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By Root 896 0

fast, wanting to climb the mountain today. Morley came second, about fifty yards ahead of me all the way. I was in no hurry. Then as it got later afternoon I went faster and decided to pass Morley and join Japhy. Now we were at about eleven thousand feet and it was cold and there was a lot of snow and to the East we could see immense snowcapped ranges and whooee levels of valleyland below them, we were already practically on top of California. At one point I had to scramble, like the others, on a narrow ledge, around a butte of rock, and it really scared me: the fall was a hundred feet, enough to break your neck, with another little ledge letting you bounce a minute preparatory to a nice goodbye one-thousand-foot drop. The wind was whipping now. Yet that whole afternoon, even more than the other, was filled with old premonitions or memories, as though I’d been there before, scrambling on these rocks, for other purposes more ancient, more serious, more simple. We finally got to the foot of Matterhorn where there was a most beautiful small lake unknown to the eyes of most men in this world, seen by only a handful of mountainclimbers, a small lake at eleven thousand some odd feet with snow on the edges of it and beautiful flowers and a beautiful meadow, an alpine meadow, flat and dreamy, upon which I immediately threw myself and took my shoes off. Japhy’d been there a half-hour when I made it, and it was cold now and his clothes were on again. Morley came up behind us smiling. We sat there looking up at the imminent steep scree slope of the final crag of Matterhorn.

“That don’t look much, we can do it!” I said glad now.

“No, Ray, that’s more than it looks. Do you realize that’s a thousand feet more?”

“That much?”

“Unless we make a run up there, double-time, we’ll never make it down again to our camp before nightfall and never make it down to the car at the lodge before tomorrow morning at, well at midnight.”

“Phew.”

“I’m tired,” said Morley. “I don’t think I’ll try it.”

“Well that’s right,” I said. “The whole purpose of mountain-climbing to me isn’t just to show off you can get to the top, it’s getting out to this wild country.”

“Well I’m gonna go,” said Japhy.

“Well if you’re gonna go I’m goin with you.”

“Morley?”

“I don’t think I can make it. I’ll wait here.” And that wind was strong, too strong, I felt that as soon as we’d be a few hundred feet up the slope it might hamper our climbing.

Japhy took a small pack of peanuts and raisins and said “This’ll be our gasoline, boy. You ready Ray to make a double-time run?”

“Ready. What would I say to the boys in The Place if I came all this way only to give up at the last minute?”

“It’s late so let’s hurry.” Japhy started up walking very rapidly and then even running sometimes where the climb had to be to the right or left along ridges of scree. Scree is long landslides of rocks and sand, very difficult to scramble through, always little avalanches going on. At every few steps we took it seemed we were going higher and higher on a terrifying elevator, I gulped when I turned around to look back and see all of the state of California it would seem stretching out in three directions under huge blue skies with frightening planetary space clouds and immense vistas of distant valleys and even plateaus and for all I knew whole Nevadas out there. It was terrifying to look down and see Morley a dreaming spot by the little lake waiting for us. “Oh why didn’t I stay with old Henry?” I thought. I now began to be afraid to go any higher from sheer fear of being too high. I began to be afraid of being blown away by the wind. All the nightmares I’d ever had about falling off mountains and precipitous buildings ran through my head in perfect clarity. Also with every twenty steps we took upward we both became completely exhausted.

“That’s because of the high altitude now Ray,” said Japhy sitting beside me panting. “So have raisins and peanuts and you’ll see what kick it gives you.” And each time it gave us such a tremendous kick we both jumped up without a word and climbed another twenty,