The Art of Holding On and Letting Go

by Kristin Lenz

  Shouts and cheers jerked me back to attention. Coach Mel grabbed my hand and pulled me to standing.

  “Third place. So close, Cara, so close.”

  My brain slowly registered what had happened. Third place was not what I came here to accomplish, but it didn’t stop my teammates from dancing around me. Someone picked me up, the curse of being small. Zach swung me around in a hug; he’d placed third in his division, too.

  Blood rushed to my cheeks, and I couldn’t help but smile, my heart opening to the joy around me. The first-place French climber hugged me and planted a quick kiss, kiss on my cheeks. I laughed, kissing the air beside her face. I scanned the crowd for my parents.

  Zach hammed it up with his bronze medal and pulled me into pics right and left. It wasn’t long before the media realized my parents were absent. The rumors flew.

  My smile became tighter and tighter. My throat closed as tears swelled. I escaped to the outer edges of the crowd and breathed deeply to calm my trembling insides. Some part of me had truly expected my parents to show up, as if I was capable of making them appear through the strength of my will.

  I overheard a reporter from Rock and Ice magazine speaking into a microphone in front of a camera.

  “We’ve been told the American climbers Mark and Lori Jenkins and Max O’Connor were planning to summit Mount Chimborazo by a rarely attempted and extremely dangerous route up the east face of the mountain. And now … they are missing.”

  The woman spied me and strutted my way. I was so stunned by her speed, I stood frozen.

  “We’re here with Cara Jenkins, daughter of the missing climbers Mark and Lori Jenkins. Cara, you must be very worried. What have you heard about your parents?”

  I stepped backward, but the woman thrust the microphone closer to my face.

  “I haven’t heard anything yet,” I stammered. I took another step backward, bumping into Becky, who had come up behind me.

  Becky gave me a half hug and kept her arm draped over my shoulder. She flashed a sympathetic look at me, then at the camera. “It’s just terrible,” she said.

  “We’ve heard reports of several avalanches on the mountain,” the reporter continued. “Some are fearing the worst.”

  My eyes swept the competition area. Where were my teammates when I needed to be picked up and carried away? Becky’s mother approached, smoothing her hair and smiling at the camera. Her diamond earrings flashed in the sunlight. I recognized my chance and sidestepped out of Becky’s grasp. If those two wanted the spotlight, they could have it.

  Coach Mel trotted toward me, but I didn’t wait. I didn’t make eye contact with anyone else. I bolted straight out of the competition area. I didn’t need rumors. I needed answers.

  Back at the hostel, I found Mr. S. leaning over a dining table covered with maps.

  “Have you heard any more news from Mount Chimborazo?” I asked him.

  Coach Mel burst through the door. Mr. S. motioned for her to join us. “Please sit,” he said.

  I scanned the maps of Ecuador spread in front of us, not knowing what I was looking for. My parents had shared their plans with me, but I had been only half-listening, too focused on my competition. I knew where they were going, but I didn’t know their detailed route.

  “I’ve been told that the American climbing group has not returned to base camp as expected,” Mr. S. said, “but other climbers on the mountain have organized a search and rescue effort. They speculate that the volcanic ash from Tungurahua hindered the climbers’ view of their planned route.”

  My parents! Not just any climbers, any American climbing group. Just say it already, my parents.

  “It’s possible they veered off course, which means coping with unexpected terrain.” Mr. S. spread his fingers over the map, pointing out my parents’ planned route. “If, for example, they ended up over here instead, they would encounter crevasses that they may have been unaware of.”

  I stared at the map; I knew how to read maps, but the scribble of foreign words, lines, and shadows bled into an incomprehensible blur. I didn’t need a map to picture a crevasse and what it would mean to unexpectedly tumble into one during a blinding storm.

  Mr. S. leaned back in his chair and stroked his beard. “But there’s a good chance their descent is simply taking longer than expected. Most likely they are hunkered down somewhere on the mountain slopes waiting for Chimborazo to go back to sleep.”

