The long view

A bend in the road is not the end of the road...unless you fail to make the turn. Author Unknown

Over at Writing without Paper, Maureen shares a Ted talk by Dr. Ken Kalmer, microsurgeon and mountain climber. He was with Jon Krakauer during the worst climbing disaster on Everest in 1996 and he continues to merge climbing and medicine on some of the world's most difficult and challenging peaks. Searching, as every climber does, for a route that's never been explored before.

Listening to Kalmer's fascinating speak at TedMed, an independent Ted event, I was pulled back into memories thrall. To that place where once the mountains loomed as inviting giants beckoning me into their domain. Luring me into believing I could understand the wisdom of their ages just by conquering the peak of their existence.

And then, all of that changed. A road ended. A bend was not navigated and I began to hate the granite structures stretched out across the western skyline like spikes on a sleeping dinosaur's back.

They were no longer 'the view' to the west. They were blocking the view to the west. And I hated them.

I know. I know. Doesn't make sense to expend emotional energy on inanimate objects that have been around for millennium, but, call me stubborn, call me self-centered, I did it anyway.

They had stolen the man I loved and I hated them. Okay. So, they didn't steal him in the literal sense. They didn't cost him his life but they were, on a deep, emotional visceral level within me, responsible for the break up of my marriage. And I hated them for that.

See, I was once married to a mountain climber. He's the father of my children. Once upon a time, my best friend and husband. He loved to climb. Lived for the weekends when he could turn his computer off at the engineering firm where he was a partner, push back his chair from his desk and shed his business attire for the plaid shirt and khaki shorts of climbing comfort.

He worked to afford his passion. And I wasn't it.

When I asked him why he lived to climb, he would always respond, for the experience of it.

I never quite got that. For the experience of it. Shouldn't there be a goal? Shouldn't there be a reason.

Sure there is, he'd reply. To get up and to get back down again.

There was a time when I climbed with him. Summitted several peaks in the Rockies. Snow and ice. Granite and sedimentary rock.

I slept out in a tent on a glacier at 30 below Celsius. I skied across crevasse riddled ice fields mentally going through the steps of an arrest while praying I never had to put the knowledge to use. I've walked summit ridges that ended and had to jump through three feet of thin air to get to the next piece of rock upon which I would crumble in gratitude for its solid base, the wild beating of my heart rumbling like a freight train through my mind. I mean, really, it was 2,000 feet straight down on one side and 6,000 ft on the other. We couldn't rope up because... well, he'd have to jump really fast to the other side of the ridge if I slipped and fell off. And so I jumped.

And it was exhilarating. Intoxicating. Terrifying. And I did it anyway.

Sometimes I climbed with him and his best friend Al and we made a funny threesome. Me, 5'2". Them, 6"2+. They'd carve footsteps in the face of a glacier and forget my legs didn't expand as far as theirs. They'd place pitons in rock faces only to have to add extras. When approaching the base of a climb, bushwhacking for me was a whole different experience. They'd step over fallen tree trunks and I would sidle my belly onto the log, my pack a pendulum carrying me over to the other side as I thrust my body forward, desperately trying to avoid snags and errant branches looking to trap me in their arms.

I was tiny but I was strong. I kept up. I lead the route. I persevered.

Even when the going got tough.

It was in the tough going that the emotional toll of our failing relationship began to wear against my resolve to keep up, stay ahead, never give up.

Throughout the twelve years we were together, most weekends found me following in his footsteps and ski-stride. Most weekends found me loaded down with backpack, crampons, ice axe, helmet, pitons and rope. Most weekends found me living it large in valleys and atop peaks, soaking up the view, the elements, the sheer joy of finding myself atop a mountain and seeing the long view.

And then, our daughters were born and mountain peaks and cliff faces lost their allure as I gazed into their innocent faces and vowed to never let them down, to always stay focused on the long view of their lives. I wanted to be with them. to create for them. To live for them. To be around for these marvels of wonder who had catapulted into my heart, leaving me breathless with the sheer beauty of their being in my arms.

He wanted to be with them too and he wanted to keep climbing. To keep finding one more ascent. One more route to reach that elusive peak he'd never before summited. That challenging route he'd never yet overcome.

I couldn't align his desire to put himself at risk with our responsibility to only take reasonable risk for our daughters sake. And I resented him for that. Resented that he took their presence in our lives with such equanimity that nothing changed, nothing shifted. Couldn't he see? Everything was different. Everything had changed.

It was me who couldn't see. He knew it had and he was falling under the thrall of their loving gaze. He headed to the peaks not to get away, but rather to rejoice in their presence in the only way he knew how -- alone with nature. alone against nature. alone in nature.

I remember before their birth friends who would come from the east for our annual ski trek into some remote mountain cabin. They wouldn't fly on the same helicopter. Why should we, they'd ask? If something happens to the chopper, it's best if only one of us is at risk. They had three young children. They didn't want to leave them as orphans.

I didn't understand. And then, I did.

And so, my husband kept climbing to find himself amidst nature's glory and I kept following less and less. Our separate paths led us to a bend in the road where he went left and I went right and we found separate vistas to enjoy. The bend became the end and we travelled on separately yet forever joined through these two miraculous beings who depended upon us to always be there, always care, always love them.

There are a thousand routes to the summit, and only one way to enjoy the view. And that way is to open your eyes and breathe deeply of the sheer beauty of being high up in the air with only a piece of rock holding you there.

There are a thousand routes to happiness, and to truly enjoy it is to close your eyes, open your senses and breathe deeply of the sheer exhilaration of being alive -- no matter where you are.

The summit is not the end of the road. It is the beginning. Getting there was easy compared to getting back safely. Often, on the descent, you're tired, worn out, and the 'mountain high' is waning. Often, a mistep leads to a mis-calculation, of route, weather, terrain and suddenly, what appeared 'the easy', becomes 'the hard.'

I thought having children was easy. And then, I learned what it meant to be a parent. I thought, being a wife was a cake-walk, and then I had to take the leap into singledom loaded with the resolve to not look back, to not regret the summit not climbed. I thought, falling on the road of life was the end and then I found the bend and the ending became the new beginning.

What I know is so much less than what I don't know. Sometimes, my short-view is impeded by my belief that this is now and will be forever so. Once upon a time, I hated the mountains. Hated that they stole from me the man I had promised to love 'til death do us part. I hated that they stood, silent, immobile, immutable. I hated that I thought they knew the secret to his heart and would not open the door to my entreaties to let me in.

And then I learned, there are many lessons to be gathered from these giants lying across the horizon to the west. They are not immutable. Immobile. Impossible to reach. They are, the keepers of the 'long view'.

They are not 'the end'. They are the possibility of new routes, new paths, new directions. It's all in my perspective.

Once I stood with a man on the summit of our relationship and failed to make the bend in the road together. It was the end.

And yet, in the long view, it was the beginning.

Of new roads. New vistas. New ways of being.

That's the thing about endings. There's always a beginning waiting to open up to possibility when we find a different path to the summit of living in the exhilaration of the moment that is opening up before us like the long view from the top of the peak.

Nameste.