You're never alone
Mt. Kenya climb part 3
I tried so hard to get someone to climb this damn mountain with me.
There was Beth, who really wanted to go, then really thought she couldn’t. There was Jen who really wanted to go, who totally was going to go, but her ex wouldn’t cooperate with the shift in the custody schedule. There was Faith, who really wanted to go and even lives in Kenya, but her daughter was graduating from high school around that time. There was Gary, who was going, who had already bought plane tickets, but then tripped on a sidewalk crack and shattered his shoulder.
And then there was Chanda. I thought Chanda was a sure thing. For starters, she’s a serious mountain climber. She’s done Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, has trained for technical climbs, and is well on her way to summiting the highest peak on every continent (well, I hope she will settle for the Everest base camp). She could sleepwalk up Mt. Kenya. She’s also the sort of person to spontaneously go on a major international trip. Sure enough, she was thrilled at the prospect of this one. But we couldn’t get our schedules and dates aligned. She ended up going…two weeks after me.
I asked multiple other people and struck out every time. I was either going alone or not at all.
Now, I am not a solitary animal. I have always traveled in herds, ever since I went to boarding school at age 10 and lived surrounded by people at all times. I have been by myself for probably less cumulative time than I’ve spent shaving my legs. I have known deep, empty loneliness in my life, but it’s almost never been while actually alone.
On the other hand, after decades of living and dealing with people, including two small people who I birthed and who, it must be said, are not the most considerate people with whom I’ve lived—although things are marginally better around here than a Jr. High girls dorm—marginally—the sound of my own thoughts is quite soothing. And I am rarely lonely anymore. I am no longer running from myself.
Still, a multi-day solo hiking trip, on which I would be challenged both physically and mentally, was daunting. I’d have a guide, but in some ways that could be worse—the pressure to talk with a stranger for hours on end or the awkwardness of not talking.
I decided to put a positive spin on things and just count on having a spiritual experience. I have watched both Wild and The Way and probably several other movies in which psychologically tortured people go on deeply meaningful, therapeutic treks. When I envisioned my solo climb, I imagined hiking silently through spectacular landscapes, looking up at brilliant stars in the wilderness night sky, thinking deeply about the meaning of the universe, and basically coming down the mountain transformed into something akin to the Dalai Lama.
We woke up on Day Two to more clouds, fog, and mist that threatened to congeal into pouring rain.
“It’s going to clear off, right?” I asked Sammy. “I mean, it’s dry season, right? Wouldn’t it be crazy if I got all the way to the top without even seeing the peaks?!” I was joking.
Sammy didn’t laugh. He looked concerned. “I don’t know what’s going on with our weather these days.”
As we climbed through heather-covered moors, dour and mysterious in the fog, the pressure of constant conversation eased, and we settled into a comfortable, rhythmic silence, Sammy slightly ahead of me, setting a slow but steady pace.
I tried really hard to find enlightenment, searching the craggy, lichen-covered rocks and the unfamiliar, otherworldly flora for metaphorical truths. But I had very few epiphanies, or even any good ideas for parody videos (I briefly considered a Justin Timberlake parody called “Pee Me A River” but decided it was entirely too specific to my particular circumstances to find a broad audience).
Instead, I mostly felt anxious.
I listened to Martin Short’s memoir. I catalogued all the stuff I had to do when I got home. I made plans to make meal plans. I worried about the weather, a lot. I imagined getting soaking wet, slogging through sticky mud, maybe dying of hypothermia, all without ever seeing the spectacular view I craved. I worried about all the peeing. I worried I had a secret heart condition that would kick in around 15,000 feet. I worried about Deep Vein Thrombosis. I worried about falling down and breaking another wrist. I worried about being assassinated by a squad of Southern Baptist hit men once my book came out. I worried about Donald Trump.
And I worried about all that my female body had inflicted upon me, right in time for the climb. I kept most of my angst to myself, but this item I did disclose to another climber I presumed to be female, who I saw at both camps. I just needed to whine to someone and to have them feel sorry for me. A later google search revealed the climber was actually non-binary, and I am old so I don’t know if it was offensive to complain to a non-binary person who codes as female about menstruation. But they were very kind and sympathetic nonetheless.
