The Northeast Arete

Part One: It took me five years and becoming a raven before I was ready to climb the mountain my husband died on.

Image by Jackson Negri

It took me five years before I was ready to climb the mountain my husband died on. Somedays it feels like I’ll need 20 to accurately express this experience through words. Certainly one language can’t encompass all, I need a few. Actually, maybe just the universal language we all speak, undivided by boundaries, connected by heart. Forget the curves of all of these letters. Just feel. Will you meet me out there? On the mountain? I could show you around, the mountain could do the talking.

How do we articulate the profound moments of our lives? The ones that reside within our pumping chest chambers? Do we share the before, the during, or the after? Is the climax of this story death or summitting or when I become a raven? You could become a raven with me. Maybe our throaty cacaws could express the guttural depth of love and loss. Like the time Travis, my husband, and I shed these earthly skins and flew to Mount Cowen together on black wings. It was not long after he died. He made me into a raven so I could watch the accident with him by my side. We flew to the arete and I watched a rock, larger than a car, smaller than a bus, detach from the line. Fall. I watched Travis fall with the rock. Poppi what did you think when you fell? Did my love come and speak to you in all the languages? I would learn all the words in all earth’s languages to try to tell you how much I love you.

Could you hear me over the cataclysmic sound of rocks crushing into rocks?

What would I have done if I was there?

Would I have just jumped after you?

Travis made me into a raven after he died so I could fly and watch, so I could understand that there was no choice in his actions. Did Travis save another when the rock let go? He was always saving someone. He showed me that we are made out of the same celestial cloth and that I would have done the exact same thing as him. My insecurities want to yell that I wasn’t chosen but I know that’s not truth. Being made from that same star cloth, meant we understood one another to the core. Knowing Trav, was learning me. Part of my relationship with Cowen was letting go of insecurities and anger. Which meant feeling them first. Hello. Goodbye.

When Trav was alive, I told him that I loved him. Him. Not my idea of him. Not the idea of him existing next to me. But, him. Just perfect amazing unbelievable him. I loved a man who loved the mountains. I never asked him to not go to those sacred spaces. I would never ask him to not be him. The man I loved. I am drawn to the ones with a deep thirst of life. Attracted. This ephemeral drink they pursue can be found in the heart of mountains. Sip. Taste. Become. We can taste on mountain edges. If we’re willing. If we listen. Some mountains ask us to be more than we have ever been, how do we respond? Do we become even more alive? Do we pull from the depths of self to be more than we have ever been. Because, it was asked of us. Trav asked those things of me too, he was like a mountain, it made me feel more alive. More me. He asked those questions of me because he asked them of himself first. He was my mountain, my thirst, my becoming.

I love men and women that must sip this life force. They make me feel like the map of life keeps expanding. Sometimes, they gulp. I am drawn to these connesouirs of depth. Their heart chambers are a drum that call. Boom. Boom. Maybe that’s all the words it takes to express the greatest life force. Boom boom. Why is this beat found so close to death? Which means to life. Which means to death. An ouroboros. Shed the skin. Become anew. Again and again and again. There’s another mountain to experience. Maybe it’s within.

Einfühlung is a German word meaning “feeling into.” It refers to the act of projecting oneself into another. Read carefully: into not onto. Please don’t project onto me, enter my heart, go to the sacred land, and climb the mountain. To feel. To climb beside the greatest love and the greatest loss I can know. Einfühlung is the idea that we can enter a tree and sit and sit and sit and better understand what the tree sees, through their eyes, not our own. It is the origin for the English word empathy. Empathy, the medicine, the tonic of all relationships. Empathy, the ability to know that we do not know but that we care. Empathy, the heart of all human connection.

Please enter my left chamber. Boom boom.

Trav loved Cowen. He loved her northeast arete. A stunning distinct line. The mountain is tucked away, you have to know where to look to see her. Remote but close to home. It’s a 10 mile approach to the base of the climb, past magic trees, alpine lakes, down snowfields, and up loose rock couloirs. The arete is one thousand feet of fourth and fifth class climbing. A few 5.6 and 5.4 moves if we use the language of climbing. She is truly stunning. And, the only way to be in her presence is through effort, connection, and listening. Trav climbed her many times before we were together, many times while we were together, and he laid his soul down with her when he died.

