Rising Abruptly (25 page)

Disconnected images downloading into our brains. These intrusions of the larger world are our firewall to keep us from losing our nerve. Not that we are in any real danger. But in the mountains, loss of nerve is loss of self.

We reach the lodge. Look back. Mount Assiniboine rises high above, rock no longer snow-plastered. Up there, calm and cold. Down here, havoc and heat one pass away. On the ground over there, ahead of a wall of flaming trees, panicked mice and hares, marmots and squirrels escaping. Bears and deer running shoulder to shoulder, not concerned which is friend, which is foe.

The lodge operators on the phone and their staff gathering guests are on full evac mode. Guests crowd around, silent and disciplined, awaiting instructions. A father clutching his two small children tells us that, a little farther away at the park cabin, the warden is working the radio. Since no rescue helicopters are available on account of the other wildfires burning in the two contiguous provinces, she is hard at work coordinating with headquarters. Commercial helicopters will fly from Canmore at first light. What if the conflagration jumps over the pass? And faster than expected? Still sheltering his children, the father also speculates about the logistics of their timely rescue. We are all brightly awake to this world.

GIANNA and GREGOR: How can we help?

THE OPERATORS, not mincing words: By not getting in the way. The guests are our responsibility. One thing you can do. The Naiset Cabins are mostly empty, except for a couple of hikers and two male climbers. We've already warned them to assemble here, but we don't see them yet. Could you…

GREGOR: Sure. But my wife and I will hike out.

THE OPERATORS, getting annoyed: We don't advise it. If you have an accident, we won't be able to send help.

GREGOR: We'll be all right.

It is clear our plan is not welcome, but we don't want to wait idle for hours. We look at Assiniboine denied us. At the very least, we'll give ourselves the consolation prize of a thirty-odd-kilometre nocturnal hike. Together in the mountains, always, feeding on the one's strength and resolve when the other's are waning.

GIANNA: All right. Let's do it.

We're all geared up, ready to hike out.

The operators suggest the safest way for us is via the Valley of the Rocks and Citadel Pass en route to Sunshine Village.

GIANNA: How will we hitch a ride from there to get back to our car in Canmore?

GREGOR: That's not important now.

No, it's not. We may even camp at Sunshine. We have the gear, we have food. And when rested, why not hike all the way to Canmore? It's not as if we had never hiked long distance before.

First though, we must check on the occupants of the Naiset Cabins. A short distance from the lodge at the primitive huts, we flash our headlamps into darkness. Empty. In one cabin, a man and a woman are gathering their gear. We briefly discuss with them the route we will take. Not eager either to wait for a helicopter, the hikers will also go via Citadel Pass. They remind us of us thirty years ago, in our prime.

GREGOR: You should inform the lodge operators or the warden of your decision. They won't like it, but they should know.

We enter more cabins. Darkness. Emptiness. We open the last door. Shine our lights on two guys in bunk beds. Bleary-eyed, they raise themselves up on their elbows.

CLIMBER ONE: What the fuck! Turn off those goddam lights!

CLIMBER TWO: Yeah, man. What's this? The third degree?

GREGOR: Guys, get up.

CLIMBER ONE: Get up? We just got to bed.

CLIMBER TWO: Yeah, man. We need our beauty sleep.

GREGOR: We are being evacuated. You were told. You must leave now.

CLIMBER ONE: Leave? We were here first.

CLIMBER TWO: Yeah, man. Go get your own cabin.

GREGOR: Okay, pals. You want to burn to a crisp? Suit yourselves.

CLIMBER ONE: And close the door. Who's that old geezer ordering us around?

CLIMBER TWO: Yeah, man. Tourists! A blister and they whimper for a rescue.

GIANNA: They're pretty cocky. But we're not exactly playing by the rules either.

GREGOR: What's our duty now? Drag those bozos out and force-march them to the helipad? And if they resist? Engage them in a fist fight, à la crazy-Brit climbers circa 1970s brawling in the pubs? Demolishing the cabin in the process?

GIANNA: Itching for a good old-fashioned fight, Greggy? They're big boys.

We leave the door open, should the fire appear over the pass and shine its red eye at the Invincible Climbers. Then, let them make their own calculations.

Our headlamps light the dark trail ahead. Into the silence of the night, without slowing down our pace, we quip to keep up the rhythm.

GREGOR: Those two climbers. We should have attacked them.

GIANNA: Boiled water in a bison skin and gotten out the pliers.

GREGOR: Made them bite the bullet.

GIANNA: Must settle for a piton. Bullets are forbidden in a park.

GREGOR: Aye. Is it possible to extract the complacency of toughness, that peculiar form of ego common to Invincible Climbers, without pulling half the patient's brain out with it, thus killing both the parasite and the host?

GIANNA: Or is complacency of toughness something that must fall off on its own in due course?

GREGOR: That is, if invincibility itself doesn't first kill its bearer.

GIANNA: We were that cocky once. We were.

For the last time, and before the hilly landmass hides it from us, we turn around to glance at Mount Assiniboine. What is happening to those two climbers in their cabin? Wrapped in invincibility, tomorrow when they climb the mountain, will they be consumed in the fire of their own ritual game? As we know too well, in the mountains, everything has always been a matter of calculated risk. And we each calculate our personal invincibility by a slightly different set of variables, assigning to each his equation of limits. As have done the Assiniboine and Kootenay, Blood and Peigan and Blackfoot, and all the White upstarts, and us in this crazy mix, who have clung to rock.

Hiking away from our crimson night, we can't help wondering how our own egos will manage to survive this farewell to love.

VALLEY OF THE ROCKS

And now in the Valley of the Rocks, we anticipate our last day out.

