Living Stones (35 page)

“I assumed he must have had help.”

“Well, we’ve discovered he had a friend who guided him for training and getting the explosives. A radical Islamic guy, an imam named Jabril. We have come close to tracking him down in Los Angeles. He’s slippery as an eel. But we’ll get him. Anyway, you still have to be careful, Ashley.”

Najid, his face beaming with a hope-filled smile, hurried to the phone. He had never been on a mountain, certainly not a huge volcano like Mount Rainier. He called Ashley. He could text her but he didn’t. He liked to hear her voice.

“Ashley, have you ever heard of FIUTS?”

“No.”

“It stands for ‘Foundation for International Understanding Through Students.’ They are offering a sponsored hike up to Camp Muir on Mount Rainier. Would you like to go with me? They tell you what boots and clothes to take, and you can even borrow a backpack. We’d have to rent the boots.”

“Najid, I’d love it! We see Rainier from Red Square on the campus, but I’ve never been to any of the mountains here.” She laughed. “Oklahoma is pretty flat.”

“It’s over the Labor Day weekend, and we probably should do some running to get in good shape. We would climb from fifty-five hundred feet elevation at Paradise to ten thousand at Camp Muir. That’s an overnight station used for climbing the mountain, the most
common route to the top, which is more than fourteen thousand feet. But we can relax . . . we’ll stop halfway.”

“How’d you get so smart?”

“It’s called reading from a brochure.”

The bus parked in the large lot at Paradise on the south flank of Mount Rainier. The fifteen hikers, counting their guide from FIUTS, began the climb up the Skyline Trail heading to Alta Vista and then on to Panorama Point at seven thousand feet. They met several climbers coming down the mountain with ice axes, crampons, and ropes, who confirmed the ranger’s previous caution about a storm approaching. However, they should be back down to Paradise long before it blew in. Ashley appreciated the bit of survival training their own guide had provided and found comfort in the safety gear in their backpacks—flashlight, thermal blanket, some energy bars, and small snow shovel. She’d made sandwiches for lunch.

Ashley climbed steadily on the trail through rocky screes, following Najid and others. The patches of snow interspersed with late summer alpine flowers soon faded into one vast Paradise snowfield. Gazing into the sky, the summit shone bright in the sun, far above them, and yet it looked close because of its huge size. The dark clouds in the distance only highlighted the mountain in the bright morning sunshine.

The sound of rocks falling from far above resounded as the glaciers groaned and inched their way downward. On a rocky ridge nearby she heard a shrill whistle and then spied a noisy marmot sitting up on his haunches to warn his friends of the approach of strangers. Ashley jogged over to Najid and grabbed his gloved hand. She smiled and gave it a squeeze. He squeezed back as they climbed. Ashley wondered what would heaven be like if earth was like this.

Their guide stopped on the snow. Ashley appreciated the rest as they drank from their water bottles and scanned the snow slope ahead. The guide pointed out some famous places on the mountain and gestured toward the huge Gibraltar Rock above them, Little Tahoma Peak on the right skyline and the ridge extending out to the east above them that looked like an anvil, appropriately named Anvil Rock.

They started climbing again. Ashley noticed the elevation gain as she breathed harder. Najid seemed not to feel it. Most in the group were guys. The three girls banded together and dropped a bit off the pace. Najid waited for them and then stayed with Ashley. She didn’t want to admit that she felt tired or short of breath. It had been four hours of climbing, and always one more ridge ahead. Anvil Rock to the right seemed to be so close and yet always receding. The air grew cooler as clouds occasionally shaded the sun.

One foot in front of another, again and again. She’d learned the “rest step,” locking her knee momentarily as she ascended. The guide taught them the “kick step,” kicking a foothold in the snow to provide a solid platform for the next step up. Finally climbing over yet another of the many undulating ridges she had not seen from below, two rock-built cabins of Camp Muir appeared.

