Rising Abruptly (22 page)

Now, with my asthma reactivated, Gregor would have to find other partners. It had been so simple for me to be his perpetual mountain buddy, as in the days of spectacular wigs and baffling finger tricks. Or he would have to go by himself. But I would not be happy for him to enter the hills alone. Solo shows have their pitfalls. The potential for a freak accident or an encounter with a bear would make me uneasy, back home. (The
wife
wringing her hands, eyes on the clock.) But there was more than those considerations.

We had been sharing adventures on and off stage for a long time. We had never been the kind of couple to engage in separate activities. If we did, it would have caused a rift in the deep rapport that always existed between us. And although I would be relieved to be relieved of my mountain duty, I wanted the adventure. The being there together, in full exertion mode, enduring the elements, being in the grip of the incline, testing exposure. Breathing together this amazing air. And what about afterward, reminiscing and sharing, which translate into complete understanding? That would be lost if I stopped going.

So, I took a shallow breath, then a deeper breath and, week after week, I went grudgingly. October would bring the hiking season to an end. And then, in town, began the season of dinner parties with friends. I put away hiking boots and backpack until June. And forgot about the incline.

VERTIGO

GREGOR: As for me, I was hooked from the start. Rearing to go, I wanted to try it all. Began by buying
The Canadian Rockies Trail Guide
and, later,
Kananaskis Country Trail Guide
. The former was the hiking bible in an era of few guidebooks and no Internet. Hiking was fine. It became necessary.

I still performed shadowgraphy on home and out-of-town stages, in shows with or without Gianna. Also, I was now a bookbinder and restorer, as had been my grandfather in Edinburgh. I loved, and still love, the tools and the smell of old leather and the broken spines of damaged books. Though fine, the workshop was too confining a place.

So, every week, I pored over the guidebooks, suggested this hike and that hike. Gianna bought me topo maps as birthday gifts. One year, I wrapped two mountaineering axes and placed them under the Christmas tree.

Late June, sometimes early July, signalled the opening of the hiking season and the season of blisters, though the blisters never stopped us from going out once a week until mid-fall. It took us a number of years to realize our boots, too tight, were the source of the misery. Before each hike, Gianna went through the ritual of applying moleskin to all the contact points on her feet. I didn't think I needed any and, later on the hike, grimly endured my bleeding blisters.

With each new hiking season, we chose trails that were more involved in distance and difficulty. Until one day, when I came face to face with vertigo. I had never had it. Why should I have vertigo now?

That day, a short section of the trail hugged a rock face on our left and was exposed on the right until, further along, the trail widened again. I denied the issue. Tried to step forward. Could go no further. Was frustrated; pushed myself to go on; no wuss; then had to admit defeat. How could that happen?

Gianna suggested vertigo lived in the mountains. Could she go on? She hesitated; said yes. I could see she was trying to spare my feelings. That made it worse. She pretended vertigo was like allergies. Some develop it, others don't. Great! That made me feel a whole lot better.

I was embarrassed, Gianna could see that plainly enough, but I could tell she was not disappointed. In those early days, turning back was never an issue for her. What had become an issue was my vertigo. It had to be dealt with. As had her asthma. We managed to control both. The only way to conquer vertigo and asthma was by not giving up, was by not giving in. You keep trying.

We tested our limits and began scrambling. Endured endless scree. Tackled snow slopes. Learned to self-arrest with mountaineering axes and practised tumbling down low-angled snow slopes without stabbing ourselves with the picks. We enjoyed ridge walking. Bought more specialized guidebooks and climbing equipment. Pairs of crampons were wrapped and put under the Christmas tree. We taught ourselves to climb on rock, first at sport climbing areas, then on more secluded multi-pitch climbs. Learned to travel roped up across glaciers. Practised crevasse rescue. Began climbing glaciated mountains, such as Mount Athabasca, Mount Joffre, the President. Many more mountains. Stretched the summer hiking and scrambling season to year-round mountaineering by adding ice climbing. And in our own way and in our own time, we dealt with the incline and vertigo. Like a well-rehearsed piece of theatre—no matter how foreboding at first—that shines on opening night. Until the incline became second nature, with or without exposure.