  “So waiting for sun down?” Coach Mel asked.

  “Right. For the temperature to drop back to freezing. Then there’s less chance of falling rock,” Mr. S. said.

  “You think they might be waiting out the storm,” I said. “Maybe tonight they’ll be able to safely descend now that the ash has cleared. Or they might wait for sunrise.”

  “Like I said before, they know how to keep themselves safe.” Mr. S. shrugged and held his hands open in front of him as if he was offering a gift, a gift of hope.

  I rubbed my temples in circles.

  I wanted to believe Mr. S. Expeditions became extended all the time when climbers needed to wait out the weather. My parents were gone an extra two weeks when they climbed Everest. But I was only ten years old then. I hadn’t understood the degree of danger. All I knew then was that I would be staying with my grandparents for half the summer.

  “What about avalanches?” I asked.

  Mr. S. chewed the inside of his lip and drummed his fingertips on the table. “There have been reports of recent avalanches on the mountain. But this is common. Your parents knew this and were wearing avalanche transceivers.”

  I nodded. A transceiver could send or receive a radio signal if someone was buried in an avalanche, alerting others to their location. I searched Mr. S.’s face for more clues, but he was as difficult to read as the map spread before me. My legs wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go.

  I shoved my chair back from the table and stood up. “I want to go to Mount Chimborazo. How can I get there?”

  Coach Mel exchanged a look with Mr. S. “Cara, it’s safer for you to stay here with us.”

  “The skies are clear now,” Mr. S. said. “Your parents will find their way down the mountain.”

  “You said there’s a search and rescue group. We could join them.”

  “We aren’t prepared for that type of mountaineering,” Coach Mel said. Her tone was slow and firm. “We’d only be in the way. We need to sit tight and hope for the best.”

  “She’s right.” Mr. S. nodded.

  I just wanted to be home in California. I wanted to be back in the safety of our mountain cabin, curled up by the fire, engrossed in a book, Mom and Dad beside me. Uncle Max stomping through the front door, sniffing out dinner.

  I walked out to the deck and searched the bruised sky, seeking the highest peak, the glacier-domed summit of Mount Chimborazo. Please, please let them be all right. My muscles felt twisted, wrung out like a sponge. I squinted into the evaporating daylight, through the layers of setting sun, but the distance was too great.

  6

  The next morning, Becky packed her suitcase for the return home. I folded my clothes and layered them in my bag, but no way was I leaving Ecuador. My teammates would drive to the Quito airport then scatter for flights to different states, Colorado, Oregon, Kentucky, Georgia. They didn’t know what to say to me. I wouldn’t have known either.

  Becky fingered the tiny cross she wore on a delicate gold chain around her neck. The cross pointed down like an arrow toward her cleavage, which was pushed up out of her hot-pink tank top. Her patriotic fingernail polish had been changed to match.

  “I’ll pray for you,” she said.

  I clutched my copy of Walden to my chest, Dad’s postcard tucked inside. I had been praying in my mind, over and over. Please, please let them be safe. It wasn’t the type of prayer that Becky had in mind. I prayed to the earth, the sky, the wind, the trees, the mountains. My parents and Uncle Max were in the mountain’s hands.

  Coach Mel walked in. “The
airport shuttle will be here in an hour.”

  I crossed my arms at my chest and stared at her. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I postponed our flights for one more day.”

  Despite her words, she looked like she wanted nothing more than to hop on her flight home that morning. She ran a hand through her short, spiky hair.

  “And I called your grandparents in Michigan.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re who your parents listed in case of emergency.”

  Oh great. My parents would definitely not want my grandparents involved. Grandma had always been against our climbing life. Now there was going to be another fight for sure. My grandparents had thought Everest would be my parents’ last expedition. What more was there to accomplish? But then Mom and Dad sent me back to Michigan a couple summers later while they climbed Denali, and the visit ended with a storm of angry words and Mom in tears. We hadn’t been back in nearly four years.

