Mark M. Rostenko | The Fear

I’m hiking this slot to its source but where is that? Every so often it forks off into other channels, creating a latticework of micro-canyons, all of them indistinguishable at cursory glance, but each in fact a novel trove of seductive details and textures, pour-offs, hoodoos, and shelves. About an hour in I arrive at the final fork, both short tines dead-ending at steeper inclines leading to the carved plateau above. One looks climbable. I am helpless against the lure of the unknown; I’ve come this far so why not see what’s up top?

No rope, no protection, no belay, but it’s a relatively easy grade, maybe a sixty to seventy degree slope interspersed by the occasional perpendicular shelf of manageable height. Looks like about a hundred feet up but you never can tell. How many times have I popped over a ridge only to discover a false summit and more climbing beyond? The fragility of this rock, the sharp edges, loose boulders and scree-riddled path concern me, but so long as I’m rigorous about testing hand and footholds, I see little risk.

Only the crux is sketchy: the final twenty feet steepen sharply, nearly vertical. Probably not enough height for an instantly fatal plunge but just enough to cause a slow, lingering death from immobilizing injury in the jagged rocks below. But I won’t be turned back by fear again, not after yesterday’s incident. Up and over the ridge I find myself atop an ancient corrugated sea bed, a desiccated yellow-brown void baking under scorching sun, accompanied only by a scraggly old juniper, half succumbed, half yet clinging to life. It smells like dust up here… the nondescript, parched scent of hot dry dust.

In every direction there is virtually nothing but rock. A monument to total alienation carved into stone. No billowing clouds of desert smoke betraying a roaming vehicle in the horizon, neither raven nor hawk in the sky, nothing. I am inescapably alone and far from anything familiar… in another world, a world unfit for humans. A home for disembodied souls with nothing more to do and nowhere left to go.

With steep drop-offs on all but one side there are only two ways down: the way I came or a walk-off in the opposite direction leading into another unconnected maze of slots. The latter is no option; my getting lost with one quart of water in an environment that demands a gallon a day but offers not a single drop might thrill the ravens and other scavengers but I’ve other plans for my carcass.

Everything looks the same every which way, just crumbly, chalky rock, and suddenly I’m no longer sure whence I came. Yes, the direction is obvious. But the final climbable stretch isn’t visible without actually descending backwards into the chasm; the last foothold that secured my decisive thrust up over the edge, the few square inches of stone that is my lifeline to descent now utterly indiscernible. There is no peering over the edge; the slope of the loose gravel before it requires a commitment to either stay up top or descend by sliding over blindly and precisely onto the foothold. The gravelly surface registers no tracks, no sign of my cresting. To know where I am whilst totally disoriented… this is indescribably bizarre.

And within that fertile synapse of confusion the seed of fear takes root.

The mind plays tricks. Being alone in a place where I just don’t matter, to anything, arouses nameless never-felt emotions beyond description, a veritable unexplored wilderness within. Unfamiliarity breeds terror. Gazing out into nothingness I reflect upon what I’ve just done in light of having no protection from the sun and so little water. I’m not unreachably far from camp but such inhospitable terrain can multiply single errors into cascading tragedies. How much water might one need to down-climb with a broken ankle and crawl back over rough ground and rock under a hundred degrees of blazing exposure? How far must one venture from camp to wither from dehydration, immobilized by a fall and blow to the head?

I am ill-prepared. My kit usually includes a sixty-foot hank of climbing rope and some ‘biners just in case. Just in case I find myself in a situation like this. Tie on, loop around the juniper, lower myself over the edge, problem solved. But this was to be a leisurely hike, boots to the ground, no rope required. When will I learn? Always, without exception, carry the essentials.

I weigh options, ponder alternatives. I squat and breathe deep into my center to disperse this fear gathering and swelling like thunderheads in my gut, but I can’t relax into the not-knowing. This is how panic begins… panic kills. If not to get off now, I must at least find a route to quell the festering uncertainty gnawing at my core. But the only way is to drop over the naked edge and probe for invisible footing.

Such it is in a land of perpetual paradox: the only way out of the abyss is to leap blindly into it.

Why this fear? A thousand times I’ve scrambled unaided up and down slopes. This is easy, well within my capabilities. But it’s not just me; it’s this place. In the absence of anything familiar—life, water, sound, humanity—what I bring to the equation is magnified exponentially by the mercilessly clear vacuum of the desert. There’s nothing here to distract me from the situation, just me and my thoughts. And a blistering hot sun that sucks my lungs of precious humidity with every breath. Nothing here will help me. Nothing to grab onto, nothing familiar within which to root my awareness, nothing to count on. No one to hear me scream. And no one knows I’m here.

