Descending to Ascend: Rockfall, Water & Cowen
Part Two: Climbing the Mountain my husband died on.
The preface here is important to me: my 15 year relationship and spiritual connection to Mount Cowen can be found in Part One. Please read first for the full story.
“It would be really fun to bring Blair here,” either Joey or Jackson let the words fall through their lips. Their heart. Let the universe move through them. Where do words come from? Is it volition or is it cosmic connection simply flowing through? The J’s were sitting on the summit of Cowen via the Northeast Arete on July 14, 2023 when they first spoke those words— they’d climbed the route every year since Trav, my husband, their dear friend, died. This was the first time they’d ever spoken that particular idea out loud, “It would be fun to bring Blair up here.” I know “fun” might not be the word everyone uses but it’s the one Joey, Jackson, and I would. We’re each somewhere on The Spectrum and connect deeply from our own unique hills of weird beautiful intricacies. We don’t jump to conclusions or assumptions based on our own hill, we see one another’s spot. What a thing it is to be understood. Seen. Accepted. Loved. It would be fun to bring Blair here.
Those words left an esophagus, then mouth, and then began a journey outward. How do words travel across space when there aren’t mouths to hold or ears to hear them? Do words ripple out or do they flow in a river?
I was running across the valley from them, looking up at the stunning Arete line to the summit. I knew Joey and Jackson were there, which meant Trav was there but he was also with me. He was with a lot of folks that day. It was four years to the day since he died along the same route. My longing for him just the same as it has ever been. I kept running and then I thought for the very first time, “Maybe I do want to climb Cowen.”
Did I say it first? Or did they?
Is there an intangible network for words to flow across space? How many times have you thought of someone, only to have the phone ping because they were thinking of you too? How do we reach between the wires, through veils, across miles? Were Trav, Joey, Jackson and I all conversing up there even though we were realms apart? Whatever that language is, is the one I want to learn.
At some point, months later after I worked up the courage, I finally admitted my wish to Joey and Jackson. “I think I do want to go up there.” For almost 15 years I had admittedly said “No” to climbing Cowen. And then one day it changed. “Blair! We had the same exact idea when we climbed this year!”
We were already in motion, moving towards the mountain together.
Joey is Trav’s person. His climbing partner. If you climb, you know the depth of those words. You know the physical and ethereal that connects them soul to soul. They were also Search and Rescue partners, bandaging and caring for regular and extraordinary traumas daily. They often didn’t need any words to communicate out there, climbing a mountain to explore or climbing to rescue someone. Some days they brought home the body of a loved one when there was no rescue to perform, only a recovery. Joey and Trav went to many edges together in 15 years of deep partnership.
Jackson was only 24 years old when he climbed Cowen with Travis. His mentor. His guide. His friend. A person and life he admired so deeply. Jackson was the last person to hear Trav’s guttural scream, “ROCK!” as the massive rock left the mountain. When did Trav realize the enormity of what was happening? What other words did his heart say? I love you too, Trav. Jackson was the one to hear Trav fly down the mountain alongside the rock. Sometimes it isn’t the sounds of words we hold in our hearts, sometimes it’s the sounds of life and death. Becoming and unbecoming. How do we learn to hold all that we hear? The weight of the day was too heavy, Jackson too young to be forever changed. And, yet, loss asks us to simultaneously become and unbecome. He has done so with bravery, strength, integrity, and tenderness.
Joey, Jackson, and Trav were (are) members of SAR’s Heli, Alpine, and Posse mountain rescue teams. Trav and Jackson had gone to Cowen the day of the accident to come up with a plan to perform a rescue Trav felt was coming on the mountain. There’s a call coming on, Cowen, Blair. I need to be ready for it. Did the universe whisper? How did those words reach his heart? He heard. A part of him knew. He just didn’t know it was his call.
