Stories Told: Lessons From a Storm Part 2

Stories were told. I suspect every disaster has its own folklore that races through the battered towns. Little children rescued from coolers citing women with wings as their saviors, adults flung hundreds of feet only to stand and help their neighbor, five people found in a basement in this town, three people rescued from a basement in another. Each day, without the help of a TV or radio we heard more stories of hope. Each day they brought a smile to our faces.

Humanity needs hope. Most of the time these stories whether partially true, true or truly figments of someone's imagination stoke the embers of hope. They are like a sugar pill, they make tomorrow more bearable and if they are true, all the better.

One story was different. Every disaster or human tragedy has this story. The characters and places are different the message is the same. It is a story of brightly colored, candy coated poison.

A man of faith had been away from his home and when he returned the valley around his home, a place of drug dealers, was decimated. Houses were piles of rubble. His home, his pets, his cars were untouched. My friend's face was enraptured. The tornado had spun out at the bottom of his hill and couldn't make it up.

I smiled and nodded. My stomach cramped and my heart bled, grated raw by the lack of compassion in the story for the families in the valley. Families who most certainly suffered and will continue to suffer for their loss of life and homes.

In a few of my photos there were shots, specific ones that were a rebuttal to this innocent story that poured toxic into my heart from that day forward. Photos of the box labelled "Missions" that was flung from the place on the granite counter top where items were put in to donate, the counter top pulverized. Photos of an inner wall that has, "Every good and perfect gift comes from above." The rest of the house crushed like an egg. Ironic.

I wanted to grab my friend and beg for him to see, there are no favorites. There isn't always reason, not always an answer to impose upon this chaos. Everyone suffers together. We crave black and white yet are gifted with a insipid gray haze. In that dreaded pallid haze, is a place of grace.  It is here that I found humanity grabbed hands, rough hewn and straight laced, broken and whole, deserving and undeserving and struggled to rise above the obliteration of their existence.

But in my abraded heart I still hemorrhage anguish for the callousness of the 'favored' who will never understand the gift of the haze.

The Business of Being Alive

 My expectations are fairly low regarding the mountains of the east and Smokey Mountain National Park did little to raise them. It's still early in the high country, not many leaves or flowers and the pinnacle of a few thousand feet the views were brown. Not horrible, it's hard to imagine being out in the woods and it being horrible ever.  Every place, like nearly every human, has something to appreciate. Something wise to bestow on the person who sits for a short minute of contemplation at its heart.

Dry Falls

On down to Transylvania County.  That's the place to go. Waterfalls that sent sound waves to beat your backbone, roar down gaps in sheer mossy cliffs. Forests that pulled in the mist like a breathy hint of lace and little towns with sweaty, bearded men driving trucks piled with rakes and shoves as well as alabaster skinned men in button down shirts, Italian leather and cars. I saw few women.

Out the Window

Little restaurants could be found, covered in ivy, surrounded by green ponds, lit by candle and owned by people who came looking to run away from the life they had built for themselves and never went back. Gregarious entrepreneurs with more life experience than most have in 100 years and a penchant for kissing the women that visit their place.

Horacio's

Antique shops with brand new merchandise shyly beckon  from nearly every stomach lurching corner. I started to count and then gave up wondering how many people it took to keep these havens of commerce thriving in a place that looks like you leave on vacation and come back to find your shop entombed with vines, centipedes and trees.

Unlike the arid peaks of the west the rain forest of the east crawls and hums with six, eight or hundred legged life all going somewhere and eating something.  On the way back from a warm shower with a tiny button in the wall that you pumped ferociously to get 3 minutes of pressure, I found a centipede with a fringe of tiny yellow legs. These legs moved in a sinusoidal pattern from back to front. All the legs bunched together in one spot as it tickled along the ground and this bunched up spot flowed up its body in a perfect sin wave pattern.  Beautiful in a squirmy sort of way. 

I found direction there.  Purpose for the summer anyway. Another summer of no money. A summer of rice, beans, Ramen Noodles and dreams.  But dreams to chase that I'll never get to chase for years if I don't do it now.  Someday I need to get a real job. Something that will take my soul from 9-5 and give me a decent living in return, but it appears that won't be this summer. I have settled on trying to sell at least three of my stories and perhaps write more to send out.

Lower priority but still a priority is to put my name out to do portrait photography and see what comes to me. Why not? Like the Italian in the little ivy covered restaurant pointed out. You try and if you fail you get down, do two push ups and move on.  I like that. It's true. I have to try.  I may fail but I'll never know if I don't hurtle myself down mountainside taking the challenges as they came.  I prefer landscape/nature photography but why not try, I have the skill and a good camera and I can always stop when I tire of it.

At the top of a mountain one can prepare, mitigate risk, visualize success and enjoy the view but life isn't lived at the top. It's lived either climbing up or hurtling down.  If I try to stay at the top it loses it's ecstasy. The view is made sweeter by the sweat, the agony and the sensuous experience of being physically and mentally engaged in the business of being alive.

- To Shel...

The Cost of a Mistake - Open Ankle Fracture

Eric had a sobering story to tell yesterday and made me really thoughtful. He and Val went with one of their EMS co-workers in Pagosa and his wife rock climbing at X-Rock, on a climb we were on not long ago. This guy really likes climbing and climbs ice and rock. He is quite comfortable with leading and good at it as well. He was leading an easy route, twelve foot high route and placed one piece of pro approximately half way up the route. As he came 4 foot from the top of the climb he peeled off and fell. Who would have thought but his pro pulled and he fell to the bottom.

Eric and Val saw the pro fling from the crack as he went skidding by. But it wasn't until his wife yelled did they realize that he had been hurt.

Quickly they ran up to her and found him with an open fracture of both his tibia and fibula (both bones sticking out the side of his ankle). He hopped out with the help of his wife, Eric and Val and rode to the hospital and 2 hr orthopedic surgery by his step mother-in-law. How long until he recovers? No one knew last night. One person with that kind of break can't stand/walk for more than four hours...even years after the accident.

Thank God (and I mean Thanks be to God) that he wore his helmet.

Sobering. When I talked to Eric he and Val were going out to dinner. They couldn't go any place fancy cause he still had blood on his pants. Wasted blood. Preventable blood. What if? What if he placed more pro? What if he had placed it differently? What if...? Somewhat futile questions. he made a mistake, a boo boo, a slip up (no pun intended) maybe two...easy mistakes to make.

Really I cannot blame him for his mistake. It is a mistake climber's die for every day. It is the mistake of comfort, experience and over-confidence. It is a mistake that could have been me, it was an easy climb after all, it could have been my brother, our friend Jesse or Kris, Thad, Kim...it could have been you. So don't blame him. Look inward, don't scoff at our friend because he made a mistake. Check your attitude and on your next climb (or other adventure)...think about the result of a mistake and decide if it is worth months of lost work, a lifetime of lost outdoor experiences, a lifetime puffed out with the slip of a rock, a hand or a foot.

It made me look inward. It reminded me of the stakes that I play with when I climb and the results of a simple mistake. It reminded me why I enjoy climbing, it tests you not only physically but it tests you mentally as well. What a sport. Take chances but THINK about the risks and the things you can do to lessen those risks.