A couple of years after the accident, I sat across from Cowen, in one of the few spots you can see that distinct and stunning arete. Hi, Cowen, it’s me, Blair. I sat across from her, stayed open, dissolved parts of myself that prevent me from seeing, feeling, what is always there. I sat bare in front of her and asked nothing. Inhale. Exhale. Slowly, I began to see the blue lines that connect us all. Since I could see the blue lines, the tree people trusted me, so they moved the trees on the mountain into a very particular order, a new order, this took some time and I felt fortunate to bear witness. To see. The new order of trees unlocked the gate to the mountain and her spirit rushed out. Her mountain spirit flew out with alacrity, across the canyon and straight to me. In an instant we met nose to nose. Eyes level. Her spirit and mine. She was dark. Large. Gossamer. I didn’t blink. We met one another face to face in the dark and light space between the blue lines. I didn’t flinch, I didn’t move. Level chin. Straight back. The tree people watched. I understood why people were afraid of her when I saw her. Why I had been. Her being. Her face. Her soul. Dark and strong. But not malicious. She wasn’t hurtful. She just was. Mountain. Mount. Spirit. I wasn’t afraid but not in the human self-postulating way. I wasn’t afraid because the blue lines connected us and she was stunning. Plus, her and I, we share Travis. Who could know me better than her? I guess she met me too that day. I wonder what she saw?

Travis asked me to climb Cowen with him so many times I lost track, I always said, “No.” We climbed many special mountains together, many I couldn’t even fathom climbing until we were doing them side by side. For 10 years though, I said no to Cowen. I think part of my soul knew.

Trav knew too. A dream brought it forward for the first time in January 2019. He woke up and said, “I think there is going to be a huge call on Cowen this year, I feel it deep in my soul.” Snow fell outside. Words fell on my heart. What did I say back? How many more times did he say it throughout the year? Does death whisper to us? Or, does life? By July, he was resolved. He had been a Lead on the Mountain Search and Rescue Teams in the county for 17 years. He decided to climb again with eyes and intent on how to best execute this challenging and remote call that he felt was coming.

The wind blew. A leaf landed. A shift occurred. A crack went all the way through. When does a rock decide to leave a mountain? When does a soul decide to leave a body?

The call Trav felt in his soul, it was his own. A massive boulder sheared off the face. He fell 400 feet. “ROCK!” his last guttural cry left his soul. Was time fast or slow?

Where are you, Trav? Where did you go? Cacaw! Can you hear me? Please find me. Let me find you.

I had to swim in an ocean of feeling before I was ready to climb Cowen. I had to cry every day for years. Sweat through bedsheets. I had to lose 15lbs and gain 15lbs and etch my face in lines. I had to handle the estate and a pandemic and do the Teton Picnic with friends. I had to take pictures and write. I had to bury my cat and my dog, my saving graces. And, learn goodbye all over again. Goodbye, family. I had to work. I had to swim across the sky and enter my own heart and meet a goat on Granite Peak to climb together. I had to leave anger behind. I had to die everyday just to be born anew. Again and again and again. Just like all of us.

Does the past or does the future lead us onward? Is it a hello or a goodbye? Everything we experience makes us who we need to be, who we are asked to become.

I wanted to just write about the climb but I can’t without the story before. The preface. Classic me, afraid of taking up too much space. Cowen was an intimate part of my life for 15 years before I climbed her. Trav and I even took our engagement pictures in front of her. Is it too blatant to mention irony? What about fate? We are standing there, fitting so perfectly together, with eyes forward looking towards the life we are creating together. We don’t know that the ending is right behind us. And, how close it is.

Image by Stacy Townsend

I needed to meet Cowen before I climbed her. She asked more of me than anyone had ever asked before. I needed to become the person that could go there.

Maybe she needed to meet me too.

Thank you for reading and for flying with us. Part Two: Climbing Cowen to come.