Mountains of the Night

MOUNTAINS OF THE NIGHT

by

BRUCE TAYLOR

Produced by ReAnimus Press

Other books by Bruce Taylor:

Kafka s Uncle and Other Strange Tales

Kafka s Uncle: The Unfortunate Sequel

Kafka s Uncle: The Ghastly Prequel

Edward: Dancing on the Edge of Infinity

Magic of Wild Places

© 2016, 2010 by Bruce Taylor. All rights reserved.

http://ReAnimus.com/authors/brucetaylor

Cover Photograph: © Bruce Taylor

Oct. l988, Tank Lake at Tank Lakes Plateau with (right to left), Chimney Rock, Overcoat Peak, and part of Summit Chief Mountain. Central Cascades, Washington.

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Disclaimer

This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. Readers should regularly consult a medical professional about all matters relating to their health—and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

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Table of Contents

Disclaimer

Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Afterword

Dedications

About the Author

When I was two, my grandmother hit me so hard she knocked me all the way across the room.

I sat stunned in the chair. Dr. Antonio Roggen had just completed a session of a new counseling therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, which he was evaluating for effectiveness.

It was June 1993. He had asked me about my paternal grandmother, her hostility and her violence.

He moved his fingers left to right across my visual field, forcing my eyes to move farther than they naturally would. Suddenly, I saw it. Instantly, I felt a burning on my face where my grandmother had slapped me forty-four years ago. I was a two-year-old again, slapped so hard that I went flying across the room.

From feeling stunned, I went into shock. Then came the tears. Oh, my God, I whispered, more of the puzzle. I equate feeling good and getting what I want—not only with my mother leaving me and my father’s anger—

Antonio nodded slowly, —but with being hit. You never knew that before, did you?

I shook my head. Not about being hit. No.

Antonio sighed. And you wonder why you’ve struggled with feeling OK about yourself, about going ahead in life?

I leaned over in the chair, hands to my face.

Antonio, softly, What on Earth could a child, age two, possibly do to deserve being hit?

My crime? I whispered. All I wanted was another Shredded Wheat biscuit…

And I wept.

Preface

Of Crags, Precipices and Mortal Danger

The worst of madness is to learn what has to be unlearnt.

—Erasmus, 1514

Oedipus, your mother wants you—

—College humor, circa 1969

The Mountains of the Night exist in perpetual darkness. They are in the twilight of Pluto, the other side of midnight, the landscape of your blackest fears.

When you find them, as we all must find them, you have only two choices: to travel them or decline. One choice leads to the Intolerable Death of Spirit, the other leads to death as well, for ultimately, that is where life leads—but death with Grace and Nobility.

When you find these mountains, the trails lead you to the Cliffs of Despair, The Forest of Fear, the icy, slippery Summits of Harsh Memories: failed relationships, missed opportunities, self-doubts, illness, loss. Formidable mountains.

Mount Rainier? Nothing.

Mount Everest? Simple.

The Mountains of the Night? Treacherous. Oh, God, so treacherous.

Yet, to ever fully know, to ever fully embrace whom we really are, to ever come to know that truth, that light, burning, burning, bright, we must travel those Mountains—of the Night.

Chapter One

First Vision

For faith is my shepherd, I shall not want…

…and seemingly, that’s the way it was for the first fourteen years of my life. Mountains of the Night? What? In Seattle, just two mountain ranges to satisfy my new love of hiking in my early teen years: on the east, the Cascades, and to the west, the Olympics. And suddenly, August 1962, at age fourteen, a new mountain range—a range that made the Himalayas, the Andes, much less the Cascades and Olympics—utterly insignificant: the Mountains—of the Night.

August 1962. I was devastated. After some weeks of falling asleep almost at any time, excessive thirst, weight loss, my mother became concerned. My grandmother, who came to visit every few months, had diabetes, and we had on hand her supplies for testing sugar in urine. My mother had me turn over a sample of urine. Five drops urine, ten drops water into a test tube. Drop in a Clinitest tablet that boils the solution. Wait. The solution turned from blue to green and then to orange and finally a brownish orange—a high amount of sugar in the urine. I screamed, No, no, no! No! Not me! NO! Shrieking, I ran through the house, ran outside and sobbed by the garden pool with the family cat, Flak, paws on my leg looking up at me in curiosity.

The next day, sitting in the doctor’s office, the verdict was confirmed. The doctor, an older man, glasses, graying hair, tried to be professional, but kind, Your blood sugar was 560—you’re going to have to be on insulin injections. Being diabetic isn’t so terrible, you can lead a perfectly normal life.

Insulin injections. Measured food. Urine tests. Insulin shock. Potential blindness, kidney failure, heart disease. Being diabetic—labeled a disease instead of a person. Hiking? My new love of hiking? Incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

A normal life?

Age fourteen. And all I knew was that a normal life and the potential for a normal life had been destroyed. And I did not know the nature of the Mountains of the Night that had suddenly risen before me: what was the nature of the violent upthrust of DNA rock, environmental stone, that had arisen in massive black summits before me? The future, an impenetrable wall of fear, uncertainty, disease, early decay, early death. It was over. Over.

Yet, even in my despair and misery, I heard a whisper from the Mountains of the Night, a wind from those black canyons, those bleak summits, those dark divides, freezing plateaus. I couldn’t understand the message then, but looking back on it, the words were: Come. Come. Come into my darkness. There is a trail here that you must tread. Be not afraid. Come. For the only other choice you have is death, not of disease, but of Spirit. Come. Travel this trail through the darkness. Come. Come and know me. And through this, you shall come to know courage and nobility. And on the altar of God, Time, Earth, Stone and Eternity, you shall know your place. And in this place of torment, terror and fear, you shall receive a gift. Come. Come into my darkness.