It was a tiny human connection that actually did help. Because saying things out loud to another person is a miraculous drug. The power of looking under the bed and naming the monsters, of watching the Wicked Witch of the West shrivel into nothing when doused with water.
Because the main cause for my anxiety was loneliness.
There were people around. Sammy was as caring and lovely as he could be. But these weren’t my people, the people that normally surround me and make me feel safe. And I missed them terribly.
I thought about Kevin, who I hadn’t seen in a month. I thought about how he accepts the fact that I am incapable of planning and cooking meals on a regular basis. I thought about how he would definitely compare the Ostrich Plume Lobelia to a muppets character and maybe act out a whole skit with it.I thought about how hot he looks in hiking gear. I thought about how he could be carrying my day pack for me and my shoulders wouldn’t be screaming right about now.
When Martin Short began to narrate his beloved wife getting sick and then losing her, I thought about what that would be like, the brutal absence of someone you’ve allowed yourself to need so completely. I thought about my Aunt Linda losing her beloved Gary a few months ago. I cried silently, creating some distance between myself and Sammy up ahead.
I thought about all the friends who might have been there with me. I imagined Gary and I brainstorming the novel we are writing together and how he writes his emails in the style of a Victorian gentlemen. I thought about Jen and how she already knows about my irrational fear of Deep Vein Thrombosis and how much she would love gossiping with me and Sammy about the other climbers in Swahili right in front of their faces.
And I thought about Chanda, who is a yoga teacher as well as a mountaineer. She would probably be leading me in a guided meditation that would cause me to forget I had feet and regular human lung capacity. Which I would need to forget if I were to keep up with her on a mountain. And if I got tired or discouraged, she would hold my face in her hands, tell me I am beautiful and I am enough and my vulnerability is my power. And if that didn’t work, she would just carry me up the mountain, even though she is roughly half my size.
None of these people were with me in person. Chanda wasn’t even a part of my regular life anymore, having moved away. But I was reminded anew that they, and so many others, were with me. I remembered that I was alone only on this climb, for this challenge. But not for all the climbs.
As Sammy and I got higher and higher, following the valley that leads up to the peaks, the sky cleared. The sun lit up the strange, Dr. Seuss-like landscape, dotted with bizarre, captivating plants, and I laughed to myself at the whimsy of it, and at myself for being here, where I so clearly didn’t belong, but where I had chosen so whole-heartedly to be.
The peaks brushed off the clouds and beckoned me onward.
In the case of Chanda, I had an additional bit of presence. I had a Golden Girls button she gave all of us girlfriends as a funny reference to our future plans. And to the community of women supporting women that we had already built.
In fact, just a few weeks before, she had connected me to a professional female climber who co-wrote a book with other women athletes about, among other things, menstruating while mountain climbing and in other physically challenging circumstances. I got practical tips that I would in fact need, but mostly I got the courage that I would in fact need, when I woke up on the morning I embarked to a familiar but unexpected, most unwelcome visitor that would significantly complicate my journey. I read Bethany’s book as I went, clinging to these women’s resourcefulness and perseverance.
When Chanda and I realized I’d be climbing two weeks ahead of her, we decided I would leave her a gift at the summit in a secure spot. And I knew immediately what I would bring.
Dorothy, Blanche, Rose, and Sophia would be climbing Mt. Kenya with me. As would Chanda, in a way.
I didn’t tell Chanda what the gift was. It would be a surprise. But she seemed to assume it would be something more meaningful and maybe more valuable than a Golden Girls button (as if there were such a thing).
“Oh, I can’t wait to see my treasure!” she enthused, as I chuckled to myself.
The night before the summit, instead of doing a guided meditation with Chanda, I had mild panic attack with 10 or so strangers looking on. I myself didn’t fully understand why, but I’m sure hormones had something to do with it, along with the Diamox, which I couldn’t take in conjunction with my anti-anxiety medication, and which at this point I blamed for all the evil in the world.
I was nervous I couldn’t make it to the top, I was afraid I would die, I was cold, I had no appetite to eat the food I knew I needed. I was lonely. And my gosh, I was so tired of peeing I could die.
