If I Live Until Morning: A True Story of Adventure, Tragedy and Transformation by Jean Muenchrath
Author:Jean Muenchrath [Muenchrath, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: VajraSky Books
Published: 2019-04-04T22:00:00+00:00
INTO THE WIND
Guanacos beneath the Cuernos
The Rockies were under snow by the time we left Asia. Maura returned to her home near the Tetons in Wyoming while I went to Colorado. As the months passed, I felt sluggish and down. I had picked up a parasite in Nepal. It plagued me for six months with intermittent diarrhea before I could get it properly diagnosed.
However, it wasn’t just the giardia that ailed me. I was feeling depressed. There seemed to be a big void in my life, yet I wasn’t sure why. A few months later I realized that it was because I had accomplished my most important goal in life while I was still in my twenties. Now I wondered if there was anything greater that could feed my soul and keep me going.
Eventually I relaxed into the uncertainty. New dreams would arise with the passage of time. Meanwhile, I read voraciously about the Himalayas, Eastern culture and philosophy. I wanted to understand the world that had spoken so deeply to me.
Over the next few years, Ken and I skied in the backcountry and occasionally climbed frozen waterfalls during our free time. Christmas holidays were spent climbing on warm south-facing rocks in Joshua Tree National Park. In the spring and fall, we took vacations to climb in Yosemite. Whenever I wasn’t in the mood to climb, Ken bribed me with
an offer to take me out for dinner. As an introvert, Ken depended on me, his one and only climbing partner.
Ken was driven. He climbed incessantly. On summer evenings he scooped me up in the car the minute I got home from work. I had already put in a long ten-hour day working at nearly 12,000 feet at the Alpine Visitor Center, the highest visitor center in the National Park System. While driving to the nearest cliffs we wolfed down a snack and then climbed until dark. We repeated this pattern several nights a week, summer after summer. It was utterly exhausting.
I felt like I had to keep up with Ken even though I didn’t share the intensity of his passion. Scaling rocks at the limits of my ability kept me in a state of perpetual anxiety. I had believed that continuing to climb after my accident would help me get past the fear of falling. To climb again was to ride the proverbial horse after one’s fall. Instead, it retraumatized me over and over. It might have helped if I could have talked to Ken about how our tragedy on Mount Whitney had affected me. Nonetheless, despite the challenges that we had while climbing, we still enjoyed each other’s company. Our love for mountains kept us together.
Two years after my trip to Nepal we embarked on a journey that could be meaningful for both of us. On Thanksgiving Day of 1988 we flew from Denver to Punta Arenas, Chile, near the tip of South America. Ken had big dreams. He wanted to study the spires of Patagonia for a future climbing expedition.
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