A story of the mountain, limerence, love and shame
Part 2 of 4
Part 2: The Decision
I stopped. We’re going to die, I said.
You really think so? Angie said and then laughed. It was the way she said it, half-a-pitch too high.
I think so. Let’s call for help.
I don’t know why I was so decisive at that moment. Angie was not. She had done so many hikes like that in her lifetime, this was hardly the most dangerous one. Or was it? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had nothing to lose other than my life. Angie, on the other hand, could lose a lot more – including her reputation were it to turn out that we’d cried wolf.
Before she could dissuade me, I pulled out my phone and dialed Search and Rescue. On a day of unlucky and lucky breaks, the reception on death mountain was excellent and when the dispatcher’s voice came on, I explained the best I could our predicament. I was having a tense little chat in the sky. He had asked me where I lived and I got impatient with him, explaining that I lived in Toronto but that I was not, in fact, in Toronto. He understood but still took down my address.
Once I hung up, Angie said something about being so embarrassed. She looked around, her forehead scrunching. I guessed she thought I was behaving like a hysterical city girl indeed.
Would you rather be embarrassed or dead? I said.
Yeah, no, for sure, that was our agreement, she reassured me. At that time, we were stuck on a small platform-like edge where there wasn't enough room for both of us to sit. Still wanting to save face, Angie suggested climbing down before it became instantly obvious that climbing down could mean a serious injury or death. It was too steep. But she managed to make it to the bushes a few meters down from me, not before shouting cheerfully about wanting to do something called “bushwacking1, ” and I stopped at my little precarious perch that I can presently feel straining under my weight. The only time other than announcing we might die, where I confidently declare we’re not going to do something, is when the word “bushwacking” appears in my vocabulary for the first time. No. No. No!
Right now, every time I shift I cause a little avalanche of rocks so, really, it’s best not to move too much and not to picture the roots I’m sitting on, possibly slowly coming apart. Once they come apart, I will start sliding down and depending on where I’m at with my impending heatstroke, I will either fall face forward or I will not.
From above, for the third time, there’s a small shower of rocks, one of them bouncing off my painful shoulder. It’s as if there’s a troll up there throwing them at me.
“It’s happening again!” I yell to Angie and she turns around and shouts, “Yoohooo,” and waves her arms. I join her shouting, “Yooohoo,” and for a few seconds we make noise seemingly to draw the attention of the imaginary hikers we told ourselves are possibly above us. What neither of us had said out loud – but what we’re both thinking – is that the rocks are neither a tourist nor a troll.
They could be a mountain lion. On-brand for a kitty kitty pushing things off table.
I don’t dive too deeply into the scenarios that start to form in my head – the same head I see in the jaws of a beast. Or my body, a bloody sack of bones at the bottom of this peak.
I occasionally check my phone for messages. Angie has announced our predicament on Facebook, which is unorthodox but a good call since she’s been unable to get a hold of her husband and Fernians are knowledgeable about these sorts of situations. It’s a small town and it’s not uncommon for people to organize and help each other whenever someone in the community is in trouble the way we are. Also Angie has what some might consider a compulsive need to share2, something that sometimes gets her in trouble as when she published a memoir about her infidelity or when she alerts people about her mischievous dogs running away and risks unhelpful Karens offering not advice but harsh judgment about her dog-owning shortcomings. I admire Angie’s sharing; it’s brave.