I started to weep uncontrollably, right there at the dinner table. The others stared at me with alarm and confusion. A German woman asked me in blunt, stereotypical fashion, “What is wrong with you?”
Sammy was concerned but unfazed. He talked me through what I was feeling physically to make sure I wasn’t sick. He commanded me to stop taking the Diamox. “You are doing well, you don’t need it!” he proclaimed. He recalibrated our schedule and route on the spot to make it less daunting. He told me I had to eat more and drink more water. He told me he saw no reason why I could not make it.
He was my leader and my friend. He helped me get myself together. I wasn’t alone.
We started out for the summit at 3:30 a.m. Most climbers do this ostensibly to see the sun rise from or at least near the top, and so they can make it all the way back to the first camp. I had done this on Kilimanjaro, and it was an excruciating day. On Kili, there isn’t enough space, or probably air, at the summit base camp to stay a second night, but on Mt. Kenya, it’s possible. Sammy had decided that’s what we would do, as it would be less grueling and I was doing fine with the altitude.
We discussed starting later in the morning, but I opted to leave during the night. Honestly, I didn’t want to see where I was going, other than the small bit of ground in front of my feet illuminated by my headlamp.
So off we went into the pitch dark, foot over foot, step by step, rocks giving way beneath each one. It was so very steep, it was hard to find a good place to catch my breath as the air thinned out.
Thank God, I didn’t have to pee. I had stopped the medication, as directed by Sammy, and my kidneys had returned to their normal pace of business.
I would reward myself every now and then with an upward glance at the night sky. I would turn my headlamp off and look into the deep space lit up by the darkness, literal clouds of stars. I remembered this view from my childhood, from the remote perch of my boarding school on the escarpment of the Rift Valley. It was one of the things I had lost in the unrelenting brightness of an American life that dulls your sense of being mercifully small and lulls you into an exhausting hallucination of control.
My calves burned and my lungs ached for oxygen. I thought about turning around more than once. But then I would remember the Golden Girls, riding along in my backpack. I imagined hiding them under a rock just so, shielded and safe. I imagined Chanda reaching the top in a couple of weeks, following my instructions, finding them there. I imagined her laughing at this “treasure.”
This climb would probably be a piece of cake for her, but who knows? Maybe she would need that treasure hunt as an additional lure, pulling her along. Maybe she was more fragile than she ever appeared in the twenty years I’ve known her. Maybe she would need to feel the community that I could feel now. The desire we all have to connect across the impediments placed in our paths by the dictatorial physical authority under which we all live.
By the time the sun rose, it was almost surprising. I was becoming used to the night grind, my own breath, my existence shrunken into a footprint. The sun brought me its life, as it does to everything here, placing the land I have loved so deeply for so long before me like an indulgent feast.
We still had more climbing to do, but I knew I would make it. And I did.
At the top, we took our celebratory pictures and sang the Kenyan national anthem together in Swahili. Me and Sammy, fellow countrymen of sorts, at least for now. A beautiful, makeshift community.
Then I got to work identifying a good hiding place. I settled on a space underneath a large stone near a sign. There was enough room to wedge a smaller rock on top of the button to keep it securely in place, hopefully for 2 weeks, at over 16,000 feet. I took a video with instructions.
A couple of weeks later, safely back home with my family, I heard from Chanda. She had finished the climb. And she sent me this video:
And I just felt pure joy. At the experience I had had. At sharing it in this way with a friend I missed. At the fun of it all, and the meaning of it. That’s the thing about friendship, it’s equal parts. Or, rather, it’s just one whole.
And a few weeks after that, we were in the same place at the same time, finally, after many months. She was back in DC visiting. I went to a yoga class she taught at her old studio.
She was wearing the Golden Girls button.
And I hugged her so tightly, with so much gratitude, for the power of community, for the gift of camaraderie, for the mystery of human connection, how it defies the laws of gravity, distance, time, even death.
How it rises above what we can see and understand, like a mighty, snow-capped mountain improbably hovering over an equatorial plain.
Beautiful view. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Great, great tale - all three parts! Also, I'm not crying, you're crying.