The two flatlanders, however, were not newcomers to wilderness. Both had, in their own way, dedicated a large part of their lives, talents, and energies to the exploration and celebration of the natural world. Their trip to visit us in the San Juans was an extension of a journey they had just made to the desert and canyon country of southeastern Utah—a journey that included an attempt to write and perform music as a response to the moods of the canyons. Before they returned home, Nancy and David decided to visit the San Juans and to climb Engineer Mountain. Our journey up the mountain was a metaphorical complement to the canyons. The climb, like the river trip to the canyons, involved music in response to place. In our packs we carried our usual supplies: extra clothing, water, food, and a rope just in case someone felt a need for a belay through one of the few tricky spots. In addition we carried some unusual gear: double ocarinas, a few simple percussion instruments, and an oboe.
We began our climb in the marshy meadows at the top of Coal Bank Hill, working slowly up through the steep wet grasses and false hellebore. In midsummer, the false hellebore was nearly up to our chests. Local belief has it that the height of these plants indicates the depth of the coming winter’s snows. If this was true, it was going to be a heavy snow year. At the crest of the grassy slope we entered a series of limestone benches, each several hundred yards wide, each heavily forested with spruce and balsam fir, the forest floor an alternating world of snow-melt bog and flower-covered meadow.
Is there anything that simultaneously reconciles the seemingly irreconcilable opposites of flamboyance and subtlety as well as the alpine forest floor? Color more showy and brilliant than any I have seen anywhere else exists along with flowers so small and delicate, so carefully hidden in the interstices, that they, but for direct attention and active seeking, remain hidden from view. This apparent contradiction exists in all of the natural world, but its manifestation in the alpine forest is no less startling for this realization.
As we continued our hike, forested benches and limestone cliffs filled with the fossilized remains of millions of tiny creatures gradually gave way to a rolling grassy slope, above which was treeline and then the massive rocky cone that is the peak.
Our climb took us through shattered rock along a ridge formed initially by glaciation and later by the continuous melt-freeze fracturing that is typical in the volcanic and sedimentary formations of the San Juans. Climbers used to the solid granite, hard cracks and vertical faces of places like Yosemite find the San Juans nerve-racking. Even modest slopes can be dangerous because of the loose rock. Without a basic sense of trust in the relative stability of broken rock in repose and the ability to quickly abandon a platform that proves to be unreliable, even a relatively easy climb, such as the one up Engineer, can become a fearful experience. With little relief the climb crosses scree, talus, and precariously balanced boulders, but the ridge emerges from all of this, an obvious and safe path as it winds its way to the summit.
Along the way, each change in the rock signals a new rhythm to the climb. The steep tundra of the base gives way to a band of relatively stable red sedimentary rock. The red rock becomes a fractured band of white rock that slides with little provocation. The white rock becomes another band of red, then a band of tan rock that is more stable but much steeper. Climbing out of the last chimney in the tan band, the large, balanced blocks of gray conglomerate on the summit ridge come into view.
At the bottom we had climbed steep slopes with long confident strides, then changed to short tentative steps in the loose scree. From here the rock had gradually steepened until nearly vertical, and we resorted to stair-stepping, climbing motions with our hands and feet. At last we had emerged on the summit ridge, where we moved once again with long, confident strides toward the summit.
The view, as expected, was wonderful and so much more pleasant and rewarding for having been earned. I have flown through the San Juans quite a bit, sometimes in light aircraft, sometimes in large commercial jets, a few times in helicopters. The views during those flights, I must admit, were spectacular. I would whisk over and through drainages that I had spent days hiking and those that I wished I would someday hike. As jagged pinnacles of rock, high crags, and steeply dropping ridges passed close below, with my feet planted on nothing but air, I saw more rugged land at one time than I once thought existed. But all that pales beside the experience of looking down from a mountain you have climbed. To be breathing hard with sweat glistening on your body, grinning as the view emerges at the summit, is an experience that can never be equaled in photographs or plane rides. The view that day with my three companions, though I had seen it many times before, was no exception.
The deep valley of the Animas River lay to the south beneath us, its waters and those of the valley’s small lakes shining in the midday sun. To the north the high snow-covered peaks of the San Juans near Silverton reflected a light that appeared amplified, more than just a reflection of the sun’s brilliance. To the west were the mountains and forested flats of the Hermosa Plateau. To the east rose the steep, massive face of North Twilight Peak and the pinnacles of the Needles Mountains behind it. Beneath our feet, Engineer’s walls abruptly fell away to the valley floor, green and lush before us to the south, white and wintry behind us to the north. Can anyone be in such a place and not be deeply moved?
When I was a student I heard many discussions in literature and writing classes about romanticism, about the limits of language and about the need for writers to restrain emotion, to rein it in so that description and expression of personal passion avoid hyperbole, or worse, maudlin sentimentality. I was distressed to hear this once again in graduate school in reference to the visual media. Even more distressing was the stunning silence, in the upper levels of academia, in graduate seminars and colloquia, of the issue not being discussed at all. For the academically trained, the issue had been settled. Personal passion, love, beauty, agony, ecstasy, none of these were allowed to exist. We would be well advised, it seems, not to make ourselves appear stupid by bringing these themes out of the grave where they had been laid to rest. This is true for love stories, autobiographies, news reporting, novels, short stories, essays, and poetry (God, yes, poetry), and, especially, it would seem, nature writing. Pure description when penned with skill is sufficient to evoke emotion. There is no need to overdo it.
Yet, what is someone to do with a memory like this? When we got to the summit, we smiled, laughed, sighed, sobbed, and ate. We organized thoughts and packs. After we had each found a comfortable seat the instruments were distributed. We began to play, to make music. Those of us with little talent did what we could in support of those in whose hands and lips instruments became extensions of thought, of being. Music began to flow from our happiness into the air, and from the air into the world around us. And from the world around us, into us and back out again. Butterflies that had been fluttering nearby came closer and fluttered near our faces. A hawk that had been circling overhead came in low and slowly passed—passed so close, in fact, that the wind moving through its wings made a sound we all heard above and in complement to our music. One by one we put down our double ocarinas, our wood blocks and sticks, and waited for Nancy to pick up her oboe. She did. A few tentative notes came out, notes that seemed to be searching for an anchor in the soil of the valley and a lift from the blue sky overhead. More notes came. Finally, a song. A song that flowed from the oboe as if the earth itself had written it. The light changed. A brightness of an intensity never seen down in the valley grew to envelop the mountaintop. Distinctions between rock and sound, light and rhythm ceased to exist. I cannot recall ever having heard a song so beautiful or so appropriate. That it was improvised, that it will never be heard again, that it belonged to that place and time made the memory more precious.
Is my description of this experience hyperbole? This telling isn’t the half of it. Romantic? I guess so. Maudlin? I don’t know. Sometimes life is more important than art (whatever art is) and truth more valuable than restraint. I’m a firm believer in passion and stupidity and life. I think these experiences are not ours to hoard; rather, they are ours to share. To pretend that the experience was less or other than what it was is not sophistication. It is pretentiousness in the extreme. Compared with a mountain some hundredmillion years old, we’re all a bit stupid and naive and unsophisticated. Coming down from the mountain, as we reluctantly did, doesn’t mean abandoning the joy and wonder we shared there, no matter how strange it might have seemed when we got back to town. Part of holding the experience of a climb is being able to realize that