I am in a race against fear and I fear that I am losing. I panicked once, only once, as a teenager buried beneath a North Atlantic beach, totally immobilized, a child’s game gone unpredictably too far, my body beyond my control, my head perched atop sand with nothing to do but indulge in fantasies of drowning helplessly beneath a rising tide. When the mind crosses that line all manner of irrational foolishness seems to make sense and desperation rules, reactions I can ill afford. I must act now before the downward mental spiral grabs hold and shackles my reason.

Mortality uncoils upward from the emptiness to confront me head-on like a serpent emerging from the fog, its forked tongue lapping at my fear, gauging where to strike, probing for vulnerability, for a tender spot. I realize that nothing more than a thin, fragile strand of stuff secures me to just this side of life. What I’ve brought, only what I’ve packed. The moment it runs out the countdown to annihilation begins. There is nothing here to sustain me, no way to survive once the body uses up what is stored. Control is an illusion fostered by the comforts of civilization; I haven’t the luxury of either here. The desert suffers neither fools nor hopeful fantasies.

I tread gingerly down this mental road, confronting what I want to forget, what all of us deny, what we build our lives to avoid… what the serpent knows: I am vulnerable, a trivial sack of flesh and bone with precious little say about when my ticket gets punched, clinging desperately to the delusion of control. I am the dead man walking with nary a clue to where this road runs out, to when my well runs dry. The desert, stripped of all bullshit and distraction, makes this one thing magnificently clear: I’m going to die. And there’s nothing I can do to stave it off, no matter how many comforts, distractions, addictions, or amusements I toss into the path of the reaper’s relentless march.

This desert is a huge, open land; from my perch I can see farther than I could hope to walk. The scale here is such to which the modern civilized human can no longer relate, his vision constrained by cubicles and walls and the protective shells of mobile steel cages, where all is prepackaged, neat and tidy and the illusions of safety and immortality and one’s own bloated sense of self-importance are fostered and encouraged by the incessant output of jingles and baubles, sound bites and gadgets. One needn’t, one mustn’t, look too far ahead in that comfortable world, but out here, measured against the desert’s stark magnitude and perpetuity, the fragility of our temporal, civilized existence cannot be denied. Out here where there are no guarantees, nor safety nets, we’re asked to confront everything from which civilization strives to shield us. Out here death comes easily and life must be earned every day, survival not underwritten by the state. Here death is undeniably real, a constant companion and wise advisor who speaks to the precious value of Life. And if you listen you will hear what really matters.

I’ve carried this shell for forty-five years; I have crested the arc of my journey and only the descent awaits. The way down terrifies me; I can’t see where I’m going and I don’t know how to get there. “You’re not scared of falling,” the desert whispers. “You’re not scared of dehydrating, nor losing your way, nor succumbing to the heat. You’re scared of the truth, the undeniable, inescapable, unstoppable reality of absolutely certain and unalterable mortality.” For I am human and carry that weight, as do we all, acknowledged or denied.

And therein lies the wisdom of the desert: from within the rapier clarity of barrenness that which is always there, at which you would not otherwise look, is reflected back if you’ll but open your eyes. Against the void the reality of our own lives is magnified by relativity, mirroring the remotest edges of our mindscapes, the nether regions we dare not tread. The desert, having little of its own to offer, asks you what you’re made of, reflecting only what you’ve brought, naked, pure, and undistorted by the fog of self-deception and denial.

I have carried fear for far too long and, unwittingly, I have brought it here to let it go. I have climbed not as a fool but as the reluctant hero forcing himself onto the serpent’s path, leaving myself no escape short of wrestling my will back from the clutches of this faceless, nameless beast who seduces with the lure of comfort, the easy road, acquiescence to how things are and what I’ve allowed myself to become: all masks disguising the inevitable face of death. The fear is not my voice but that of a culture gone mad, sacrificing our wild, true, individual natures for the illusion of safety: safety from risk, from injury, from discomfort, from freedom, from responsibility, from independent thought, from originality… from all that is good and vital and life-affirming. Life is terminal and death renews life but the fear of death—the ultimate source of all fear—mires us in an insipid limbo that murders the spirit over and over again, in every waking moment, leaving us stuck atop a crumbling butte of shattered dreams and frustrated hopes until eventually we lose the way down and surrender to the siren song of resignation.

I refuse to listen any longer. To get off this rock I have to trust, dismiss the irrational voice of fear and allow my authentic, free and wild self to guide me down. There is nothing more to consider, nothing more to contemplate, nothing more to figure out; the unknowable succumbs not to reason but to faith. The Mystery will neither bend nor bow to indecision but reveals itself to courage borne upon trust. I refuse to rank amongst the living dead so I proceed, blind and backwards over the edge to find my footing, one precious step at a time, the following step revealing itself readily only in my commitment to the present one. It turns out that the way is easy, asking only faith in self and my own abilities. I step back into the wash exhilarated, grateful for this test and yet another lesson taught by wilderness.

Yes, I am forty-five and half my life is over. And half has just begun…