Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [119]
Troy’s overarching thesis was that if backpacking were your criterion of judgment, the Sierra Nevada of California was an unequaled paradise, and essentially heaven on Earth. All mountain ranges were beautiful, of course, but backpacking as an activity had been invented in the Sierra by John Muir and his friends, so it worked there better than anywhere else. Name any other range and Troy would snap out the reason it would not serve as well as the Sierra; this was a game he and Charlie played from time to time.
“Alps.”
“Rain, too steep, no basins, dangerous. Too many people.”
“But they’re beautiful right?”
“Very beautiful.”
“Colorado Rockies.”
“Too big, no lakes, too dry, boring.”
“Canadian Rockies.”
“Grizzly bears, rain, forest, too big. Not enough granite. Pretty though.”
“Andes.”
“Tea hut system, need guides, no lakes. I’d like to do that though.”
“Himalayas.”
“Too big, tea hut system. I’d like to go back though.”
“Pamirs.”
“Terrorists.”
“Appalachians.”
“Mosquitoes, people, forest, no lakes. Boring.”
“Transantarctics.”
“Too cold, too expensive. I’d like to see them though.”
“Carpathians?”
“Too many vampires!”
And so on. Only the Sierras had all the qualities Troy deemed necessary for hiking, camping, scrambling, and contemplating mountain beauty.
No argument from Charlie—although he noticed it looked about as dry as the desert ranges to the east. It seemed they were in the rain shadow of the range even here. The Nevada ranges must have been completely baked.
All day they hiked up the great gorge. It twisted and then broadened a little, but otherwise changed little as they rose. Orange rock leaped at the dark blue sky, and the battlements seemed to vibrate in place as Charlie paused to look at them—the effect of his heart pounding in his chest. Trudge trudge trudge. It was a strange feeling, Charlie thought, to know that for the next hour you were going to be doing nothing but walking—and after that hour, you would take a break and then walk some more. Hour following hour, all day long. It was so different from the days at home that it took some getting used to. It was, in effect, a different state of consciousness; only the experience of his previous backpacking trips allowed Charlie to slip back into it so readily. Mountain time; slow down. Pay attention to the rock. Look around. Slide back into the long ruminative rhythms of thought that plodded along at their own pedestrian pace, interrupted often by close examination of the granite, or the details of the trail as it crossed the meager stream which to everyone’s relief was making occasional excursions from deep beneath boulder-fields. Or a brief exchange with one of the other guys, as they came in and out of a switchback, and thus came close enough to each other to talk. In general they all hiked at their own paces, and as time passed, spread out up and down the trail.
A day was a long time. The sun beat down on them from high overhead. Charlie and some of the others, Vince especially, paced themselves by singing songs. Charlie hummed or chanted one of Beethoven’s many themes of resolute determination, looping them endlessly. He also found himself unusually susceptible to bad pop and TV songs from his youth; these arose spontaneously within him and then stuck like burrs, for an hour or more, no matter what he tried to replace them with—things like “Red Rubber Ball” (actually a great song) or “Meet the Flintstones”—tromping methodically uphill, muttering over and over “We’ll have a gay old—we’ll have a gay old—we’ll have a gay old time!”
“Charlie please shut up. Now you have me doing that.”
“—a three-hour tour! A three-hour tour!”
So the day passed. Sometimes it would seem to Charlie like a good allegory for life itself. You just keep hiking uphill.
Frank hiked sometimes ahead, sometimes behind. He seemed lost in his thoughts, or the view, never particularly aware of the others. Nor did he seem to notice the work of the hike. He drifted up, mouth hanging open