Great Spirit knows what we need before we do. All that is required by us is patience to see the Hand at work. This story is but one small example out of many in my own life. Adolescence is a difficult time for all people. Older cultures have rituals in place to aid the transition and to mark the passage of young people into their adulthood. The currently emerging world culture has, in many ways, frayed this delicate and necessary fabric. Many children are expected to be adults before their time and too many adults are encouraged to remain childlike forever. My story starts in Texas and winds up on a mountaintop in British Columbia, where I found one of my teachers when I was working as a letter-carrier.
When I was going through my ceremony free passage into the realm of adulthood, I was living in Texas. My country of birth was at war. Most of the boys in my Oak Forest neighbourhood were an average of six years older than myself and I watched them all get drafted to serve in Vietnam. Most of those guys who made it home alive after their tour of duty, returned with heroin addictions. The same tried and true methods of creating public acquiescence to war were employed then in the Sixties as they had been in the Boer War and most other strategic wars.
For my part, I did not believe in the killing of people who were not threatening my life directly or that of my loved ones. I had read books on the propaganda techniques used by governments in other wars. Further reading had taught me that during the Cold War, the flow of secret information from the West to its professed enemy in the East, had been aided and abetted at every turn. Much of whole affair had been stage managed by bankers, tycoons and international industrialists for the furtherance of their privately venerable agenda of personal gain.
Hegelian aerodynamics instruct us that the left wing and the right wing flaps merely adjust the headings of political flights and that it is these headings that should be understood. The public where I lived had been kept in constant tension and fear of a Communist threat. Using that fear, taxes were levied in unprecedented amounts to fund the research and development of new war materiel with which to counter the Soviets, even as the blue-prints were being supplied to them. When I first came to Canada it was apparent that the USSR couldn't feed itself and was buying Alberta and Saskatchewan wheat at very attractive prices.
Much of the horrific weapons that the Soviets possessed had been handed to them one microfiche at a time. There had been North American citizens who regularly visited behind the Iron Curtain and some who even kept apartments there when it was forbidden for anyone else to travel to those countries. It wasn't publicized and their academic and business credentials made them untouchable at any rate.
Much the same tactics were used when it was decided to initiate the next step in the agenda. That of building up China to be the world's manufacturer. On the outside it appears that they have lifted themselves out of the dark ages when in fact they have been given clear intentional legal and financial advantages of every kind to ensure the success of a massive relocation of manufacturing expertise and plants and the wedding of them to a well tamed, talented, economical work force. The Chinese working people may see eventually that they have been played like fish.
Back in Texas, an adolescent philosopher began to ponder war in earnest. My graduation from high school was looming closer and I had no plans to attend university; so, if the war was still raging three years hence, I would be drafted to serve in Southeast Asia. I tried to think of a solution that I could live with.
The solution of going to jail was not for me. No one should volunteer to go into a cage. I wasn't a member of a recognized conscientious objector’s religion although I was nominally a Christian. I knew that deep inside their human hearts, most of the guys did not want to go. It was surreal to me watching them being patted on their backs by parents at going away parties and regaled with the perpetual pulp fiction that the Army would make men of them and that they would make their WW II and Korean Conflict broken fathers proud.
My mother was a Dalton Trumbo reader and she debated with some of her neighbour ladies about the dubious honour of serving in the Vietnam War. As this was a very unpopular view to take where we lived, I cheered her pluck. But her occasional coffee klatches that pushed against the mainstream didn't fix my looming problem. After reading Johnny Got His Gun, I suspected that it was a propaganda piece designed to help prepare the human ground for a Utopian Socialist control grid. It was to me, the literary version of the "war to end all wars" ploy. Sometimes people do have to fight in their own hills. They don't, however, have to cross oceans and rain death upon women and children.
Most American parents seemed quite happy for their sons and daughters to go kill people in a jungle 15,000 miles away from their suburban, dog shit-festooned lawns. Just like many Canadian parents in a much later day, who were proud of their sons and daughters kicking in doors in the Middle-East and fragging the inhabitants. Less so, when many came home legless, crazy and were subsequently abandoned by their government except for being aided in obtaining opiates after they harmed their spouses.