My relationship to Joey and Jackson is sacred in my life. We have our bonds before Travis died and we have our bonds after he died. The three of us have this ability to not just bring back parts of Travis through memories, stories, and mannerisms but we also have the ability to bring back parts of ourselves we lost when he died. One of the gifts of moving in the mountains, isn’t just the experience of the space outward but also the space inward. I learned myself as I learned the mountains. I learned safe relationships with others covering mountain ground together. To be successful as a team means knowing your strengths and weaknesses, means being honest, vulnerable, and encouraging. Means moving with integrity and humility, not assumptions or ego. It means asking questions. I can ask them anything and they can ask me anything. Jackson and Joey give me back parts of myself as we explore together. We are a team. They take me farther into the mountains than I could go on my own and I am deeply changed by these experiences. I become and unbecome too.
This presence, these experiences help me connect with the wonder and awe of life. As with all the people I admire, the mountains have never been about conquest to the four of us, they have been about communion. I don’t want to lose Trav and also lose these special moments. Trav was my mountain guide. The J’s help me rediscover, help me rebuild parts of myself that I am not ready to abandon. They help me feel alive again out on my own mountain edges. A day shared out there is sustenance that helps me make it through the seemingly-benign-but-racked-with-loss regular everyday days. I am alive because of this nourishment.
“Ummm I feel like Metallica would be more appropriate,” Joey said as we drove through the dark morning. We were up reeeeal early to make the drive in the dark during a Montana summer when the sun rises around 4:30am. As we drove to the trailhead, watching stars above the mountain ranges, my classically morose playlist was playing and Joey noticed. Metallica is much more Trav. We switched and turned the stereo up to 11. Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire! Rang through our ears, it was Trav’s and my processional song from our wedding. We sang. We smiled. We drove. We prepared.
I didn’t tell anyone, except Mark (my current partner), what we were doing. The only person who knew I was going to climb Cowen sometime that summer was Meesh, my soul sister, but I didn’t even tell her the day we were going. I tell her everything. E v e r y t h i n g. I didn’t want one person to worry about us. I didn’t want to ask anyone to hold any more weight. We all hold so much. Family and friends all experienced something incredibly traumatic when Trav died. He was the saver, he always saved others in the mountains, he is who we called for help, but then he died, and we all had to try and make sense of it. Trav’s nickname was, “Golden Heart,” because of his ethos because of his care. Our precessional song at our wedding was “Heart of Gold” by Neil Young. I found you, Love, but I am still searching for you. Trav was 33 when he died. Bursting with life. And then he was dead. Gone. Forever.
When someone dies, each person left earthbound goes through their own obliteration, their own deaths and births in navigating the ocean of loss. In those internal deaths, new neural pathways are formed, some help us survive, some do not help us thrive. All pathways take time and energy to build. I didn’t want to contribute to any new buzzy stress neural pathways for anyone. I know how I can get caught in a loop of anxious worry and I didn’t want another person getting caught in one. It is so hard to step out of ingrained neural pathways. Some of the internal paths I have built since Trav died have helped me survive but they haven’t helped me live. So I didn’t speak, I didn’t share, I just went.
No one needed to worry any more than they already do about me. But there was another layer to my silence. Intentionally and thoughtfully, I couldn’t be connected to anyone else’s worry or fear. I couldn’t have any cords attached to me, connecting me to someone else’s perceptions or buzzy stress. I am sensitive to other’s feelings, cords, connection. I needed to save all of me for Cowen. Some mountains ask us to be more than we have ever been, to be our true and fullest self. The person I needed to be to climb where my husband died couldn’t carry an ounce of anyone else’s weight. She couldn’t hear anyone else’s words. My own weight laced with grief and love and loss, a golden heart, his best friends, and my own tender broken broken-open strong and soft heart was all that I could carry. No tethers. No cords. No shared emotional sinews.
I needed to be free.
“.69 is your change,” the cashier said to me as I checked out at the grocery store the day before we climbed. I was buying treats for Joey, Jackson, and I, many of the goodies were Trav’s favorites: Peanut Butter MnMs, Gummy Bears, a few beers for the boys for after. (Trav once climbed Cowen with only three pounds of sour gummy worms as fuel). I laughed as she told me the change and I knew, without expectation, that we were supposed to go to Cowen. 69 is one of my Signs for Trav.
