From Gavilán Peak a jagged ridge circled west, bleeding avalanches of boulders and featuring large granite teeth and rocky crags leading to Needle Mountain’s crest. I hadn’t remembered that these mountains were so big and imposing. Daunting slides of scree under the highest promontories reflected a dramatic light that made me sway, alarmed by the overwhelming grandeur. I developed a crick in my neck from gaping at the summit. To the east Engelmann spruce trees ringed Gallegos Lake and above the trees Gavilán Peak loomed at over thirteen thousand feet, a resplendent grassy cone rising to massive cliff walls and escarpments cleft by narrow chutes on top. Nobody shot me, though, and in due course, halting to catch my breath, I finally mustered enough courage to glance up at the surroundings whereupon the true nature of my folly boggled my fruitcake brain. Diverted by dire presentiments, I miscalculated and banged a shin and squealed. Breathing hard, I lumbered along at a hesitant pace, expecting a fatal bullet at any moment - it was impossible to climb faster. I had not actually seen any gun-toting feds at the lake enforcing the wilderness closure, yet they may have been camouflaged as ordinary citizens sporting dirndls and lederhosen with MAC-10s stashed in their olive-green fanny packs. All I could do by way of subterfuge was hunch over to make myself a smaller target. And at that thought sweat spurted off my forehead like rats leaving a sinking ship.įor at least fifty yards while traversing the talus I was exposed to the gazes of snoopy hikers and government snipers a quarter mile below. There were no trees, no other vegetation, only heaps and heaps of busted stone craving an opportunity to brutalize my rinky-dink limbs. Why didn’t I bring sunglasses? Those obstacles were ominous and without a trail through them. I’m coming home to the Pleistocene, bubba.įacing me was a wide boulder field where some monster rocks were three to five feet tall and harsh rays glaring off them stung my eyes. But first you have to be able to go there, as Yogi Berra once said, in order to reunderstand our own evolution again. And what we all need, yours truly included, is a totally different attitude toward the biology that sustains us. All of a sudden you hit sixty, you realize that time is running out. Ben and Miranda thought I was crazy, but I didn’t care. Raggedy tufts of pastel-green lichen beards dangled off all the branches.īeyond the initial zone of verboten forest, out in the open, ferocious sunshine magnified by the smoggy sky mugged me. I drew in deep breaths to calm myself as I zigzagged among the trees, my temperature rising. It’s not going to happen, Dad, I could hear Miranda saying. I flinched at the noise, wishing a wind would rise to cover my tracks. Layers of crisp needles covered the floor of the dark glade interspersed by islands of moss and withered leaflets so parched my every step crackled. Sick from fear, from the heat, from too much exercise already, I hobbled off through the evergreen shadows, hunched over, inspecting my folded geological survey map. “You have an annuloplasty ring in your mitral valve, you fluctuate in and out of serious atrial fibrillation on a daily basis despite all the Lanoxin and Coumadin you ingest, you can’t walk straight because of the Ménière’s disease, and when was the last asthma attack that floored you - six weeks ago? I feel as if I’m listening to a quadriplegic inform me he’s planning to dance the lambada all night with Charo.” “Look at you,” Miranda had said when she was trying to dissuade me from my suicidal folly. Why didn’t Pfizer make some kind of Viagra that could be used for scaling heights? Up against the wall, Smokey, black power’s gonna get your momma! Of course, already I was regretting my arrogance. A bright red sign said: CLOSED DUE TO EXTREME FIRE DANGER - NO TRAVEL BEYOND THIS POINT. Standing, I muttered “Cheerio” to a dozen obedient tourists at the lake and retreated into spruce trees behind me, my heart fluttering from guilt. It looked as if my obnoxious children, Miranda and Ben, were not hustling up to search for me: their tough love had called my bluff. My twenty-minute R & R after the easy ninety-minute hike from the wilderness parking lot to Gallegos Lake at eleven thousand feet was over, Rover.
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