  I refused to believe this was the kind of emergency that would warrant a call to my grandparents. My grandparents were the last resort. I repeated my mantra, please, please, let Mom and Dad be safe.

  I sat on the front steps of the hostel after my teammates left. My head jerked toward the sound of every passing car and truck, waiting for one to roll into the driveway. I saw my parents throwing open the doors, running toward me. Or maybe they’d been injured; they could be on their way to a hospital right now. It could be something as simple as a broken ankle, walking would be slow and difficult. Or altitude sickness, high altitude pulmonary edema; it could be deadly. My lungs constricted at the thought.

  There was no cell reception high on Mount Chimborazo, maybe not even in the foothills. It’d be a while before they reached an area where they could call.

  I wandered around the yard peering at flowers. Everything was different here. Plants that looked like artichokes but thick and spiky like cacti. Red bumblebees. Huge hummingbirds with pointy, long beaks and a plume of a tail. Foot-long yellow and orange flowers hanging upside down like tubular bells. The landscape was vibrant, full of life. This strange world where everything seemed possible in a magical yet frightening way. The pressure in my chest was unbearable; I wanted to jump right out of my skin. I couldn’t sit around and wait any longer. I needed to go to Mount Chimborazo.

  Mr. S. couldn’t leave his work at the hostel, but he arranged a car for Coach Mel and me. He spread out the maps again and gave directions.

  “Be careful. Mount Chimborazo is not like our national parks back home,” he said. “There isn’t a visitor center or park rangers to help you. It’s true wilderness. Wildness.”

  He handed me a wool blanket like the ones I had seen in the market. “Keep this in the car just in case. It’ll get colder and colder as you head up into the mountains. Don’t underestimate the cold. You’re not prepared to stay up there.”

  I nodded and hugged the soft blanket to my chest. “Thank you.” “Buena suerte,” he said.

  When I had first arrived in Ecuador and seen the Andes Mountains, I was awestruck, ready for adventure. Now I felt chilled. A tingle crept down the back of my neck, and I shuddered. The road wound through shades of green, pastures and fields carved into the slopes of the Andean highlands. Volcanic peaks rose up and disappeared into the clouds. Along the lower slopes of Mount Chimborazo, llamas scratched at the volcanic ash coating the ground. Or maybe they were alpacas; I couldn’t remember how to tell the difference.

  “Does this sound familiar?” I asked Coach Mel. “Something like ‘I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over and see things you can’t see from the center’?”

  “I don’t think I’ve heard that before, but it could be about climbing. Why?”

  “It was written on a postcard from my dad. He always sends me something from his trips. If I was at home with Mom, we’d make it part of my schoolwork.”

  “How come you’ve never gotten into ice climbing like your parents?” Coach Mel asked.

  “They said I complained about the cold too much, it was just easier to go without me.”

  “That’s why you focused on sport climbing and not on mountaineering?”

  I shrugged. “I like hiking way up high, just not when it turns to snow and ice. There’s something freeing about just slipping on your shoes and heading out, not being weighed down by all that other gear. They have their thing, and I have mine.”

  “Well, your focus has paid off.”

  “I should have placed higher than third.”

  “Yep, you should have. You’ll have other chances.” She tapped my knee. “And your parents should be there to see it.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “You’ve had some great summits in your past. Why did you stop?”

  She didn’t answer right away. “The same reason you never started.”

  I was about to ask her what she meant, but she leaned forward, squinting out the windshield. “I think that’s it.” She pointed to a dirt and gravel road on our left.

  We turned and headed up the steep, rutted road. Coach Mel braked around the switchbacks, and the car bumped and dipped in and out of the ruts. My ears popped. The temperature dropped as we drove higher and higher. I rubbed my arms.

  “It’s freezing.” She fumbled with the dials for heat. Cold air blasted from the vents.

  I pulled my knees into my chest and hugged myself against the cold.

  She waved her hands in front of the vents and turned another dial. “Seriously? I think the heat is broken.”