Thunderstorms are another and one erupted midday, when I got home from the store. Crack! Bam! Thunder, lightning, and a torrential downpour erupted unannounced in the middle of a dry spell. It was 95 degrees. Another sign. I hear you, Love. I am going.
And also, ravens. Always ravens. I’ve seen a raven nearly every day since Trav died. We’ve become ravens together. (Read: Part One). As I walked up my stairs to my bedroom the night before the climb, I heard a sharp “Cacaw.” I smiled. Cacaw! escaped my own lips as I continued to walk up and past a window, there on my neighbor’s roofline a big black bird looking back at me. Yes, we’re supposed to go. I hear you.
If you’ve lost someone you can’t lose, you know about Signs. I didn’t know until I lost Trav. Before he died I judged others that talked about Signs. We often judge experiences we’ve never had thinking that we can predict our learning. Our unlearning. I had to learn a new language after Trav died. Signs became profound, whispers of words that could no longer be said. The change, the thunder, the raven all on the day before made me feel connected and supported. I knew we were supposed to go but what is equally important to me is: that didn’t mean I knew we’d climb the mountain. That didn’t mean I thought we had a right on that day to summit. That didn’t mean I picked up a pack of expectation or requests or obligation to the mountain for us. Even though Travis laid his soul bare on that peak, she still didn’t owe me anything. Just because I heard we were supposed to go didn’t mean I felt we had a right to summit. It just meant we were on the right path.
To me, it felt like Cowen gave consent for us to walk there in her own language. Signs can be a means of listening. We are our most lonely around someone who doesn’t listen. Can’t listen. Are the mountains the same? The trees? The rocks? Do they feel unseen when all we bring is ego and conquest? Do they feel seen when we walk without expectation? Our intent was communion not conquest, Cowen made no promises but she did say, you can come here and have your experience. I speak of mountains as if they are spirits and I believe that because I have met them. But, I don’t believe they’re malevolent or hand-selecting who gets to pass and who doesn’t. Cowen didn’t want to kill Travis. She was a mountain. Cowen didn’t want to let us pass. She was a mountain.
Jackson, Joey, and I began an easy jog up the trail in the dark, our headlamps illuminating a small corridor through the foliage of trees. We move so fluidly together. We have experienced so much together. You know those friends that are refuges for you because they accept you in all moments? Bring your ecstasy, bring your pain, bring your anger, bring your fear, bring your insecurity, insight, and intuition, bring your love, your silliness, and full soul laughter, I will listen to it all. That’s Jackson and Joey to me. People can get upset about how you grieve when they’ve never experienced what you’ve lost. That’s human. That’s OK. But that’s not a refuge. Joey and Jackson have always accepted me. Always celebrated me being me. That’s what I hope to give back to them.
A couple years after Trav died, Jackson was raw and vulnerable with me. Human. Stunningly human. He told me that I saved his life. What?! How? He told me the fear he experienced walking up my bedroom stairs to see me for the first time after Trav fell. Did a raven Cacaw then too? He spoke of how much guilt he carried for having climbed ahead of Trav. He thought maybe it would have been different if they’d been climbing side by side. Guilt can be like water, especially for climbing partners, if you try to hold it in your creviced hands it falls down onto you. I reminded Jackson of Trav’s deep sense of autonomy and agency, no one told Travis what to do, he walked his own path. But guilt like water on rocks slips easily into the cracks and depths of the soul. Crevasses form. Sometimes it comes in downpours, sometimes in a constant, subtle dribble. When Jackson reached the top of my stairs that day, he took a breath and then entered my room. Brave. And tender. I reached for him, wrapped myself around him and just said on repeat, “I’m so glad you’re OK.”
I am so glad you’re OK.
I am so glad you’re OK.
I am so glad you’re OK.
I am so glad you’re OK.
I am so glad you’re OK.
What those words meant to him. Can you hear his care? Can you hear his courage? Can you hear my love? I am so glad he is OK.
