Mount Evans and Ethics

A few days ago we drove up Mount Evans (14,264), which is one of Colorado's fourteeners (fifty plus peaks in the state above fourteen thousand feet). It's one of two peaks you can actually drive up to. The other is Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, but that's another matter: it not only hosts a well-known car race each year but also sports a very popular narrow-gauge train to the top. Mount Evans retains a little more mystery--you must drive about fourteen miles from I-70 to the entrance station and then fourteen miles after that on a oh-my-god road.

Sid's climbed about thirty of the fourteeners in the state and, when we first met, wanted me to attempt some with him. I did two but it wasn't pretty. It took me three separate tries to get up Gray's Peak (14,270). I'd get to the last pitch, where the mountain goats were, and then some part of me would give out. Finally, I did it. Then I did Mount Bierstadt (14, 060) in one try. After that, it was literally down hill. We tried the highest peak in Colorado--Mount Elbert (14,433 ) twice. Each time, I got to the final pitch. The first time it snowed and the peak disappeared. The second time a thunderstorm drove us back. But by that point in the trail I'd had it anyway. My back hurt and I was panting for oxygen like a malamute in hundred degree weather. I knew the descent would throw out my knees and blacken my toe nails, so I was not a happy camper.

To encourage me, Sid gave me a statuette of Winged Victory with two gold plates on the base showing two mountain names and the date I got up them. There was room for two more plates. But I wasn't to be moved. I could live with a half-filled base.

Now, Mount Evans seemed to be another matter. You could drive up as far as you wanted and walk to the top. I had visions of an easy plate for my trophy. Of course it was craven and Sid wasn't encouraging when I suggested it. "It's cheating," he said. "You need to climb a couple of thousand feet to claim it." I suspected he just wanted to see me earn my plate the hard way. So matters stayed, but then for some reason he relented and said we'd go up. As we drove up the narrow road with its sharp drop-offs and eroded asphalt, Sid told me he’d never taken anyone else up there. It turned out that he used to climb up from Crater Lake, across a sawtooth ridge and on to Mount Bierstadt the back way. I looked at the ridges and secretly thought he was crazy, but he looked so wistful I couldn't say anything. He rwas remembering the Mount Evans area from long before it became a stop for visitors on their way into the mountains from Denver.

They’re powerful, these memories linked to places as we remember them as they no longer are. I remember seeing Waikiki when the pink lady, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, was the tallest building along the shore line. Now she is dwarfed by towering high rises that almost seem to be one piece. Not all change is progress, as Sid likes to say—and that applies just as much to the Colorado Rockies, which are being loved to death. Some trails are so popular that it’s possible never to be alone. We certainly weren’t alone at the end of the Mount Evans road, which has a sign saying that it is the highest in North America. Above us was a rock pile several hundred feet high marking the real top of the mountain. I was struck by summit fever and was prepared to climb over the boulders, but it turned out that there is a sedate set of mild switchbacks leading up to the top. The summit was packed with people from Oklahoma and Texas savoring the view of Denver and the Front Range of mountains. It was, as Sid said, a destination stop.

I suppose some of Sid’s ethics must have rubbed off on me because I have decided that I won’t claim Mount Evans on my statuette. I guess I have to live with myself. The first two plates represent mountains where I struggled and pushed myself on, plodding one foot down after the other. I can’t claim what was really just a walk in the park. I'd secretly like to bag Elbert and maybe Blanca in Alamosa, but I know they're beyond me now. I will, though, smile whenever I see Mount Evans looming above the Denver skyline and will definitely take visitors there the senior way--in my sure-footed all-wheel-drive Subaru as long as they don’t mind getting scared out of their wits on the undulating and crumbling road.

The Midnight Click

Well, with the midnight click less than one month away, I've decided might as well get on with it (collective sight of relief is OK, everyone). The midnight click is what I call the day I reach the dread sixty-five. Those of you patient enough to put up with my angst over this will recall that one minute before midnight I am (supposedly) competent--or as much as I have ever been--and one minute after I am on the slippery slope to final ash.

I've been thrashing about because I didn't feel any less competent as I approached the witching hour. I felt that this great threshhold was being forced on me by other people's perceptions. To that extent, it's still true. But now I've accepted that what's more important is what I think about myself. I've never felt more in control of my writing and my decisions and my life as I do now, even though I concede that may be relative. Someone told me once that people can't fall off the floor. Don't know about that. I think I may have started in the basement. But still, I don't have to buy into media perceptions of older people and I am now in a position to correct them rather than just resenting them. Laughter, I have decided, is the best remedy.

