Bear Mountain: Exploration

Bear Mountain stands just outside tiny Peters Creek. As my hiking partner Rich has put it, because it is there, we've all ignored it, this ridge of a height lesser than those so fabled up here, and so even to locals, passable and mundane. It's hot-a lingering 80 degrees, one of the driest days of the summer, and we are all wondering why climbing this peak was the first activity to come to mind. Chad, in a welcome executive decision, opts to take his new Toyota FJ, a shiny yellow vehicle with 4-wheel drive and we pile in, feeling slightly conspicuous and overdone. There's only one pack, full of water and fruit, the dog dish, and some $7 beef jerky from REI, pricey and smacking of pretension.

Jumping out of the FJ, I feel ready. The trailhead is not steep, nor particularly different from any other I've seen. The dog, Chip, my sister's miniature schnauzer, is off like a shot. While there are many cars parked along the pullout, we encounter only two men with aluminum telescoping walking sticks. There's an elated sense of pioneering: we may be the only ones on the mountain today. In the puffed-up, overconfident way of the conquistador, we all believe it more noble to be the 'first', to set foot to a terrain unfettered by other eyes and feet-no one but we could then say what transpired, what was said or undone or given.

We had very little time to come into a stride. The steadiness of our entrance to the trail soon gave way. Chad veered to the left-"I'm pretty sure this is it",- he seemed preoccupied. We were not, then, to take the main trail, one I would later learn curved steadily around and up the back of the ridge. Instead, Chad was intent on finding that a less-traveled path, one that sloped up quickly, leading directly to the summit. Our calves ache immediately. Chip scampers ahead, sending up a dust cloud; the first hint of that heavy, ripe-cranberry smell, and often it is impossible to tell what must be done as it hits your nostrils. Is this decay? revulsion? Do you recoil from it? Or is it merely the scent of harvest, of a season not dying but being born? Perhaps, though, the cranberries told us what we were refusing to acknowledge otherwise, stranded by the energy of our own wakefulness in the heat of summer, not yet able to begin hibernation. Chip ate a few blades of grass and turned. Chad was convinced he was taunting us. The trees covered the sky, yet the patchy sun we were exposed to crept up our bodies, a gradual overheating, and Chad stampeded up the first rocky, muddy incline, while Rich and I hung back, our hearts knocking in our throats, lungs heaving. We yelled a few breathless obscenities at Chad's ascending back: "Chad, we fucking hate you right now!"

He was running on his toes, not lightly, but with the labor and strain of a mountain climber. Shortly thereafter, each of the three of us would juggle the adoption of this same strategy. One soon learns, after an embarkation of this type, that each small offering of energy-from a calf muscle tensed against rock, from a few deep breaths-must be accepted and immediately distributed to the denizens of the body, and more importantly, to the unfocused and hesitant mind. One at a time, with the other two lagging behind, we each charge up ever-shorter sections of trail, bursts of energy lasting first 200 feet, then 100, then 50, Chip's gray and white back bobbing in and out of the brush ahead. Using another strategy, we never looked up.

Those with a fear of heights, of falling, refuse to look down. When summitting, it is preferable to practice the opposite. One focuses on feet, on seeking a foothold first with the eyes, taking in every stray crushed plant, and rock, distillation of a usually-smooth, thoughtless action into its component parts. Having not looked up for minutes at a time, we were surprised to find that when we did, we had come up through the shade into full sun: treeline.

Reaching the treeline is not an achievement understandable to those outside the jargon engendered by the outdoors. True, such a term is, on paper, dry, poor substitute for the event that it describes. Passing from brush out onto a slope above the treeline is like surfacing abruptly from under water, a gasp associated with struggle, the shock of it simple to overcome, but never avoidable. In late summer, with each plant's colors beginning to change, the terrain rising up above us is subtly briliant with reds, browns, yellows. Here and there the fuschia hue of fireweed lingers. Suddenly, as with a rush of oxygen after long deprivation, everything is perfectly and calmly clear, devoid of stressors, as effortless as the movement of a few wispy, feeble clouds across the sky. There was nothing tall above us, nothing creating a canopy, and very little greenery . Once past the treeline, the tallest, most invincible bodies around were ours, unfettered as we were now with trunk or tendril or leaf.