Her announcement causes a swift reaction – messages from concerned friends and instant advice piling up under her post. Soon enough, my phone pings a new message notification. It’s my ex-husband who has seen the post and who wants to help but 2,000 miles away can only offer the only thing he is realistically able to offer and that he is good at. Quickly, my messenger fills up with Latvian jokes (“Man is hungry. He steal bread to feed family. Get home, find all family have gone Siberia! “More bread for me,” man think. But bread have worm.”). I appreciate this gesture and push away the nostalgic thought reminding me that I am no longer the woman he should bother making laugh. But the jokes are good, and the absurdity of the whole situation – Ex-wife stuck on mountain. Ex-husband try make laugh. But lion eat ex-wife. – is a joke of its own. Humor can act as a great coping mechanism; it allows you to distance yourself from stressful situations and reframe perspective. You don’t need studies to tell you that laughter is indeed the best medicine, but if you want to be a stickler about it, studies show that the laughter leads to a decrease in stress hormones, such as cortisol and epinephrine, and an increase in beta-endorphins, which are associated with relaxation and feelings of well-being. Bar the circumstances, where I am is painfully beautiful and I go over the landscape again but my mind is not poetically inclined at the moment so the best I can do: the mountain is green with trees, with gray peaks. Behind it, another mountain. To its left more mountains and to its right mountains too. Mountains mountains mountains. Angie and me, we’re on a mountain as well. Ours is called Mount Hosmer, famous for its shadow of a Ghost Rider3, a very distinct shape of a person on a horse being led by another person that becomes visible as soon as the sun starts setting. This isn’t just some forced pareidolia – the tendency to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus like a maybe-Jesus face on a toast – you can really make out this image. It’s the first thing I was shown when I arrived in Fernie a few days ago to visit Angie. It was a spectacular image.
I have no idea where we are in relation to the Ghost Rider shadow because for all my Girl Scout knowledge, I suck at directions and spatial relations. Angie is trying to figure it out through her Facebook discussion.
(contd. below)
I watch a tiny bug crawl up my thigh and I do nothing when the bug suddenly turns bloodthirsty and bites me. Eat up, little fellow. I welcome this distraction while wondering if he has friends and will they soon join him as I’m slowly cooking, my mind offering a number of possible scenarios that involve both my death and my rescue. In terms of rescue, Angie is coordinating those details with a number of people now. She has finally gotten a hold of her husband who was in a meeting earlier but who now is involved in organizing SAR to come and get us, trying to determine where we are exactly.
She shouts something about longlining and I look it up. A longline rescue is a technique that involves the use of a long rope or cable, typically attached to a helicopter or another stationary anchor point, to transport people or objects to a safer location. During a longline rescue, a rescuer, often equipped with specialized gear, is lowered from the aircraft to the location of the person in need of assistance. The rescuer then secures the person or object to the longline, and both are safely lifted or pulled to a designated landing area.
This is exciting, Angie shouts. In her usual fashion, she is trying to make light of the fact that soon we’ll be forced to partake in the sort of endeavour that makes most normal people vomit and scream. Later, I learn that the toddler-swing-like contraption at the end of the longline is known as “the screamer suit.” In extreme cases, the rescuers are instructed to cover the person’s head – a panicked, injured tourist can become an arm-swinging, tossing, problematic cargo while dangling at the end of a rope attached to a moving helicopter.
For now, I look to “my” mountain again and I understand and god. This is the thought and there’s nothing else attached to it and I cannot explain it now, it’s just I understand and god. It’s a sensation that’s like an orgasm, indescribable and fully encompassing. Beautiful and unknown. Maybe even more beautiful than being rescued, I think, turning melancholy. From that moment on, I look forward to both outcomes – the rescue and the unknown. I am really okay with the unknown.
Sadly, I have not achieved total freedom because as soon as I come to terms with where I am and what is happening, I have a thought that maybe this is finally enough reason to message Gabriel.
Bushwhacking is a term used to describe the act of traveling through dense vegetation – such as the thick tumult of shrubs and weeds that Angie ends up landing on – without following a designated trail or path. The actual practice typically involves using a machete or other cutting tool to clear a path through the vegetation, and may require climbing over fallen trees, wading through streams, and navigating rough terrain. I don’t know what bushwacking is at the time but all I can picture is Angie trying to whack the bush – with what exactly I don’t know since neither of us is carrying machetes – and slipping and tumbling down or setting her foot down onto a non-existent surface and breaking her foot.
Not me, I am after all the author of this substack lol
The image is said to be that of a scorned Indigenous princess, sitting on a horse led by her father. This is based on a folklore story — made up by white people — about William Fernie who in the 1880s was said to encounter a young Indigenous girl wearing a coal necklace. The girl’s father offered to show him the coal source if he married her. Fernie changed his mind, angering the girl's family, leading to a legend of a curse causing fires, floods, and famine. The Ktunaxa people deny the curse claims.
The “screamer suit” sounds awesome.