  I reached into the backseat for the blanket from Mr. S. “Here, we can share.” I spread the blanket across my lap and over to Coach Mel.

  “It’s okay. You can have it.” She switched off the malfunctioning heat and veered around a giant pothole, only to dip into another. The car shuddered.

  I pulled the blanket up to my chin.

  Finally, we spied the Carrel Hut as Mr. S. had described, the first of two refuges where climbers could rest before their Chimborazo treks began. My parents had been here just a few days ago. Sorting their equipment—crampons, ice axes, ropes—before heading up the steep slopes beyond.

  “I think that’s their car.” I leaned forward in my seat. My parents’ rental car sat by itself at the edge of the dirt lot. A little Chevrolet something that I had never heard of before. We parked next to it, and I untangled myself from the blanket, leaving it in a heap on the floor. I couldn’t get out of the car fast enough.

  I peered into the Chevrolet’s windows as if there’d be a message waiting for me. I lifted the driver’s door handle. Locked. They were still on the mountain. Somewhere.

  The cold wind blasted my face. I pulled my fleece jacket out of my backpack and slipped it on as I headed toward the hut. The fleece was all I had. I had only packed for the competition in the city where it was warmer, maybe some hiking in the foothills. I hadn’t expected to go this high into the mountains. My parents had layers of fleece, down parkas, gloves, gaiters, helmets.

  I stopped beside a pyramid-shaped cairn of boulders and rocks as tall as me. Cairns are often built to mark a trailhead. This one was different. RIP had been carved into the lowest, largest boulder. Back in California, I had built a small, simple cairn to mark the grave of my dog, Tahoe, a couple years ago. Three rocks balancing. The number of rocks in this pile made me light-headed.

  I exchanged a look with Coach Mel. Neither of us spoke. We moved together toward the hut. But then I stopped and dropped to one knee, examining the stones and pebbles on the path.

  I picked up a thin, oval stone the size of my thumb. Dark gray, almost black with a wavy line of copper running through it. I ran my fingers over its smooth edges and turned it around and around in my hand. So different from the pyrite with its deep grooves and sharp edges. A good luck token. Buena suerte.

  I stood up, slipped the stone into my jacket pocket, and caught up to Coach Mel at the hut. The silence was eerie. My mind jumped to images of splattered blood, ghosts. I stepped back
while she knocked on the door and peered inside.

  “No one’s here,” she said.

  My heart hammered. I didn’t know if I should be relieved or disappointed. I peeked in the hut to see for myself. It was just an empty, rustic space with plank floors that looked like they’d been swept clean.

  “Let’s go to the next one,” I said.

  Mr. S. had told us the Whymper Hut could only be reached on foot. I tightened the laces of my hiking boots. This trail was too rough for my Converses; I’d roll an ankle for sure. And again I prayed for something simple like a sprained ankle to explain my parents’ delay.

  I zipped my jacket up to my chin against the biting wind and tugged the sleeves down over my hands, wishing I had gloves. We hiked for an hour up the steep path, picking our way over and around rocks and boulders. I didn’t pause to take in the view. I was on a mission, one foot after the other.

  John Muir wrote about the mountains. Dad had scrawled quite a few Muir quotes on postcards over the years.

  But this mountain felt jagged, dark, and threatening, not like my California mountains. My California mountains were bright and safe; they were home.

  The Whymper Hut was the refuge where most climbers stayed to eat and sleep before their midnight ascent. I heard voices as we approached, but I couldn’t make out the words. The sound was muffled—it was coming from inside the hut, and the words weren’t English. Spanish, Portuguese?

  Beyond the hut, the trail disappeared into snow and ice. Fields of white with spires of gray granite, rising up, up, up. A moonscape lost in the clouds.

  I rapped on the door, then opened it with a shaky hand. Were my parents here?

  “Hola,” Coach Mel called out.

  Inside, three climbers were unloading their backpacks and rolled out sleeping bags on the bunks that lined the room. They nodded hello but continued their work. With our small packs and lack of gear, Coach Mel and I must have looked like tourists.