But, I was swimming in the ocean of my own grief following that moment, I didn’t see the rain on Jackson, the downpour or the sleet, the constant drip drip drip of years of holding this weight of water. I didn’t see the water slipping into cracks where it didn’t belong. I was drowning.
But, a day came and Jackson told me about the storm. And all of a sudden I could see anew. I could see a man I love standing in front of me more clearly. How did I miss the strength of this storm? I told him he didn’t need to carry that water any longer. Open your hands, Jackson, drop the water. Please don’t try to hold it any longer. Give it back to the earth. She can hold it. You don’t have to. We talked and talked and talked. Words. Heart. Refuge. You don’t need to carry this, Jackson. He heard me, those words meant something deep to us both, but also, sometimes words are just words until they become action.
Light starts to crest the hills around us as we leave the tree corridor and hike into the open meadow. We walk, we jog, we turn off our headlamps. We all know this trail so well. Eventually we make it to Elbow Lake and this ends where I’ve been before and begins where I have never been. There’s no more designated trail. I immediately feel more free. We move past beautiful alpine lakes, lupine, trees, and the steep and massive wall beneath the Cowen Cirque. The J’s begin to point out places to me, “There’s the LZ” (landing zone for the helicopter). That’s where they flew back and forth to perform rescues and recoveries. Part of me can see the day through imagination. Intuition. Part of me will never see it all.
As soon as we’re off the beaten path, I begin to understand why Travis loved this place so much. Such beauty and adventure so close and also far from home. A wild and stunning world. I told The J’s that experiencing Cowen was like getting to meet another woman that Travis loved. But without betrayal or insecurity or or or. Like getting to meet Trav’s mystic, muse, land of life force. A depth of intimacy and learning. Hi, Cowen, it’s me, Blair. Experiencing Cowen was like getting to experience Trav again for a little while, I know his soul because we share one and getting to walk in that wilderness was like getting to walk beside Trav again. I see why you loved it here, Poppi. I see you there and there and there. I can hear you too.
We fill up our water flasks at the last lake. The NE Arete filling our lens, she is massive. My first glimpse at her this close. Austere, bold, beautiful. I have witnessed her from so many angles across this state. The first time we climbed Granite Peak again after Trav died, Joey, Jackson, and I summitted and the first thing I saw as I crested the last pitch was the NE Arete of Cowen. Every time I run Baldy there she is. When I drive to work in Paradise Valley, Hello, Arete. I have seen her so many times and now I stood below her. A small human looking up at her own life and love and loss.
We descend a snow field, navigating lots of loose rock. You must descend before you can ascend Cowen. How universal. This would be enough to paralyze younger Blair in fear. But, I’ve changed. And today, I’m not just Blair, I’m Trav too. We cross massive boulders, how did they get here? They fell. We walked on. We climb up a couloir filled with more loose rocks and each of us takes a line adjacent to one another to avoid knocking rocks down onto anyone. Soon we are standing at the start of the NE Arete, Trav’s Girl. Trav’s other girl. And I get to learn her.
I was open to feeling and open to releasing those feelings however they came up naturally within me. If that meant crying or turning around or or or anything, I was fine with that. Since I didn’t walk with expectation I just felt free to be. For me, I felt like I was finally the person that Trav always saw within me, the person that I couldn’t always believe in. He saw the universe within me, that I could climb and write and love and be all that could be dreamed up. He was my greatest supporter. I didn’t always know how to believe in her, he helped teach me. On Cowen, with Joey, Jackson, and Trav, I was the most real version of myself, not hindered by self doubt or cultural not-enough-ness. Nothing to prove, everything to experience. The mountain accepted me like the boys accepted me. And I accepted myself.
As we stood there on the saddle, Jackson pointed out the massive rock slice left in the mountain, where Trav fell, where he laid to rest. My love. Joey pointed out the path of the massive rock and how it hurled itself all the way down a turn in the couloir to rest at the bottom of the snow field. Just like the giant boulders we’d climbed across on the other side. When does a rock decide to let go of a mountain? I engrained these physical locations into my soul because it is more of the story of Trav. He is all that he did, felt, thought, became and he is all the places that he went, and all the people that he loved. I don’t want to miss a part of him. I want to know all of him. I want to know what he saw and how he felt and who he loved. I don’t want to miss an ounce of Travis. I am still searching for you, Golden Heart.