Ashley sat with Najid on the warm rocks, leaning up against the south wall of the larger of the two cabins. She welcomed the rest and the sandwiches. In the cool air, she leaned back against the rock wall of the hut, sun in her face, warming her tired body. “Najid, I’m so glad you brought me. What an incredible experience for a girl from Oklahoma!”

“For me too. We have mountains that feed the Sea of Galilee, but
nothing like this with so many glaciers in the summer.”

“Would you like to walk over to Anvil Rock, Najid? It doesn’t look far. The guide said we have an hour here and can explore a bit, except upward on the glaciers. Let’s put on our backpacks and stroll over to the Rock.”

Ashley and Najid found a comfortable rock platform to sit on, out of the snow at Anvil Rock. They gazed south, munching on M & M’s. Mount Adams, another volcano to the south, had disappeared in clouds. Soon the dark billows blocked the sun over Rainier. A breeze began and picked up speed as the temperature suddenly dropped.

“I think we better get back,” Najid said.

Ashley rose to start back to Camp Muir when her left foot slipped off an unstable rock. She twisted her ankle, yelped with pain, and fell forward. A sudden panic poured over her. Najid rushed to her side.

“I’m OK, Najid, except for my ankle. It hurts.”

Najid opened her boot to examine her ankle that began to swell. He raised her to a sitting position on the rocks. “Can you walk on it, Ashley?”

“I’m not sure right now. Give me a few minutes, and it should be better.” She laced up her boot loosely.

As they sat the clouds rolled in rapidly, soon enveloping them in a thick fog. Ashley tried to remain calm. “The storm is coming faster than we thought. We better get back.”

With her left arm over Najid’s shoulder, and his right one encircling her waist, she tried hopping to keep weight off her left ankle. Bearing weight on it caused sharp pain. Najid maneuvered her off the rocks onto the snow, turned toward the camp, and supported her from the downhill side.

They moved slowly in the thickening fog. Then everything turned white. The feeling that she stood inside an empty white refrigerator overcame Ashley. There was no horizon to indicate where the snow stopped and the air or sky began. Disoriented and dizzy, she couldn’t determine which direction they should go. She couldn’t even tell which way the slope tilted. They could be struggling uphill or down, or maybe in the wrong direction. She felt disoriented, not even sensing where her feet were. She couldn’t see them.

Suddenly, her stomach cramped with a surge of nausea. She
breathed in hard to overcome it. Droplets of condensing fog beaded on their parkas. The wind picked up and howled.

She glanced at Najid. He also seemed unsure which way to turn.

“I think we are walking too much uphill,” Ashley shouted as they struggled forward.

“It seems to me we’re going downhill and need to turn to the right. But if I’m wrong, we could get into the cliffs over there beyond Anvil.” Ashley’s ankle throbbed with pain.

“I can’t walk any farther, Najid. Let’s stop and figure out what to do.” She sat down on the snow.

“We can’t stay here, Ashley. I’ll shout for help. I can’t see anything but white, and I think we are turned around.” He shouted “Hello!” several times, but the howling wind carried away any sound.

Ashley shivered as half-rain half-snow pelted horizontally into her face and neck despite the parka hood. Her hands and feet felt frozen, and she feared she could faint from the ankle pain. A sense of helplessness and dread came over her.

“I’m not much good for any decisions right now, Najid,” she lamented. Her teeth chattered as the sleet drove hard against her. Cold began to penetrate her body as she collapsed on the snow. She prayed out loud, her words muffled by the wind.
“Lord, we’re in trouble here, and we need help!”

“Amen!” Najid shouted into the wind. “As you prayed I suddenly remembered the stuff in our backpacks! It’s time to use it.” He reached in, pulled out his thermal blanket, and taking off her boots, quickly wrapped Ashley in it, laying her down in the snow to minimize the direct wind chill. He placed a large rock at her feet to prevent her sliding down the slope. “This shovel might help now.”

“Of course! Like the survival shows on TV. You are supposed to stay put and dig a snow cave. We’d be out of the wind and snow.”

