George: The Columbia, Part 2

Cold fresh air blew up out of the canyon, and through the cracks between the columns. The breeze refreshed his mind; it was a relief after the hot and arid plain above. He found himself more alert, and he could concentrate on the path at hand; which had become progressively more challenging the further down he went. The columns were six sided, caused by shapes that the crystals had formed as they cooled. The heat from the molten rock had dissipated slowly, evidenced by the large size of the pillars. The path wove around the pillars, a result of their shape, and George followed them back and forth and down deeper into the cool air. Ever downward into the darkness, where the sun only reached through the occasional space between the pillars. At these, George would look out on the lush green growing on the banks of the river, a change from the dusty plain and occasional dunes that he had been crossing, up and down, since shortly after he had left the coast.

The trench wound down and down, with what appeared to be stairs, crafted eons ago by a completely incompetent mason--chock-stones in reality, boulders and other debris fallen from the narrow gap at the top; which was receding further and further above, providing what little light there was. The spaces between the stones were filled with gravel, dust, sand, and dead plant parts (trees and brush) blown from the west. In places the stairs would stop and he would walk along a path full of wind, dust and stone.

Once, about halfway to the valley floor, the trail leveled and exited on to a shelf that ran along the cliff. It was several hundred meters wide, and while still too dry to be home to a large number of plants, the sage, aloe, and other succulents provided something for George to chew on while he searched for another path to lead him to the bottom of the gorge. There was a vaguely trail-like parting in the plant life which he followed, and it eventually led him to a path that would take him down to the Columbia.

The path he found was in an old washout, a huge fan of rubble, composed of sections of the columns above and to both sides of him. Here the trail was hard to follow; he guessed at where to step by looking for where there was wear on the rocks. Occasionally, there would be marks scratched into the rocks pointing to the safer path, or cairns leading the way. Back in the sun, George found it very hot, but the trail became easier to follow the lower he went, until a few hours after leaving the plain, he arrived at the bottom and could relax, drink fresh water, and rest for the night.

George: The Columbia, Part 1

George sat for a moment, pausing in his search for a way down to the Columbia. He watched the wind turbines spin. There were several hundreds of them, and someone had to maintain them, so that Seattle could have light and heat. He wondered who still lived out here, on the blasted plains. The blades swung, glinting in the sun, still bright white over fifty years after the last had been built. He found their presence reassuring, guardians over his, and everyone else’s future.

He began to walk along the edge of the gorge again, half his attention on where he was walking, and half on the turbines. It was odd, George felt, that he should think of them as guardians. They had been too little too late. The wasteland that was Washington, a vast desert, dotted with abandoned towns and farms, was only a small corner of the totality of the world, but there was no part of it that had not been affected by the environmental collapse. The guardians had failed, economies had followed the collapse, and humanity had retreated to live in sustainable enclaves.

A fissure opened before him, taking his attention from the turbines spinning across the gorge. It was formed from pillars of dark stone that had detached from the plain he had been walking on. Far below were the remains of thousands more of the same formations. There was a trail, narrow and sandy that ran into it; George hoped that it would take him to the valley bottom, where the river ran, and he could fill his water bottles and wash his feet.

His boots had been chaffing for the past month during which he had walked from Old Seattle. His boots were done, but he was not. His journey had taken him from that city on the West Coast and would end on the desolate east coast, ravaged by the effects of the Expulsion, amidst the ghostly towers of Manhattan. That was one of the greater disasters of the 20’s, a huge Carbon Capture project had ruptured, releasing hundreds of thousands of metric tones of carbon monoxide and dioxide. It caused the death of millions on the eastern sea board before dissipating into the ocean and atmosphere, triggering the collapse of dozens of species.

His would be the first traverse of North American by foot since the Melt. George would be the first to see the Columbia Icefields—though it felt wrong to call it such anymore—since the last snow had disappeared.

He stumbled, and ran a few steps, hopped over a stone, and came up short of a large hole. "Remember George, pay attention," he told himself, "it would be pretty poor form to die here, before even leaving Washington." George needed to cross the Columbia before he could follow it to its source. With the glaciers gone, all the rivers relied on rain to feed them; they were all seasonal, and George needed to be finished this leg of his journey, all the way to the Rockies before summer set in and he was left without a source of water for four months.

Alpine Start

I wake to the low beeping, barely heard above the wind. The snow strikes the wall of the tent, in the dark it sounds like the night is trying to put me back to sleep. I turn on the lamp, and off the alarm. The tent wall is mere inches from my face, the weight of new snow pressing down, until I shake the walls and the poles spring the tent into shape. My naked arm feels the bite of cold, and I hear the distant rumble of avalanches coming down the face. Instead of climbing we will sleep the day through, and tomorrow we will try again.

It’s dark, but this night there is no wind and the snow shows signs of stopping. Three AM, it’s fifteen below outside, but my sleeping bag is comfortable. I dress inside it to put off the inevitable shock of putting on frozen boots. Hopefully they will thaw quickly today. They are cold, but the mountain waits.

Outside, light snow falling, wisps of clouds stream past the beam of my lamp. Tie in now; there are crevasse between the tent and the face, crampons click, and snow crunches under foot. Yesterday’s snow has blown off, through gaps in the clouds the moon lights the peak. A cold blue light shows cold blue ice, on this cold blue night.

A short walk to the ‘shrund, but I don’t see it until the crevasse opens beneath my feet, a dark maw, cold breath sucks heat from the cold air and from me. As I swing my head from side to side, my light expels the dark, but I see no way across. Walking along the bottom edge, one eye alert to the shape of the snow, ready to warn of undercutting, the other eye ahead looking for weaknesses in the wall of ice. Near the far edge of the face, where it is bounded by a ridge of rocks, there is a bridge of snow. It looks too soft to hold my weight, but perhaps the rocks will hold the path on.

The rocks are featureless in the dark, as I make my way to them, the moat is a few feet wide; not enough to be insurmountable, but retreat would be challenging. I step across, and details appear and then are washed out by the flat light of the headlamp. A small hold is found by feel and the way forward opens, for a moment. A few more moves and I’ve run out of holds, the rock is blank and vertical, but a few feet to the left lies the snow and ice of the face we had set out to climb.

A brief call to my partner “watch me!” though there is not much else to see this early. I step out on to the snow, and the rest of the climb is before us.

Glaciers

Impressively I have an even shorter prose poem for you this week... Its a few years old now, some of you will have seen it before.

Glaciers are silent places. many people talk about being struck dumb with awe, but there is more than just that. The silence will not be broken. not merely voiceless on the glacier, but thoughtless. The silence rages within and without the beholder. Glaciers eat sound.... No, they eat the souls of sounds, suck them down to the cold cold depths. There is indeed tremendous sound, but that sound is soulless, cold, and will allow no interruption. The crash of cracking ice, disintegrating under its own weight, the subsonic grind of ever slowly ever moving ice, the crack of splitting ice, and the ever blowing wind. What do voices calling names and commands hope to accomplish? The casual conversations, and warm background noise of forests, streams, and other scenes of pleasant hikes do not exist and cannot survive on the frozen wastes.