Trav had the ability to elicit so much from my soul. He taught me what true safety and love felt like and he taught me everything I knew about moving in the mountains. He was a magician pulling out the best parts of me and gifting them to us, to this world, to myself. Mountains can be magicians too, they can ask us to be more than we have ever been and we have to rise to the occasion. They ask us to be humble and also strong, to listen, to be, to bow. The J’s and I bowed.
If I had cried then, that would have been accepted and appropriate. But, a part of me knew that it wasn’t the space to walk into right then. I wanted to keep experiencing Cowen and I knew I had to give my all in the current realm and space, not past, not future, just present. I needed to walk a new pathway. So I didn’t cry. I didn’t ruminate. I didn’t worry. I climbed.
We crossed an incredibly loose couloir, the one where Trav laid to rest, come with us, Poppi. I will climb for you. We can finish this route together. We put on our harnesses and began to climb up the Arete. Joey and Jackson always climb this section without rope, it’s completely within their wheelhouse. My mind needed the rope, not my body, and I’m ok with that. One of them would lead, set anchor, the other would solo up, and I would climb on rope up to the anchor. They’d switch who led, who soloed, back and forth. We flowed. The Arete is stunning, of course, ironically having the best and most stable rock of the whole day. We worked our way up. How many pitches? 10? 12? Who knows, we were beyond numbers. We listened to rocks, to ravens, to one another. I felt strong. I felt grateful to be there.
Do you hear us, Trav?
I had the chance to climb the Arete I have obsessively turned my eyes and heart towards for five years. I touched the same rock that Trav touched. I climbed over the place where a rock decided to let go and with it, my love, my husband, my heart went with it. How do I live without you, Trav? I see why you loved it here. I miss you. On the thin line of the Arete there were thousands of feet of relief to my left and thousands of feet of relief to my right. I climbed. Remember when it took me over a year to climb to the top of the climbing gym on top rope, Poppi?! Are you proud?
There we were climbing, or maybe flying, up. Joey, Trav’s best friend, the man who flew in on shorthaul below a helicopter the day of the accident, who cared for and prepared his best friend’s body, and then flew out beside him. Jackson who shared the time and space of Trav’s soul splitting from here to there. Me, his wife, his soulmate, his love. There we were three black dots moving up the mountain together. What words can honor this movement?
In part one of this writing, I talk of when Trav and I became ravens and we flew around the Arete. How Trav let me witness the accident as a raven. A raven could hold the loss when my human self couldn’t. Climbing the Arete felt similar, like I was up there in all that sky flying next to Trav, Joey and Jackson joining us. Maybe we’ve always been blackbirds together. Cacaw! We flew into another realm here on earth and it was just the four of us and our broken broken-open hearts together again.
It was fun.
With one pitch of the Arete left, another rock left the mountain. Larger than a softball, smaller than a bowling ball and magnetically headed straight for me. Jackson and I had both voted to carry no helmets with the 22 mile round trip, Joey had voted for them but joined us bare-headed as a Team often works together. Judge that decision if you’d like. There are plenty of opportunities to judge how we each walk in the world. I was reminded immediately of when Trav and I climbed Teewinot and a group ahead of us knocked a suitcase size rock down towards us. Trav made his body as small as possible somehow, turning sideways and changing physics and the rock flew down inches from him. I was amazed. I heard Trav right away as the rock moved towards me on Cowen. “Make yourself small, protect yourself.” I flung myself against the mountain and lifted my right arm over my head immediately. Protect your skull. The rock hit me in the ribs below my upraised arm and then continued down the mountain. It hurt and I also knew I was OK. Nothing broken. I can only imagine how Joey and Jackson felt in this moment as they both had a clear view of me. I shouted that I was OK. I am so glad that you’re OK. But I stayed slumped against the mountain for a while. Collecting myself.
