t go for it you’d kick
yourself.”
Depression is a passing cloud. A
passing cloud. We must find it within ourselves to believe in
the wind that will push the cloud, and understand that no external
force can produce it. No place. No people. It can be cultivated
without, but must originate within. When it can only be synthesized,
then synthesize it. It is the wind. It is the key ingredient. It is
the best of things.
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| Perpetual stoke! Thanks to Jacky Soong for the awesome friendship and photos :) |
It is hope.
The grass is as green as you want
it to be.
2
Depression is different for everyone.
Everyone I have spoken with about the subject has felt it in their
own way. Personally, it has nothing to do with sadness, and more
with a episodic inability to feel. The feeling- or lack thereof, is
out of my control, but the response to the feeling isn’t. For me,
depression is not a choice. Happiness is.
