After the mountain

Fear arises from the anticipation of Shame

The same day we are rescued, Angie calls some friends to come over and we tell our story. Whether she does this to pre-empt how the narrative about being stuck on the mountain is going to develop or because she simply needs company, it is the right move even though we are both still in shock (something Angie says every once in a while with a nervous, apologetic giggle). There is, after all, already a disgruntled stranger who has immediately – as in while we were still on the mountain – commented under her public (Facebook) cry for help, about us creating a ruse to get a free helicopter ride. That evening, we tell the story with enough jokes to qualify for a standup, me focusing on the part where I’m deleting dirty pictures from my phone, and comparing my rescue to a threesome and Angie recalling how we joked that my visit will be so boring that there won’t be any reason to include it in her book on hiking. I stare into the fire Angie’s husband lit as we sit around it in a circle of good-natured laughter, with the dark shadows of the Rockies like a layered,  uneven trim on a cloak wrapped around the town. I keep thinking of my beloved Adidas jacket, no longer like a flashing green spill on the rocks but now blending in with the darkness. And I keep thinking how it didn’t get knocked out of my hand by wind or any of that, but how I purposely let it go.  

Remember the parts where I told you about Angie being nervous and where I hinted that she was, frankly, also irritating? There were moments when I thought a lot worse than that – when I seriously wondered if she was perhaps unhinged and I had no idea until then. I didn’t understand why she felt so confident, even nonchalant about it all because despite her voice shaking, it appeared like she was mostly indulging me and if it was just her, she would’ve done it all differently.  She was only honouring our agreement where me saying we’re going to die was a veto. Before I got swallowed up by the mountain and my torment over writing goodbye letters, I debated if I should perhaps just let her keep climbing so she could find the clearing she insisted was above us while I tried to slide down the shaft on my bum, risk an injury but at least survive. When she suggested bushwacking,  I felt rage and imagined a few different scenarios, one of them of Angie losing her footing and then having to listen to her scream and moan in pain somewhere where I can’t see her and then me having to risk my own life to try to help her, and eventually both of us dying some kind of slow death, exposed bones, marmots and weasels chewing up our entrails. And I thought of my son too, how Angie’s irresponsible behaviour would indirectly lead to him losing a mother – I wasn’t just blaming myself that afternoon for that potential loss. Her cheerful reassurances only made me more nervous and I wished she would stop trying to pretend we weren’t in danger. I suspected that some of that was because she felt embarrassed about being a “bad” hiking guide, but I wished she’d do away with the no-big-deal performance and admit that we were fucked. It wasn’t until we were sitting around the fire with her friends that she made a joke about how she was going to have nightmares that I was finally reassured – reassured I wasn’t some panicked wimp who overreacted and got half the town of Fernie and a helicopter to give into my city girl’s whims. 

But also, that night, as I look around at her friends, their faces half-visible and red in the fire, something else occurs to me. She wasn’t being recklessly brave – I think she was the opposite. On the mountain, she was terrified – and not of injury. Fear often arises from the anticipation of Shame; it can be a response to feelings of Shame particularly when it comes to social situations. Angie is not a shy person, she doesn’t avoid social situations but she knew that she will not “live it down” And she was dreading this.  It doesn’t end there since Shame can also be a result of experiencing fear – I remember later how often that day and for a long while afterwards, every time Angie would talk about the hike she would use the word “stupid” in all kinds of combinations but mostly in reference to herself: I am so stupid, that was such a stupid to do…

The day after the hike, I am leaving for Toronto and I wake up early, immediately thinking of my flashy-green jacket sticking out like an idiot in the natural toned yellows and greens of the mountain. I feel guilty for leaving it, now, as if I spilled something toxic on purpose. But what am I going to do? Go get it? 

I sit on the loved-up, massive living room couch that seems a bit at odds with this modern, bright, tall-ceilings-light-wood-windows house overlooking the mountains – everything in Fernie is overlooking the mountains; it is claustrophobic like you’re inside a vivarium, which I suppose is the same way mountain people feel in a city. But I love it here now, I almost died here. 

I wait for Angie to take me to the airport. Her striking redhead daughter, all puberty’s long limbs and no-eye contact, is making pancakes in the kitchen, her husband is off downhill mountain-biking or swimming upstream or hunting bison. I hear Angie laugh upstairs and shout, Oh, they called us a “couple,” – she is referring to the article in Fernie Free Press that appears next to a picture of us as two red circles drawn over the mountain – my circle to the left, above hers. It looks pleasant enough, the camera flattening out the surface until you look closer and see the jagged rocks. I am sure she read the SAR quote with great relief: “they made the right choice to call for help, as their options were limited.” 

Angie bounces down the stairs and we joke for a bit how now she’ll have to deal with the neighbours-readers thinking she’s a lesbian or perhaps a bisexual in an open marriage or perhaps having another affair. Off-handedly, she says, I had a nightmare. I think I’m gonna have nightmares for a while. 

PTSD, I say.

Imagine?

I ask her about the SAR quote about making the right choice. 

I saw that, she says, her voice full of real relief. 

No, seriously, we did, I tell her. Truthfully, I read the quote with relief, too. I’ve been feeling guilty since the mountain for overreacting, for making my experienced hiking guide have to humilate herself with calling for help.