With that, Najid dug furiously to form a tunnel slanting down so the entrance faced away from the wind. The snow proved plenty deep from last winter’s accumulation. After twenty minutes, he had created a two-meter-long tunnel they could both get into well below the surface snow. He eased Ashley in her thermal blanket into the snow cave. Then taking the other blanket, he removed his boots, wrapped the metallic but plasticlike sheet around himself and slid
down into the tunnel beside her, removing his hat and gloves. He had brought the boots and backpacks with him to partially plug the end of the tunnel.

As they lay in their cave, Ashley could just see Najid in the gathering darkness, his head partly covered with his blanket, which looked like a hijab. She smiled. The howling wind and sleet above could not get to them now, and she quit shivering. They lay close together, wrapped like mummies.

Ashley looked at him, seemingly amused. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

“You in your hijab.”

Najid grinned. “It feels so good around my head. Are you better now?”

“Much. You saved my life again. It got us out of the storm!”

“So what did your TV program tell you to do now?”

“OK . . .” Ashley hesitated. “As I recall, you’re supposed to stay inside your snow cave until the storm passes.”

“That sounds good, except that you are not in shape to hike down with your ankle, even if the sun comes out tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Ashley said, “barring a miracle.” She paused a moment. “I guess we’ll just have to wait to be rescued if I can’t make it down. At least we’re OK for now.”

“So, I guess we go to bed together for tonight, all wrapped up like a cocoon.” Najid smiled in the semi-dark snow cave. “It doesn’t seem to be wrong to sleep together like this, even though we’re not married yet. If we stay close, we should be warm and OK to sleep.”

Ashley suddenly turned toward Najid from lying on her back. She laughed. “What do you mean, ‘not married yet’?”

“I, I, um, I guess it just slipped out. I didn’t mean to shock you, certainly not here. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Well, you don’t even know if I want to be married!”

“OK. Well, do you?”

“Yeah,” Ashley said casually as if he had asked her if she wanted a candy bar. Then she added, “Someday.”

“Do you have someone in mind to marry?” Najid sounded a bit worried.

“I guess I do, but he’s never asked me.” She chuckled.

“How could he ask you if he hasn’t had the chance to go to your father?”

“Would he ever ask me if he couldn’t go to my father?”

“Oh no! That would not be right. And it would bring on all kinds of trouble.”

“So would he want to see my father first? Before he asked me?”

“Yes. That’s the way he would do it. He would never ask the girl first.”

“What about his parents? Would they accept her without asking?”

“No, but maybe they already have.”

“You’re saying they would accept her into his family?”

“Yes. They might think she’s pretty special.”

“So, all that’s needed is for him to talk to her father? Then he could ask her?”

“Yes, if he wanted to.” Najid laughed.

“Well, does he want to?” Ashley asked with a smirk on her face he could not see.

“You’ll have to wait to find out, just in case he could talk to her father.”

Both drifted off to sleep, smiling despite the raging storm above.

Najid awoke first, struggled out of his thermal wrap, pulled on his boots, and pushed the packs out. He climbed out of the snow cave to a morning of high clouds but clear air. No wind. He heard the thump-thump of a helicopter approaching Camp Muir. It landed near the huts, about one half mile away. Najid tightened his boots and ran, arms waving and shouting. Soon the mountain rescue team jumped out of the army chopper. One of them looked up and saw Najid running toward them. He quickly broke from the group and walked rapidly to meet Najid.

After a quick discussion with Najid, the man returned to the helicopter, pulled out a toboggan with blankets, and three rescuers in bright yellow parkas followed Najid to the snow cave. Ashley crawled out half-awake with Najid’s help. The team strapped her into the toboggan and soon lifted her inside the helicopter. During the flight to Seattle, the medics splinted Ashley’s ankle. Overcome by relief, she shook her head and smiled, starting to thank her rescuers, but the noise of the chopper prevented conversation. She jerked a hearty thumbs-up to them with both hands.