And through it all, in the distance, in sun or rain, in clouds or snow, the persistence of Mount Assiniboine.

GETTING PSYCHED UP

We set the camp stove on a flat stone on the ground.

GREGOR: I'll prime it. Get the fire going.

GIANNA, picking up the pot: I'll fetch water from that spigot.

Spigot seems a luxury. Usually, you get water directly from a creek or at the edge of a lake. In this British Columbia provincial park, a pipe must have been installed to run from Lake Magog to the campground to save campers the short steps to the lake.

GIANNA, carrying her pot of water, retrieving the food bag from the safety of the metal cache, returning to the campsite with a steady pace: I know the place's deserted, but I feel the hordes jostling at my back.

Waiting for the water to boil, we can't take our eyes off Assiniboine.

GREGOR: At least, doesn't look like we'll be bombarded by too many climbers.

GIANNA: How long to the hut, do you figure?

GREGOR: Let's see. The trail around the lake, then scree to the headwall, then scramble up ledges.

GIANNA: The Gmoser Highway.

GREGOR: Aye. Then snow slopes to the refuge. People do it in two or three hours.

GIANNA: Seems a lot farther to me than a couple of hours from here. And I bet we'll be slower.

GREGOR: And if we don't go off route. There may be routefinding.

GIANNA: I'm more concerned about the North Ridge itself.

GREGOR: For what I've read, better to avoid the gullies and stay on firmer rock. From the refuge, there are cairns in the scree, then a black rock band and, after that, a red band. From there, we regain the ridge up a grey band. Good holds. And there are fixed pitons. That's good.

GIANNA: Right! The actual climbing. Fifth-class rock bands. Hope we don't go off route.

GREGOR: We have to stay below the cornice. Then the final ridge to the summit.

GIANNA: Reading about it, always seems straightforward, doesn't it? Until you have rock right in your face.

GREGOR: We just have to pierce the rock bands in the right places and know where to penetrate the ridge with the good holds. We'll be fine.

GIANNA:
Pierce
?
Penetrate
? Sounds like war up there. Like B Company being slaughtered trying to secure Hill of Beans.

GREGOR, scrutinizing the big rock: We may luck out and have the whole mountain to ourselves. We descend the same way. Only a couple of rappels. Maybe three. At least, we have dry conditions. Apparently, it's a lot more entertaining when downclimbing in wet or icy conditions.

GIANNA: It'll take us forever. But I'm up to the challenge. I think.

GREGOR: Most people do it in eight to eleven hours return. But it'll take us longer. That's why we'll stay at the refuge overnight.

GIANNA: Good plan. We'll scramble back down the next morning. We'll leave the tent set up here. I don't see the point of taking it down and storing it with the extra food while we're gone. Doesn't look like the place will have much traffic in our absence.

GREGOR: You're really up to it?

GIANNA: Psyching myself up.

BACK TO COMFORT

We sit recalling the middle years, cockier times when we disappeared into the hills for days. Camping in the backcountry, climbing one peak after another, moving to the next camping area. Sometimes, camping out of bounds.

GIANNA: Remember that time, how wary I was of moose trampling us on their early morning wanderings? I was convinced we'd erected the tent on an ancient moose byway.

Camping, climbing. Decamping, hiking out, setting up camp elsewhere. Climbing, decamping. Walking out.

Your rhythm, your outlook, your muscles, your face, absolutely everything about you as it never is in the city. As it never was on stage.

GREGOR: Even when I was showing entire narratives in shadows with my hands, and while you, dressed up wig and all, as you were, moved across centre stage. Nothing compared. And we were not trampled by any moose.

They were not comfortable, those camping-climbing trips. Nothing cozy, those nights in the tent, sleeping on the ground. But what you gain more than makes up for what you lose in comfort. No sound, unless it is raining. Or, if you are camping near a glaciated mountain, the occasional thunder of an avalanche or a rock slide. Or the ripple of a creek if you camp beside one. Or the wind howling if you set up your tent on a ridge. Otherwise, a deep quiet prevails. And the animals in the north country are soundless. Nothing like in the steam bath of the Far East where the cries of nocturnal animals are a continuous racket.

