Alone and together

Some go alone and some are never alone because they touched and changed so many. We are with them. Especially when they need us.

I’ve been watching the outreach after my dear friend, rope mate, sometimes soul mate, and climbing partner — a man I trusted with everything I had — ran into something he couldn’t push aside. He fell. It wrecked him. He might never be the same. Then again, he’s Barry Blanchard, and he might return to base, or he might return one better. It is in others’ hands now. And also in his. If he wants it then it shall be.

I am proud to see the Brotherhood step up to love and support a Brother. We share a link, sometimes broken by trivial shit, but always reforged when real life comes to the door.

Barry has always been a force, sometimes quiet, sometimes loud, carrying the weight that could turn bad momentum toward the good. Casual in the face of hard things because he made himself competent and durable, but sometimes the miles catch up, or maybe we spend too much luck against a balance sheet the universe doesn’t show us and we run out, run dry. Maybe when we weren’t paying attention.

He and I had the rough patches. We all do. More so with men of passion, who thrive and grow in extreme circumstances and relationships. We tried everything, we tested everything, and sometimes we paid. I’ll not forget that drunken night in Argentiere when he kicked the windshield out of my car while I drove four or five decimal points over the line and turned up the volume until he did it. Or when we opened champagne bottles with a butcher’s knife the night before I caught a plane to Nepal. Or when he went blind in one eye on Everest. We were way, way out past the line with little hope and only able to call on the resources we had onboard between us, what we had accumulated over the years, in skill, knowledge, and tricks, but more importantly love, a love that bound us harder than any rope; love that could conjure solutions and efforts strong enough to save him. Yeah, we got through that one, and it sounds cool when I read it, but while that tested us physically, it never tested our relationship. Our love. That shit came later.

It was mundane. And it could have killed us just like altitude, or hubris. It was man-woman-man shit … something we hadn’t learned to navigate because we devoted our learning to those mountains. It was grim for a few years. No harsh words, but instead a lack of care or respect, harsher than words. I turned away. He never did. I was the small man. He remained large, Barry Blanchard, solid, steadfast, through and through. He came with offerings. One day we climbed that classic in warm sun, over easy moves, and made it back in time to catch the last cable car to the bar. But that was a band-aid, on a wound that wouldn’t heal.

The next time we tied in together he rode a free-hanging icicle onto my head. I didn’t black out but came close. Then there was the morning of the avalanches out in the Kananaskis. What was the name of that mountain, that route someone has surely climbed by now? I don’t know. Or care. It was one more canvas Barry and I painted on together, one more thread sewing more tightly the fabric of our relationship. I freaked out in the snow cave that night, when the air went still, and the roar of the constant spindrift went quiet, indicating that we were being buried.

I woke in a crazed state. I’m claustrophobic and it was not good. When we dug the cave the outer wall was two or three feet thick. We were plenty safe. Rock anchors. Tied to them, sleeping in our harnesses just in case. But when the freak-out came I started digging, and digging, and I woke Barry up, he was sound asleep and OK with whatever. He trusted our preparations. What once was three feet was now twelve as the spindrift built up and buried us in the place I was convinced I would die. The fresh air I breathed when I broke through the outer wall relieved me, momentarily, but the realization that we were bivouacked in the starting zone of a Class 3 avalanche meant I’d never sleep the rest of the night. Barry was OK with it because he believed in us. He might have even snored.

We got away with that one. And the storm on Nanga Parbat, which we wrote plenty about so I’m sure you know that story … and now we are older. Elders, alive and trying to reconcile everything we have been through, learning to live with it. And we take time too casually, imagining we have enough, enough to say, “I’m sorry,” and, “I trust you,” and “I never stopped loving you …” Yeah, I suppose we knew we were running out of time but I never thought the account would come due so quickly, in such a mundane incident.

And that’s the lesson: nothing is mundane. There is beauty down here, in the valley, among friends who can’t go up there, for whom the “up there” that made us doesn’t matter … fuck, the day-to-day, when shared with the right people, the right person, the one who sees and understands us … well, maybe that’s what we were seeking all along.

In the deepest dark Barry always said he loved me unconditionally, and for years I couldn’t say the same. Blood passed between us and I wasn’t mature enough to handle it. But I grew into it. I came back to what we had, what we shared, the extreme things we did for each other … it went beyond an attentive hand on the rope. We loved. Others. Each other. Hard. Deep.

And now I realize that all of the shit we have been through is just life and living it, playing hands we were dealt, chasing what we wanted, had tasted, and what we savored long enough to addict us, to change us, to steer us … into hardship, into trust, into love … and sometimes, maybe now, into positions where we cannot influence an outcome, where we must wait patiently, observe quietly, and abide … attending to all that we and our relationships with the universe have caused to happen. We are not without responsibility. We are complicit. We lived and did and loved more and harder than our bodies and our souls were designed to withstand.

So what now? What next? 

I’ll be here. I hope we will be able to answer those questions together.