It honestly felt appropriate to me though. Mountains are sacred and spirits and they can help bring out the best parts of us (if we let them) and they’re also mountains. Subject to wind and rain, gravity and sun, they are mountains and they ask us to remember our humility. Our humanness. If we only ever move through controlled environments we lose touch with the true environment of our stunning natural world. If we only move through controlled environments we forget our humanness and lean farther and farther into our hubris and ego. The natural world reminds me of how strong and also how delicate I am. We all are. It makes me value this vulnerable and extraordinary soul pod and the soul that resides within it. It helps me appreciate all souls.
We finished the last pitch to the summit, climbing through the keyhole (portal), single file. We sat up there in the sun and placed the .69 and Trav’s ashes at the top. Ceremony. Ritual. I got to see the world from a place Trav loved in the deepest part of his soul. I sat beside two of his greatest friends and my soul connection men. We climbed with all of the weight and none of the weight. We climbed with all that we are, were, and will become. I got to finish the route with Trav, he wanted to climb it together our entire relationship. Cacaw, Poppi! Fly free!
We descended via the standard route which is just crumbling rock and snowfields, I felt much less secure this way than I had on the Arete. At some point, Jackson noticed the blood seeping through my white shirt at my rib cage and I felt more validated for how much the rock hit hurt. I don’t know, it felt like a microscopic connection to Trav’s experience. When does a rock decide to let go of a mountain? The J’s would stop and look up at me, helping to guide me down as I’d always much rather move upwards than downwards but sometimes you have to descend after you ascend.
At some point we were back at the truck.
Morphing back from ravens to our regular soul pods.
“Let’s get dinner!” Joey drove us back to town and we let Mark know that we were safe and heading back towards him. Mark had asked if he could drive us to the trailhead in the morning or meet us there when we were done. I said “No” to both. Those decisions can be judged too, if you’d like. But, Mark understood. No tethers, no weight at the bottom of the mountain freed us to move above. He understood and supported. Mark was one of the most experienced and stunning alpinists of our time, he understood beyond words, through experience. Afterwards we were ready to share our special day with him, a shared table, more nourishment, communion.
We left the realm of ravens, portals, and an Arete and arrived back into the world of the everyday when we sat down at the restaurant. We recanted our adventure to Mark. After we shared the details of the day and eyes welled with tears, Jackson went on to express a depth of the experience. Sometimes it takes years before you can reach within the source of all words and share them and sometimes words just flow immediately. Jackson naturally and quickly brought words forth and articulated beautifully. He reminded me of the moment a few years prior when he finally told me about the guilt he carried, the storm, how I reassured him with words that he didn’t need to try and hold all that weight. Open your hands, Jackson. Let the water go, it was never yours to hold.
And yet, I understand why you held. I see you. I love you. Let it go, let it flow.
I had used words to express my love and support of him. But what Jackson went on to express was the power of action. I had vocalized my heart to him but what Jackson was putting together in time and saying was, when I let him lead me across the same exact spot where Travis fell and died, I was communicating my love and support not through words but through action. Climbing was a physical bond of trust. My words reflected my heart reflected my action and Jackson felt seen, loved, valued. As he should.
I trust you, Jackson. I will show you how much I do. Take me to where my husband died. I will follow you. Please, hold me, not the water.
Jackson communicated that a part of him couldn’t hold the depth of those words until he experienced the power of action behind them. He didn’t realize that until we had climbed together, I didn’t either. We can’t predict our learning. Our unlearning.
Words and actions are both powerful. They can bring us together or tear us apart. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to speak and to act, we aren’t always given these opportunities. We don’t always seize these opportunities.
Joey, Jackson, and I, we came together and we got to climb with Trav again because we went open and bare. We went to experience Cowen together. We went to experience one another together.
“Nothing to prove, everything to experience.”
And for a little while, we got to fly again.
Cacaw!
Always thank you. Please keep writing.
❤️❤️❤️🫀🫀🫀💛💛💛🐦⬛🐦⬛🐦⬛