GIANNA: It didn't stop me from being nervous. Always an ear on the potential encounter with other campers. Never knowing to what subspecies of
Homo sapiens
they belonged. Were they the seekers of silence as we were? Or were they the noisemakers of the party animal subspecies, believing camping in the backcountry was an extension of the mall culture?

GREGOR: Think about the many times we mounted mini expeditions into solitude. Entered deserted campsites. The whole place to ourselves. Save for a lone caribou feeding at the edge of the forest. Or as we fetched water from a creek, being watched by the quiet mule deer.

Camping in the backcountry has nothing in common with camping by your car, or in your behemoth RV. And camping in the backcountry has nothing to do with comfort. When you have to carry everything on your back over long and arduous distances, you choose carefully what to bring. Comfort we will always have when returning to the city.

GREGOR: Unless we lose it all and become street people. But then, we'd rather live grim and gruesome in some badly insulated cabin in the mountains.

GIANNA: That's your way of creating your own world within a world on the verge of disappearing?

GREGOR: The badly insulated cabin in the mountains would be a last
resort
. Ha! But think about it. Comfort is at its best after a day spent in the cold, ice climbing or snowshoeing. Or days of exertion backpacking and climbing.

Even the unassuming day trips deliver their moments. The whiteouts. The going off route. Scrambling back down on rock coated with verglas. Neither of us liking it one bit, but resolutely descending. Focusing on the moment that could change everything with one misstep. The four-hour scramble that begins on a sunny summer morning, stretching into the night to a seventeen-hour epic. There are such days, and they can happen an hour's drive from Calgary on a relatively small mountain.

Back to comfort, talking up a storm. Doing the post-mortem. Watching the tempest, still so real in our minds, relief and excitement printed on our windburned faces. Together, building story, across time and across silences.

Back to comfort
then acquires a whole new meaning when you bear the land deep in the bone.

THE CHECKLIST

In the beginning, the reflex was to make a list of mountains to climb. After each outing, to check off the mountain climbed that day.

If fatigue or a sudden thunderstorm interfered, usually near the summit, the mountain could not be checked off. It had to be done again. And from scratch, since you cannot resume from the point where you had to turn back. We braced ourselves. All that trouble just to get to the point where we turned back. Were we in better shape today? Would that blue sky remain blue for the next twelve hours? Any puff of cloud getting puffier or weakness in our resolve when we wasted time going up a gully that ended nowhere and we had to backtrack could be signs we might fail to make the summit. And then, and then… we would have to come back again and again. In the beginning, a chore, an ordeal. A discouragement.

GIANNA: What was it with this list thing? The grocery list of mountain climbing? The job jar of domestica, like washing the kitchen floor or doing laundry? Was climbing as many peaks in a season a duty? A domestic duty? Collecting trophies?

Nevertheless. We greeted days that had been long and hard. Days when routefinding among rock spires and gullies had meant detours, side-hilling, losing elevation only to regain it. Days when we stood on the hard-earned summit and when we contemplated the work still ahead that had to be done in reverse, because standing on top was only a half-done job. Some days, you scrambled down forever; tedious work. Other days, you had to set up rappels and had to be doubly attentive, aware of mistakes from fatigue. Though if anything brings a state of happiness, it is the lightness of rappelling. When you leave the edge and let yourself slide along the rope into the void.

On those wondrous days, when the climb was no longer at the back of our minds where it had lain semi-dormant for seasons, sometimes for years, at last, we felt a peculiar release. The mix of mission accomplished and physical and mental fatigue made us giddy.

GREGOR: Back home, it was my job to turn on the gooseneck lamp and set up the white screen.

GIANNA: And although I was dead tired, I never
tired
of watching your hands form, dissolve and reform the mountain du jour in shadow. And with this sleight of hand, the mountain disappeared from our minds.

GREGOR: And we'd fall asleep in a cold second.

GIANNA: No nightmare about invading hordes!