I have a t-shirt that says "In order to be old and wise, you must first be young and stupid." Young people look blank when they read it; the older folk just laugh. We've all been there. I imagine the Generation X are going to relate once their extreme sport injuries turn arthritic. Ah youth. I've certainly been my share of young and stupid, but I don't really feel I can claim to be old and wise. Old, maybe. But wise? Hell no--I still make mistakes worthy of me in my thirties. I still say awkward things at inappropriate moments. I still jump to conclusions and make assumptions. I still have an optimistic squint that says I have forever ahead of me. I am still surprised when I am asked if I want a senior discount. I want to look around at the someone they must be talking to behind me. It can't be me. I dye my hair and hide the wattle on my neck--I can't look a day over 50.

But in honor of this birthday, I am going to cut myself some slack. All those clothes in my closet that I have been saying I will diet and get into again?--we all have them--they are now heading out of the door. At 65, I am no longer prepared to starve myself back into a size 10. All the mindless extra housecleaning that someone told me was my job? I no longer need to polish the silver--it can tarnish. We don't entertain as we did in our forties so I can send on the serving pieces to the younger members of the family who have appearances and expectations to maintain. All my friendships date back forty years and more (remember Varney Circle, Kimi?) and my friends will overlook the dust. I am not going to avoid things because someone thinks they are inappropriate for my age: I will wear shorts, I will eat candy floss, I will slide down a water tunnel, I will bash my grandson's bumper car, I will go to Disneyland. And even more important to me, I will no longer be defensive about being into New Age stuff--one of these blogs I'll write about the childhood experience with the supernatural that led me to write Every Purpose Under Heaven. I am going to allow myself to be.

I don't think I will wear a t-shirt that says "old and still stupid sometimes," but that's how I feel. I am still learning, still growing, and still making mistakes. Now--about all those assumptions about people in the seventies.

God, Country, and Little Antibiotics

We’ve just come back from a foray into Oregon to see my family in Eugene. This is the second time we’ve made this trip except that this time we weren’t pulling an RV. In fact, neither was anyone else. Where last time, the RVs formed a long continuous line, this time the roads were empty except for local traffic and the usual trucks. Since gas on the coast hovered just beneath $4.50 a gallon, we figured that everyone was staying home to be able to afford the things the trucks were carrying. The welcome center as we entered Oregon confirmed our observation: last year nearly 500 people dropped in for information on July 4; this year there were barely over 200 on the busiest travel day of the year. No wonder people were glad to see us.

Welcome though we were, however, we have learned to be wary in Oregon because that’s where some of our better learning experiences have taken place. Last time, for example, we blew a tire on the RV on July 4 while somewhere outside Pendleton, Oregon. That’s when we learned that the AAA guarantee of 24/7 help has some maybes and only ifs. No one was (or wanted to be anyway) available to come help us. We might have spent a lonely (and dangerous) night parked beside the road if a Samaritan had not come by and helped Sid change the tire. Now we carry a four-ton hydraulic jack in the truck, which probably means that we won’t get stuck with a scissors jack again while parked on a slanted shoulder.

This year the learning continued. Just outside Pendleton, Oregon (again) Sid’s car showed a low tire warning light. It turned out that a rather large screw had worked itself into one of the rear tires. Fortunately, Sid was able to get the car safely to a service center that also sold gasoline. The proprietor was a cheerful man named Carlos whose English was clearly a later acquisition. Since Oregon does not permit self-service gasoline sales, he had to jump up each time someone drove up to a pump. He was already working on replacing a tire on one of the very few RVs we saw so we stood by to watch. The owner turned out to be a police officer from Carson City, Nevada. I was fascinated by the tattoos on the back of his leg. He showed them to me. One was a large St Michael, the patron saint of cops, along with the memorial flag for fallen officers and his own police shield and badge number. They were very artistic and very detailed. “Didn’t that hurt?” I asked him. He nodded and told me that it had taken 6 hours and had needed two sessions. “Were you drunk?” I asked. “No,” he replied, “but a valium helped.” I felt rather old and certainly out of step with the world.

My feeling of dislocation continued after Carlos got us back on the road and we drove into Pendleton. There we visited the Woollen Mills. These are justly famous for fine wool blankets and clothing—an American tradition since 1900, the billboard says—except that most of the garments were made in Thailand, China, and Mexico. The blankets at least said they were made in the US so that’s what I chose.