Crimson pulsating behind our eyelids. Who will be the first? Which one of us will watch the other jump over the Big Void? The other one's corpse. At the bottom of a cliff. Recovered from a frigid river. Accident? Or an act of will? Or inert on his/her unchosen narrow hospital bed, taken by surprise by the catastrophic falling-apart of the body, and catching her/his last breath? A prisoner of the commonplace. He/she who never felt at ease within the confinement of walls. Will the one departing have time or the ability to write a farewell note to the one lingering?

“We ask that I should not live to see her tomb, nor she survive to bury me in mine.” Those are not our words. Baucis and Philemon, old love drawn in hand shadows. Played out long ago on a faraway stage.

Our farewell note to love will only require three words. Three words carefully written before one of us falls over the edge. Dumping ballast. What do people expect those three words to be? I love you. Of course, but. As if that were news to us. Still, when nothing more can be said, when what needs to be said is infinite, people cling to
those
three words. I love you.

The one abandoned, now alone with the absence of the one gone. Left, not with the three expected words, but with three words of far greater significance. Three words that say everything to us. You understand me.

And the one left behind whispers: I do. Throat constricted, tears streaming, lying down alongside the one departed. Hugging the body close. As we did so often, both of us alive, alive, after a particularly trying day in the mountains. “That was a close call.” And now, those last three words. You understand me. Lips whispering: I do.

The one left behind speaks:

I understand that your great crimson night had not chased you off yourself.

I understand that the full you was still intact, but trapped in the terminally ill body shell.

I understand that you waited until you could exit the long way out.

I understand that this had to be done right the first time.

I understand that you still dreamed robust dreams. And in the cruelty of your endless waking hours, you visualized climbs yet to come. The faster we lose it, the faster we will lose it.

Reconstructing our laughter and our deep conversations. Reaffirming our perfect understanding, even when, at times, we begged to differ. Bracing against the dread of one leaving the other. The survivor's grief and the departing one causing acute pain.

I understand that, the whole mountain life being taken away from us by the coming hordes, you took the summit down into the river with you.

I understand that I must not hate your ego, Invincible Climber, but must celebrate this event, which you set in motion to restore your freedom of movement, of speech, of thought. Your fierce avoidance of the commonplace.

I understand that you are now free to free climb past your age and the ages.

I understand that this farewell to love is a climbing accident of another kind.

As the one left behind hugs the departed one close, he/she must do this one last act before letting go of the belay. And so, on this crimson night, let us tell each other everything, as we always have.

We will reach the summit of Assiniboine via the North Ridge in brilliant sunshine. First though, we will revisit together our long wondrous climb that began decades earlier, in another place, in another time.

And shivering in the cold night, we prepare to leave the Valley of the Rocks in silence.

CLOSING TIME

But despite the sharp air, we cannot bring ourselves to resume the hike down.

GREGOR: We did not invest enough in the mountains.

GIANNA: We could have gone higher, deeper, farther.

GREGOR, throwing a stone into the darkness of distance: Hindsight, Gianna. End-of-life regrets. Let's not go there.

We agree. Tonight, keenly fearing the confinement of walls.

So, we set our packs on the ground. Watch the stars, identifying constellations. We exchange thoughts about the universe. Time and infinity; lives reaching their bounds at the speed of light. Destiny; and the density of destiny. The continuous string of our lives so easily snapped. Trifles of that nature. We imprint on our minds Mount Assiniboine the way we saw it tonight, the way we will never see it again. Mount Assiniboine changing its rocky aspects in the various light exposures of day fading into night. The North Ridge, its sharp edge blurring in the darkening of evening. Higher up, the summit imagined. With its cornice of old, old snow.

So, we keep watch. Listen to the quiet. In silence, solitude, stillness.

In this simple manner, we stay linked, sitting side by side on the hard ground as if we were above and beyond our finality.

Acknowledgements

IT HAS BECOME an established practice to acknowledge the individuals in the writer's entourage who have contributed to the words you have read or are about to read. Long before I became a writer, I had no doubt that the creative works I was reading were the sole responsibility of the authors who penned them. Perhaps there are still such writers; perhaps they never existed.

It is my turn to acknowledge those who helped shape this book. We may be alone in our writing room, day in, day out, with our language(s), characters, stories, imagination, but the contribution of others keeps us from deluding ourselves.

To that effect, I wish to thank Tom Back, Adrian Michael Kelly, and Anne Sorbie, who read the stories with a sharp eye and an open mind.

My special thanks go to my editor, Maya Fowler, whom I had never met before we embarked on this collaboration, but with whom our exchanges about writing and languages were as if we had known each other for years. Her contribution has been invaluable.

I also wish to thank the entire team at the University of Alberta Press, especially Peter Midgley for opening the door to my work and Alan Brownoff for having the wisdom to forgo putting a mountain on the cover.

And to you, dear readers, whether you are rising abruptly or walking gently through these stories, my wish is that you don't fall and hit the deck, but enjoy the climb as much as I have, whether on rock or with words.

In “Assiniboine Crossroads,” the Baucis and Philemon quote is from Ovid's
Metamorphoses
, translated by Charles Martin (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004) and cited in Alice Major's
Memory's Daughter
(Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2010).

“Nuit Blanche with Gendarme” is an English adaptation of one of the stories in my French collection,
Outsiders
(Montréal: Lévesque éditeur, 2013). Used by permission.

“Nepal High” is an adaptation of one of the chapters in my French novel,
Rumeurs de la Haute Maison
, (Montréal: Québec Amérique, 1987).

About the Author

Montréal-born, Calgary-based GISÈLE VILLENEUVE is a bilingual creative writer working in multiple genres. She has lived in London, England, and has travelled five continents. When not at her desk, she can be found roaming the Rockies.

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