Overwhelming Good

He was confident in his abilities, and arrived without remorse or fear. The base camp wasn’t a simple place to get to, but he had managed without difficulty. The real challenge still lay ahead, however. He gathered his gear; he slung his sack of tools and sustenance onto his back, his belay rope hung in a loose loop around his carabiner, and set off towards the others.

Sidelong glances glazed past him as he joined the group.  He was an outsider, inexperienced with the others.  They didn’t mind his presence, but always remained skeptical.  It could take years for their skepticism to chip away.  As one, they looked upon the peak that they were to reach by the afternoon.  As one, they hoisted their packs and set off towards the early tendrils of dawn.

The first part went without a hitch.  But by midmorning, he was having trouble.  He flagged as the others charged on defiantly.  The one in front of him gave one terse tug of the rope without looking back; he gasped a breath and pulled himself together, matching the pace of the group.

By the dangerous last third of the climb, his goggles had fogged and his ears were cold, even underneath the expensive product.  Here a single wrong step could pull the whole group down.  He was thinking about his down coverlet at home, his warm house in the sun.  The daydream continued, the climb lingered on.  Step after step, he marched up the hill, alternating ice pick with sunbathing, measured breathing with sighs in the jacuzzi.

Midway through his exhalation, things all went wrong.  His pick missed, his foot slipped, and he began to slide away on the ice.  The crevasse opened beneath him and nearly swallowed him in a single gulp, only stopped by the last-second hitch of his pick on a tiny ledge of ice.  He looked forward for the next one up to pull him to safety.  The one in front looked back for a moment, and shook his head.  If they veered off-course to save him now, they would all slide away.  He muffled for them to pull him up through his outer layer.  The one in front unclipped his carabiner, and the rest followed suit.

He panicked in the moment, then realized his predicament.  A line from the one who had warned him stood out in his mind, forgotten until that moment.  ”They work together, but they will not carry you up the mountain–they will celebrate their victories together and mourn their losses, but you and you alone will be the one to achieve or the one to fail.  They will not decide for you, except to leave you to your decision.”

The ledge broke, and he dropped another five feet into the crevasse.  His pick dug into the ice, and his body dangled.

They will not carry me up the mountain.

He looked down into the darkness of the depths, and looked up at the impossible feat of climbing himself out back into the light.  He looked inside himself–it took less than a split-second–and made his own decision.