By then I was starting to think Pendleton to be something of a jinx. It’s just a quiet town with some railroad history, but you can’t tell that by me. The local café was recommended to us for lunch so we drove into Pendleton’s downtown and parked next to the donut shop in the parking area. The café had a certain charm, particularly all the message signs: “”Blessings” carved in a wood as we walked in, with “ASAP: Always Say a Prayer” and “Why Wish When You Can Pray” right next to the cash register. I must admit they went well with the local Travelodge sign which was not flashing vacancy messages but instead “President Bush for Strong Leadership.” That prepared me well for the sign we later saw in Montpelier, Oregon,” which said “Get Us Out of the UN.” I think it must be isolation and the rain.

The best one, though, was our hotel in Bend, Oregon. It’s a beautiful city renowned for outdoor activities and a lot like Boulder, Colorado. It also apparently attracts people born idiots who have worked on their talent. At 3:30 a.m., the fire alarm rang in every room and common area of the hotel. Despite clear warnings about smoking in the rooms, someone lit up. Consequently, we all got up. The offender was quickly identified by the Fire Department and was fined $250.

As we left Oregon this morning, Sid decided to try the radio. All we could find were stations promoting God, country music, and programming in Spanish. Somehow, after listening to a couple in the booth next to us at the cafe discussing the need to cut (castrate) pygmy goats to prevent them from being mean, and after hearing a radio commentator discussing white blood cells as being God’s little antibiotics, I thought that just about summed it up.

Red Rocks rocks

Last night we went to a Colorado Symphony concert at Red Rocks amphitheater. It was a lovely night and we sat high up so we could enjoy the famous sound clarity and the nighttime view of Denver lights once it got dark. The earlier thundershowers had passed on and all we got was a slight sprinkle that brought out an impressive array of rain gear all around us. It was soon taken down as the evening proved itself warm and gentle.

Such perfect nights are things to be remembered and they inevitably recall other magical nights and times. Sid was the only one of us whose memories had been at Red Rocks. He recalled seeing Sammy Davis Jr., Bette Midler and Leonard Bernstein in concert there. We listened raptly to his accounts. Nowadays, Bette Midler costs well over $200 for the nosebleed tickets in Las Vegas and the others, sadly, live on only in our memories.

Sitting on the tiered seats at Red Rocks made me realize that my memories of special places and people, the ones that made me feel that I was participating in history, have been like pearls strung on a necklace. I can count them and I can say of them that at that moment, I felt alive in ways I may not have appreciated at the time but do now. Perhaps because of who I am, those moments have invariably centered around a performing or creative artist.

Van Cliburn comes to mind immediately. I heard him play at the Shell in Hawaii shortly after he had won in Russia for his Tchaikovsky piano concerto. He played it for us. I remember watching this young man with the shock of red hair and hoping that he was not condemned forever to play this one piece—wonderful though it was—for the rest of his life because those of us in the audience needed to share it with him.

Then there was the conductor, Sir Malcom Sargent. My mother took me up to London to hear the Last Night of the Proms (promenades) in the Royal Albert Hall just before we emigrated to Canada. I remember what he played (Elgar and Rimsky-Korsakov) and what he said when he addressed the audience. Years later I met him at the Hawaii British Consulate celebration of the Queen’s Birthday. I told him what he had said and he didn’t remember it. It had been my moment, not his.

The music of Prokoviev invokes the memory of watching Rudoloh Nuyerev dance Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. My mother was alive then. She had joined the Royal Ballet association to get first shot at the tickets. We were center stalls, about eight rows back. Just to hear that music makes me cry now for the beauty of the performace and the memories of both him and her.

Then there was my first real mentor at the University of Hawaii—Leon Edel, whose masterful biography of Henry James won the Pulitzer Prize. He signed my copy of his book as “sensei”—teacher—and told me that I had a major academic career ahead of me. That day I walked on air. Then, there was George Wald, who shared the Nobel Prize in science for his work on the chemistry of vision. He came to speak at a conference I was organizing. I had no idea what to expect of a scientist who had become so celebrated. But it turned out that he had become a mystic as well as a scientist and, later, a friend. All I remember of his speech is that I and the audience were mesmerized by his talk of a knowing universe that wishes to be known.

I suppose what makes these moments memorable is my interpretation of them. I went to them like George Wald's universe: a knowing member of the audience who wished to be transported. But I think there is a common thread. Those performances--and we can all point to things we have been privileged to participate in--represent the best we are capable of as human beings. For a moment, the beauty of music and dance and writing--among other things--overshadows what is merely acceptable, transporting us as observers and enabling us to see far beyond ourselves.

It wasn't the symphony that transported me, though. Wonderful as the 1812 Overture is, it would not have worked without the setting. I know that Red Rocks itself affected me last night because it tied together the rocks, the sky, the music, and distant lights of Denver as no other place. As I count my pearls, I shall include Red Rocks among them.