This species of observation was unsettling to me as a fourteen year old and I took up smoking as I pondered those things. I wondered how many young people would be willing to kill to protect their actual homes and families from an actual invasion. I wondered if the Biblical Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Kill,” had been altered from a possible original draft reading, “Thou Shalt Not Murder.” Obviously, there were situations in which a person may be given no other option than to kill in order to preserve their own life or that of a spouse or loved one. No god worthy of human worship could overlook that sad fact.
My family moved to Canada before I got drafted and it was a huge relief for me. I felt a bond of sorrow with all the guys from my home streets who had gone overseas; both those who did not return and those who returned as human cash machines for drug pushers. In some shred of my boyhood that stubbornly remained hidden inside me, I unconsciously created a misplaced survivor's guilt for having been spared. I carried that wretched burden deep beneath my surface, in a place that I didn't allow myself to ever explore. It festered there like a wrinkle on my Texas soul. It was illogical, destructive and had many a lamination.
Many years later, I was working as a letter-carrier and raising a new blended family in Vancouver. I was paying lawyers from a previous divorce, current landlords and long-term child support. I noticed a new worker at my Postal Station one day and people said he was a real mountain climber. I had always wanted to do that activity.
That very fellow stopped on my postal route and hailed me over to his faded, red Toyota. He asked me if he could give the car to me. He said that he had heard I was without wheels. I thanked him and declined his offer on the grounds that I couldn't afford the brake job that was imminent, judging by the look of the rotors, besides the insurance.
That is how I met Al. He had been climbing mountains since he was about seventeen, he told me. At work, we began to chat when we had time. I wanted to ask him if he would teach me to climb mountains, so I brought some photos of some places I had hiked to and asked the maestro if he would take me along on a real climb. He asked me who had taken one particular picture. I told him I had taken it.
“Mike, you idiot, that is Mt. Matier Glacier. It is on a real mountain. So is this other picture. I know all these mountains. Thus, you have already climbed some mountains.”
I was flabbergasted. The pictures I had shown him were from places where I had stopped my car at random without any previous planning nor equipment and had gone for uphill walks to relieve heavy stress and sniff around the mossy woods. I had counted none of it as official mountain climbing.
After weeks then months had transpired with nothing more said between us, I received an invitation to accompany my new friend, his wife and one of their close friends on a climb of the Black Tusk. It is the core of an extinct volcano lying North of Vancouver in the Garibaldi Region, whose softer rock has worn away leaving a column of black, friable stone thrusting 7700 feet skywards. I was elated! A real mountain at last and in the company of a real mountain climber.
The golden morning came and I met Al and his wife at their townhouse. We drove to the base in Garibaldi Park and met up their friend, a farmer from the Fraser Valley. It was a magical day. One of the things that happens when people climb mountains is that all the poisons in a persons system, be they physical, mental or spiritual, are cast into the furnace of need in order to provide the energy to continue. As we ascended, all the toxins in my body and blood worked their way out in sweat. The mental toxins came next and though they were more subtle, they leached out of all of us who were present.
Al had some issues, as did I. Though we didn't actually converse, we did talk in spurts during this first outing together away from work. One of the emotional burps that I belched up at about 6000 feet was quite a surprise to me. I realized for the first time, that I felt guilty for not having gone to Vietnam. We talked about that as we huffed up the steep grade. Al had already made peace with something similar and before we got up to the fine volcanic dust and slipped backwards half a foot for every foot forward, I let my guilt come to the surface of my conscious thought where it had to fend for itself against rationality instead of festering like a bag of shrimp shells in a garbage can.
Near the top of the peak was the exposed column of old lava. It was very cold up there and the crack we had to negotiate was notorious for falling rock. I got the honour of going up second in line. It was a free climb and we were not roped together. I remember thinking that any one can do anything with the proper training, equipment, attitude and desire. Although I am admittedly terrified of man-made heights, I had no fear of God-made heights and scampered up like a squirrel. The others came up and we began to descend after a brief rest on top in the howling snow and hoarfrost.
A good ways down the crack I unknowingly veered off onto the smoother apron of the mountain. If I could have seen where I actually was in the mist that blanketed everything, I would have likely panicked. Al saw what I had done from his vantage below me and in the most casual of tones, he suggested I traverse a wee bit to my left. I happily and immediately complied because I was being watched by three real mountain climbers and didn't want to appear a fool.
