Nothing says 'good morning' like the sound of explosives resounding through the mountains. A low rumble that ripples through the quiet monoculture forest. They're setting off avalanches again. A mere formality; a cautionary measure to keep catastrophic news from circulating. It's been snowing since God knows when. The sun hasn't made an appearance in days. 25, 50, 65, 75 cm of progressively fluffier snow has accumulated on top of the existing mid-winter foundation and there is still no sign that the precipitations are abetting.
A chiseled, youthful American is grilling his fellow rider: "What's a metre, anyway?" And after a brief pause: "I'm sick of the Canadian metric system: I never know what's what." 'Neither do I!", I feel like shouting, as they absorb me into their party, on our way to the front of the lift's lineup. The thought feels liberating: as if I'd been holding it in for a really, really long time. A foot is a foot and an inch is the length of the pad of my thumb and everyone knows what an ounce is. We plunder forward, a trio of athletes awkwardly scooting forward - like those G.I. Joes whose feet are welded to the thin flat base on which they stand.
Our neighbors at the lodge were up drinking all night. Again. They haven't been seen or heard from as of 3AM. In these parts, peace is only to be got when one's eclectic bedfellows get knocked unconscious. Sleep is a fleeting thing. I ordered my coffee in the village, requesting a four-ounce pour. In anticipation of its horrid taste. Even then, I couldn't finish it. But I couldn't just leave it, either. People get kind of raw over these sorts of demonstrations. Even when the product is evidently stale; as stale as a three-weeks-old baguette. I wouldn't touch the stuff, if it wasn't for the necessity of ratcheting my brain up to Continuous High Speed mode. The summit requires it.
The peak's been closed for four days, now. Due in effect to the extreme danger avalanche warning. We went as high as we could, then latched our gear. Remember not to sit. I leaned back on my elbows, sunk deep into the snow. Getting up is hit-or-miss, in these parts. Most of the time, you'll sink so deep that no amount of wriggling will get you on your feet. The sinking feeling that you'll never stand again is a scary thing.
At daybreak, a grom got lost halfway down the mountain and ended up riding right up to a quiet mountain cottage's bedroom window. The cottage was dissimulated behind a checkerboard curtain of tall pines. The young chap, bundled in a trendy camouflage jacket, caught the eyes of the snoozing couple; startled them awake. Time stood still as three slack-jawed strangers gaped at one another.
The lost boarder's mom - a woman with the rosy complexion of an ice pond skater and the body of a 40-year-old wood-chopping misanthrope who lives off the grid - thought it was all pretty amusing. She laughed without reservation as he recounted the story. Her laughter betrayed her: a woman who is truly uninhibited. During the brief late-morning respite that we shared, we were at once old family friends and complete strangers. They spoke freely before, at times talking between themselves as if I weren't there. An uncommon, warmheartedness connected us. The result of our physical proximity and its inescapability.
I could be nowhere else but here.
At times, it felt like hell would freeze over before a heated cabin came into sight; like I couldn't possibly have hauled ass out of the cold fast enough. Those moments, they are juxtaposed over the times when I wished that the tiny ants, down below my feet, would disown their fate as they grew closer and closer and decline from turning into people. Times when I wished for Base Camp to disappear; to never come into view.
There was the time when I wound up Where I Didn't Want to Go and a giant bird vultured around me, clucking like a wild turkey as it tightened its circles. There was the time when I got so disoriented - the flat light; the blinding snow; the complete absence of colour - that I sailed into a gorge with hardly any momentum, sunk thigh-deep into snow and could no longer move. With nothing but my hands to dig myself out, I waded through the abominable land of the Yeti fuelled by nothing but despair: the thought that I would never make it back to the flat-topped freeway. There was also the time when every time I stopped, someone else would stop. And every time I started, out of nowhere, someone would materialize and overtake my space. Paired with an otherwise static landscape, it made me wonder whether life was anything but a video game. A sophisticated game, by all appearances, until you wander into the nooks and crannies and the flaws suddenly reveal themselves as startlingly evident.
There was the time when I sat atop a steep dip like a little monk and melted into the face of the mountain. And the mountain was melded to the sky, which was one with the clouds, which were all full of snow. I thought of Jerry Seinfeld, and transcendental thought, and everything made sense as it was.
There was the time when a tectonic sheet of snow tore off the ground, as the capped edge of my board sliced into it, and the ground went careening away from me like a landslide. The thought of careening downhill blind and without anchor, chased by an unstoppable cloud of snow, commandeered my thoughts like an ill-fated premonition. The sheer velocity of the idea made me feel as though I had already experienced its holy rapture in a parallel time and space. Even though I could never have known how many tonnes of snow could get pried off the mountaintop, I felt with certainty that I knew exactly how it would weight on my body if I ever tangoed with its downward spiral. How I'd never make it out of spin cycle.
I'm not a morbid person. I've embraced impermanence; embraced its inevitability; its state of flux. But in that moment, I did conclude that I would gladly curl up in the snow below a firmly planted fir and slowly fade into incoherence, followed by oblivion, rather than fight breath if oxygen was to be taken away from me. I would rather prefer the gentle waning of memory, over a violent mishap that ends all time.
But here, again, the sun rises. And my thoughts march on to other rather trifling forms of diversion. If I find myself staring into a bowl of raw breakfast oats one more time, I feel I'll have to fast for ever. Dried fruit; enriched foods; nutrient-free meals prepared by others now make me buckle mentally as well as physically. Also: I'm sick of being so goddamn tired.
A couple of lodgers whose stay has just expired are taking swings at their Sports Utility Vehicle's wheels. The underside of their tires has congealed into the parking lot's icy surface and, armed with the business end of a shovel, they pointlessly try to pry loose their ride. Chack! Chack! Chack! The thin plastic edge is not breaking through the invisible layer that seals their wheels and their fate to the spot. Chack! Chack! Chack! Suspense. The sound of a fine mystery novel, in the making. Chack! Chack! Chack! Suspense. That's what it sounds like. Will they ever make it out?
Yesterday, the lowest layer of cloud parted for a brief moment. A ray of daylight sliced through our afternoon. The only reassurance, in this God-forsaken land, that the sun hasn't been extinguished.
I proceeded to scale up the mountain face, to the very top. All 7,051ft. I strapped my board to my hooves and took the plunge. Headlong, into Cedar bowl, over the steep incline of its lip. With the snow blowing in my face and the light as flat as primed canvas, I tried to keep a check on 'up', 'down', 'sideways' and other useful directions. With the snow under me constantly rearranging itself, starting to shift even before it becomes my wake, I shed all pretenses: of being in control; of having a future... All that posturing; completely absurd. Time ahead is always headed for the hills, disappearing into another sunset.
