A story of the mountain, limerence, love and shame

Part 1 of 4

Short story: Stranded hikers rescued from Mount Hosmer

Long story:

Part 1: The Mountain

There are many variables to consider. The newest one I don’t notice at first but once I do it’s all I can think about. My shoulders are burning. I pat back with my hand, confirming that yes, my skin is on fire. I look at my thighs half-expecting them to break out in blisters, sizzling. I have a stupid idea – today is the day of stupid ideas – to lick my palm and spread the spit onto my shoulders to cool them. Instead I spread it onto my furnace forehead and quickly wipe it off. For a split second my forehead feels nice. But this is not just about my body overheating – this is about remaining conscious. Because, the thing is, I cannot move into the shade. 

“How long in the sun before you get a heatstroke?” I sift through my former-girl-scout mind-thesaurus where I keep poison ivy, amphibians, tying knots or gathering appropriate firewood but where there isn’t too much about heat strokes. I do remember dizziness, headache, and rapid heartbeat. But what to do about it in my situation has probably gotten replaced with the lifecycle of a Carpathian newt – in other words, I have no idea. For now, I don’t have a headache and my heartbeat is surprisingly steady. But I am really feeling the sun beating down on my skin. I am dizzy too although that could be “just” vertigo – every time I look at what’s in front of me, it’s as if I am about to lurch forward. And if I look down it gets worse, the rocky “trail” we climbed here, from this vantage, seems as welcoming as an elevator shaft. 

I think about people on falling planes and hostages of school shooters sending messages to loved ones, their agonizing decisions that require them to acknowledge their situation and the most likely outcome. What should I say to my 10-year-old? Mommy loves you. 

(How would this go? Mommy loves you. 

♡ U 2 how r u

Great! I’m sorry.

bout what?)

I don’t know how much time I have before I become delirious from heatstroke, lose consciousness.  I cannot gauge how serious this is. I don’t know if I’m overreacting or if I’m being too nonchalant. The whole day oscillates between grave and comical. Is this an adventure or is this death?

“Don’t look,” I scold myself but one more time, quickly glance back at the mountain’s green peak behind a wave of evergreens in front of me and feel something like a distant hum in my chest. An ancient sound that’s not a sound. I don’t know how else to explain it but if I tell you the mountain is talking to me, you’d think I did have a heatstroke and I know I don’t.  I’ve been communing with the mountain for a while now; its massive presence is giving me god feelings. I don’t know when I’m going to have to finalize our agreement but my fear has turned into a strange calmness that washes over me every time I speak to the mountain. The biggest dilemma I have is about Mommy loves you. I know the time hasn’t come yet but I don’t know if it’s close. I am starting to understand some things. About life and death. 

The day is perfect, not a cloud in the sky. In the distance more mountains – green but with patches of clearcutting that look like stripped skin – and more trees. Down and to my right there’s the golden halo of Angie’s hair above her exposed shoulders with a red racerback dividing them and making it burningly obvious that she too is frying in the middle of the bush she managed to scoot down to earlier. This sight brings a little normalcy to this situation but also, the same sight signals that we are fucked, me and Angie. Sitting in the bush, out here in the mountains, she is a thing that doesn’t quite belong. Neither do I, on rope-like thick roots that I razed my ass down to, against gravel and rocks. 

In the beginning, Angie and I were together and higher up. We were both panting, the last half-an-hour spent in an impromptu race towards the peak. The steeper the trail, the faster we went. I was ahead of her, grasping onto roots, pulling myself up, using bigger rocks to step on. The more exertion, the more I pushed through it, Angie following close behind me. Earlier we joked that this was almost like rock-climbing, an activity which even Angie – who lived in these mountains – hasn’t done. The “trail” became steeper and steeper. 

We had one agreement in regards to our outing. Angie, who is an experienced hiker, told me it was hard for her to gauge what would be extreme – for someone like me – having done this hundreds of times. I was the city girl here with muscles trained on staircases and stationary bike at home, climbing mountains wasn’t the gym I was familiar with. Angie joked, Just let me know if you feel like you’re going to die. 

Okay, I said because I like dark jokes, and I like shorthands. 

I didn’t think much about dying or not dying while gunning towards the peak where there was supposed to be a clearing and a trail back – we got sidetracked by the fake one which is why we’d found ourselves in trouble. Even before that, two young women with a large dog passed us by.  Although we hadn't admitted to it at the time, that pissed us off, motivated us to finish this trek and we sped up, half-wanting to catch up with them, intending to pass them back to show them who was really the winner¹.  Their sweet, breezy “hello” mocked us – it was not a greeting but rather a dare. 

Hello, I panted, my (secretly) hungover body aching in places I didn’t know were a part of a muscular system.  I looked back at Angie and a look passed between us. 

Generously we let them gain on us and then we followed them, except we didn’t. Because somehow along the way, we made the wrong turn. Things are weird in the mountains; they happen slow and fast at the same time, like the two women who were just here and then disappeared somewhere ahead of us. And just like the “trail” that suddenly became something else, became vertical. 

Up up up. Pant pant pant. Bad bad bad.

PART 2

1.  After it was all over, Angie and I often told that detail when trying to explain what inspired us to speed up after an already grueling upward hike. An accomplished athlete, Angie – who, for example, at the age of 54 likes to break provincial records freestyle swimming competitions – and me with my manic sensibilities and nervous energy felt an instant and telepathic “fuck you” on seeing the elastic bodies of the twentysomethings. It’s not hard to guess that there too shame was at play and even though we weren’t in an official race with the women, their carefree athleticism was a brutal reminder of our own bodies ageing, our youthful beauty fading or, if you want to be more dramatic about it, a reminder of impending end. They were closer to the peak and we were closer to death, a direction nobody wants to be steering towards. But were we going to succumb to our age and fate? Don’t think so. And, as you know by now, whether by reading about it earlier here, or having accepted your own personal stupid competitive dares, shame is a great motivator. For example, in a 2003 study “Power, approach, and inhibition” in Psychological Review, the researchers found that people who were lower in power within a competitive context – here, Angie and I – were more likely to experience shame. The study concluded that the fear of being judged and evaluated negatively by others (But who? Bears? Squirrels?) in a competitive environment can heighten the experience of shame when people perceive themselves as losing or performing poorly. Another study, “The psychological structure of pride: A tale of two facets” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that people who experienced shame were more likely to engage in self-improvement efforts and strive to regain their self-esteem. Or pretend to themselves and the audience of bears and squirrels that they were just as spry as people half their age.