It was of course, here that the climb became most difficult. The surface of the trail was powdered with dried, pounded dust, a fine dirt that, not matter how careful you might be, you cannot help but kick up. Rich's feet raised a thick swirl of the stuff straight into my face as he took the lead again, toes digging in for hold, hands cranking at his sides. "Sorry, sorry..., this stuff is so gross..."

We ate it, our faces like those of little kids at a campfire, blackening around the mouth and across the cheeks. Chip, even, eas looking strained. He stopped twice for us to catch up and laid down, tongue hanging out.

About half the way to our eventual summit, Chip disappeared, hearing voices. The three of us were perturbed. Other people on our mountain? This insurmountable peak and obstacle that we claimed for ours, sweated over, and were fiercely determined to not share. Around a corner, we came upon an entire family, mother and father and two kids, spread out under a sparse bush, having a picnic. The mundanity of it was incomprehensible. We'd toiled for some two hours now only to find that an elderly gentleman holding a diamond willow walking stick, his wife, and two little boys had beat us to it.

There was, of course, only one solution to our feelings of inadequacy: pure, unadulterated raucousness. Leaving the family behind to finish the picnic, we are heedlessly louw as we barrel up the trail again. We hoot. We holler. One of us (me? Chad?) yelles and obscenity upon realizing that we had hit the base of the steepest incline yet: the final, hard 25-foot ascent. Once we come up over it, reach its apex, we will be there. We aren't exactly sure where 'there' is. Chad and Rich had admitted earlier that they'd never actually hike Bear Mountain, although they grew up directly beneath it. I certainly never had. What lay on the other side seemed as enchanting and full of frightening mystique as the sea creature always etched in the corners of old world maps. Having climbed and strained for all these steep feet, we know that this particular world is not flat. It is all too possible, still, to step off the edge.

Much to the detriment of our spirits, we are soon joined by another hiker on the descent: a boy of about twelve years, grubby, long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans, pink in the cheeks but calm, not panting and desperate like we are. He is another part of the family below us, and has clearly reached the same goal we have yet to achieve.

With the arrival of this other person comes disappointment. Here was a messenger returning; what will his message be? That it's nothing special, the sea creature nothing but some low-bush cranberries, a blade of two of grass? Thankfully, though, we nod amiably, and he does nothing but smiled a little and continue down. Our resolve strengthens again: if this gangly boy can do it, so can we. We take the twenty-five feet in on hard plunge, arms pumping, legs burning. Chip hits the apex long before we do, looking down on us. We all feel, then, that we will burst, fly to pieces before we make it, the heat too much, sweat pouring into our eyes and down around our ears.

THat's the thing about tests of will, of mind over matter, endurance: when they are over, we always feel we could have done more. Pushed a little harder, one last show of strength that might have given us greatness. And yet the three of us, so utterly exhausted before that last climb, thought of nothing but the relief of it. We thought of the last half-bottle of water, of how dust felt rolled between lips. We thought of how good it would feel to take our eyes from our feet, to finally look up.

Beyond us the blessedly-flat ridgeline were were now spread out along was russet-red, lacking tall things, no trees. Barely even a shrub. The sun blinded, then showed us what it was hiding: a river-valley vista, the small town of Peters Creek bordered by highway directly in the shadow of the mountain, yet laid out beyond and beyond that, the vast silver twist of the river and its tributaries, the flat and browning floodplains, a flock of geese arrowing their way south, flapping silently below us. Below us. We keep up our exploration, so in awe that every few feet, one of us breaks off, gingerly peering over the edge again to take in what we've discovered. Tundra blueberries smash under our boots. Eventually we kneel to pick and eat, tart oblong-shaped and truly delicious. Thick everywhere are black crowberries, somewhat flavorless-in fact, they taste like water. A handful of two quenches our thirst: epetrum nigrum, carpet under our feet. For a while Rich hangs over a precipice, looking out on the valley. Chad goes further ahead to find a similar vantage point. I wander behind, Chip busily sniffing, and despite the fatigue settling in our limbs, the warm ground and the smell of moss and berries comes up around us, and the only word for what we feel might be 'cleansed', might be subliminal.

Might be free.