When the entire party was a hundred feet below where I had been when I was course corrected, Al stopped and showed me where I’d been. It was a horribly exposed bulge that would have dropped me a couple of thousand feet if I'd gone only a few yards further. I made several mental notes.
We all went to a pub in Squamish after our climb and watched some local loggers playing pool. Al asked me if I didn't now feel superior to those wretched mouth-breathers and then he suggested that I go start a fight with one of them as he probably deserved it anyway. I didn't know if it was a test of my character or a prescription for my well-being. I used to live in Squamish and was on the patchwork quilt of my home turf. I could see no reason to lay hands on someone who hadn't wronged me in any way and I said so to my group. They quaffed their beers without comment and we left in good spirits.
I was lucky to be invited to accompany Al several more times. After those trips with my teacher, I struck out alone and climbed all the mountains in the Lynn Watershed of North Vancouver. I took along my sons and my wife. I have also taken sisters, friends, brother-in-laws and nephews.
One of the local mountains in North Vancouver is Grouse Mountain. It is a ski mountain and has a tram from the base to the chalet at the top where one may take ski-lifts to the actual peak. It is around 3000 feet tall and over the years, it became a popular training exercise to hike up underneath the tram, get a great workout at the same time as saving cash on the ticket. In the old days, anyone who did this “Grouse Grind” was given a free ride down. I used to also do that on my way to climb some of the peaks in the watershed beyond, such as Goat Mountain, Little Goat Mountain and Crown Mountain.
One day at the height of the tourist season, I was just topping the last few yards onto the shelf of land that houses the chalet. I wormed my way through a crowd to line up my ascent of Grouse off to the West side of the lift and then to head off Northwest to climb Crown. It was an easy walk from the chalet to Grouse Peak and I stopped to sip from my thermos and get myself attuned to the coming climb.
A big man and his little wife walked up to me holding hands. They had just gotten off the lift and were getting ready to take pictures from the peak. I was pulling on my first layer of tops after coming up the Grind shirtless so as not to ruin my clothes with sweat. The man appeared to be in his mid-fifties and as soon as he spoke I knew that he was from either Texas or Oklahoma near the Red River. He was weathered, neatly shaved and if you'd have hit him anywhere on his body with a mop handle, it would have snapped in two.
“Son, I bin watchinyoo an I wanna know ha-yoo goddupure.”
“I climbed up, Sir. From the parking lot bottom for that tram. Now I'm fixin’ head for that mountain over there.”
I pointed out Crown Mountain and the camel-shaped rock next to it
“Son,” he said looking me straight in the eye and talking slow, “Ima drillin-structor for ta US Maraine Core an I wanna tail-yoo at-choo wuddamaid adamgoo Maraine!”
I thanked him for his unsolicited kind words and we shook hands. His wife snapped a few photos of us and I headed off. It is fitting that she captured that moment.
Remember that misplaced guilt that had been buried in my psyche and unearthed on my first climb up the Black Tusk? I later discovered to my dismay and annoyance that it had only become a little devil on my shoulder after its eviction from my subconscious, such is the tenacity inherent in that particular species of deleterious emotions. I was glad it was in the sun light but I hadn't figured out a way to totally eradicate it yet.
Well, that unwelcome psychological parasite had just had its nebulous ass thoroughly, gently and permanently kicked by a Southern Drill Sergeant. It couldn't have happened in a more perfect place, the message couldn't have been delivered by a more perfect messenger and I have never been nagged by that particular problem since that blessed day.
Guys who climb real mountains together don't necessarily socialize together. They may not even keep in touch between climbs, yet they trust their lives to each other in the bush. My teacher Al became the proud father of a daughter and transferred to a different Postal Station. I never saw him again except in pictures.
As far as I know, he is still active in North Shore Search and Rescue, still climbing and still a letter-carrier. I know that he has seen the Hand at work and he also has peered into the Void. I know that the sight of his head-lamp coming through inky mist has been a life changing event for many poor souls, broken on the rocks and lost in the trees. Al you are a damn good Marine. Bless you, brother. There is a mountain in my heart and you're on top of it, smiling.
fin