With my first injection of insulin, I took my first step on that trail to the Mountains of the Night.

Chapter Two

Where the Trails May Lead

Faith maketh me lie in green pastures…

…but there are no green pastures in the Mountains of the Night. There are no colors, just blacks and grays and shades of gray, and in 1962, taking that first step into the Darkness, I heard the voice of the Mountains: Your journey begins.

But the journey, exactly thirty-six years later in August 1998, is quite different, and certainly some of the greenest pastures I’ve ever seen were on the trail to Lake Ann, in the North Cascades. I hike down from the parking lot, 600 feet, down cool switchbacks in forest and before long I see the head of the valley with part of Mount Shuksan dominating the skyline in its 9,127-foot gray rock and icy splendor. Before long, I’m traveling through those green pastures and it is Heaven. Heaven. Thirty-six years of traveling through the Mountains of the Night and I am here, how many boots later? How many backpacks have I gone through in thirty-six years? Instead of heavy boots, I got lightweight ones. An old Jansport external frame backpack with new straps and hip belt. Weighs a ton, but my heart is light and singing and I am with my long time friend Mike Munro and his son, Daniel. This wonderful trail. This blue sky and a crescent moon high above. And the meadow is lovely with flowers and blueberries and clear streams. I continue on. On through forest, then the trail starts climbing and I turn and there! The impossible and imposing mass of Mount Baker fills the horizon to my right and above me, above the ridge ahead, the icy fortress of Mount Shuksan looms, high, massive and grand.

How goes? Mike says.

Good, I reply, but I gotta stop.

No Problema, he says. Daniel says nothing. We all sit. I bring out my glucometer and test my blood sugar. 90. I decide to eat lest my blood sugar drop too low and I risk going into insulin shock and unconsciousness. Thirty-six years of hiking, of exploring the Olympics, Cascades, Sierras, the Southern Alps of New Zealand, the Alps of Switzerland.

Diabetes has not stopped me. My health is superb. I feel wonderful. It is good to be alive. So wonderful to be here, this place, this time.

Thirty-six years. Thirty-six years of the journey through the Mountains of the Night. It’s been all fun?

Hardly. But then, that is never the nature of the Mountains of the Night. The Cascades? Certainly. The Olympics? Absolutely. The Alps? Definitely. The Mountains of the Night? Never.

Ready? asks Mike.

Yup, I say. I stand, finish my bagel and peanut butter, and pick some blueberries. We continue on, ascending to the ice and towers of rock of Mount Shuksan. And today, this moment, my heart sings.

The journey from age fourteen to fifty-one has been a journey indeed. And I reflect back.

Whenever I hike, I go into a zone of free-association: other places, other times, other trails. And I remember…

Chapter Three

Olympic Magic

And leadeth me beside still waters…

…although the waters of the Quinault River were hardly still on that longest hike I ever took, the fifty-eight miles through the Olympics in the summer of 1985. It was so amazing. For ten miles we hiked along the Quinault River; we hiked through red alder forests with the ground covered in grasses and small broad-leafed plants with little pale yellow flowers and the river was just over there. Just beyond the vine maples. The river was pale white from ground rock that was slowly and forever pulverized by glaciers far up the valley. It was a hot day, 80 or 85, but the forest was dark and silent and cool. No one said much, it was just walk, walk, walk. The pack was heavy and it pulled on my shoulders and the waist strap rode up on my waist and it was a little uncomfortable. I had the heaviest pack. I think fifty pounds? I didn’t dare weigh it, we didn’t have a scale at home anyway, and besides, I didn’t want to be shocked at really knowing just how much I was carrying. What goes into the pack? On the bottom, extra clothing, socks, underwear, a wool sweater, pants, gloves. On top of that, a first aid kit, matches, flashlight, mess kit, stove, coat, an ace bandage, and so forth and on top of that, food: instant potatoes, eight packages of Gatorade, powdered milk, sausage, a huge brick of cheese, and candy; one pound of food a day for six days.

This was what I carried in my pack, along with bug repellent, extra fuel, and so forth and so on. And we walked and walked in sunlight through the trees, sunlight making bright and luminous pools of light in the shadow-dark of forest floor. We entered now a forest of maples, with three or four inches of thick moss growing on the trunks and moss hanging from the limbs. By this time it was noon, the second day. Lunch break, I wheezed.

Yeah, said Jason, a burly fair-haired sincere-looking fellow, the kind of guy Madison Avenue uses for, say, selling insurance or beds on TV.

Behind him Jack, tall, lanky with black beard, bright eyes and a chin that sat forward. There was Mark, hefty, grinning, very boyish and full of good humor; he had a walrus mustache and long blond hair. We sat and ate and slapped flies. I munched a hard roll, ate cheese, drank Gatorade and hoped that we’d gone a lot farther than I thought we had. Somewhat reluctantly, I asked Jason, "Just where are we? It’s noon, we must be at the ten mile mark, eh?"

Um, he said, and he frowned and scratched his scalp through an immense jungle of gray hair. He dug out his contour map from his pack. As he munched a Red Delicious apple, he studied the map. OK, he said, I think we’re here. He pointed to a green, shaded area between the blue ink of the river and brown lines denoting a ridge of a hundred feet. So, he ran his finger along the river and made clicking noises, Puts us at eighteen or so miles. I guess we have about five miles to get to the chalet.

Hm, I said. About what, two more hours?

Yeah, he said. We should be in the valley about two-thirty, three o’clock.

Faster if we jog, said Jack.

Fuck you, said Jason.

No, wait, I said, "that’s a good idea. Let’s give him all our packs and he can jog and we’ll