I pull the bottle from my lips like it’s poison.
“Do I drink the water now or do I not drink the water now?”
“Now drink,” he says, starting the car.
I unscrew the cap again.
“Drink on the mountain.”
I have seen many films with scenes like this. I don’t need to be part of one myself. If Cast Away, 127 Hours, Alive, Touching the Void, and Panic Room have taught me anything, it’s that you should never leave home without a lighter, a bottle of Gatorade, and a Swiss Army knife. At this point, people who do leave the house without an EpiPen basically deserve what’s coming to them. But the survival stuff is never the worst part of these movies. The worst part is those innocuous scenes, before the epic journey, the ones that appear to have nothing to do with anything. Chop off my arm, feed me butt cheek, lock me in a room with Jodie Foster—these will never be the moments that move me as a viewer. It’s when our hero or heroine thinks longingly of some basic household staple that my stomach lurches. Nothing is so gruesome to the human imagination as regret.
I drain the bottle down to the plastic rib equidistant between the top and the bottom.
Soon there are no more towns to be found and no more donkeys to be avoided. We drive over lava-worn ground. Wild dogs appear from nowhere and run after the car, barking. It starts to rain harder. The sky blends into the clouds blends into the ice blends into the rocks. Cold air whips through a crack in the dashboard. I worry about my clothing. But if I ask too many questions, Edgardo tells me to be “tranquilo.” He isolates the word for effect, simply saying “calm,” not bothering with the “yourself.” I know nothing about Ecuadorian culture, but I’m betting that treating a woman like a hysteric for asking about long underwear does not go over well.
“Pichincha.” Edgardo points across my chest, breaking the silence.
“I see,” I say.
Pedro reaches silently through from the backseat and offers me pistachio nuts. I shake my head. He shrugs and keeps eating. We park the car at an adobe-style house complete with a stone path. It’s bare-bones, but at this point any evidence of human intent registers as luxurious. We haul our belongings—which for me includes a backpack stuffed with an old sleeping bag of Pedro’s, climbing equipment, beans, and a chocolate bar—over our shoulders. I push a wooden door and poke my head into the house. I see a musty rug, a small kitchen, and a ladder leading up to a floor covered in hay. It’s somehow colder inside than out and smells of mildew. Pedro comes in behind me. He looks up at the rafters, puts his hands on his hips, and whistles appreciatively.
Edgardo appears behind us.
“We cannot stay here.”
“Looks fine to me,” I say, fishing in my pack for toilet paper.
I am fond of this role reversal.
“We must go to the refuge,” he says plainly and glares at Pedro, who should know better.
Apparently, we are trespassers. This little hacienda is not our destination. It costs quite a bit of money to rent and other people have done that already. This evening’s destination is another 1,200 feet up and we will be climbing there on foot. The only reason we stopped here is because Edgardo thought this might be a good spot to layer up.
I unfurl two pairs of snow pants, a sweater, and my fleece vest from my backpack but I am having trouble with the boots. Exasperated, Edgardo grabs my leg, one hand behind the knee and the other on the boot, quickly forcing me to sit on a stone bench. He starts lacing up the boots for me. This would verge on maternal if it weren’t the most violent corset-style lacing session of all time. I don’t know what kind of mother Edgardo had. Mine used to take a heart-shaped cookie cutter to my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
*
“Here is where we get out,” Edgardo says, firmly.
It’s beyond me how anyone could discern “parking space” from where we’ve stopped. The rain has turned to snow that comes from beneath the car as much as from above it. No one expected a snowstorm but apparently this one doesn’t look so bad. I am awash with the impulse to be back in New York in my apartment, imagining it in mid-July when it’s too hot to go outside and the first sign of rain is a hollow tapping on the air-conditioning unit. I am freezing already, a fact that Edgardo can’t quite believe, despite the purple hue of my lips. I have been backed into trusting him through circumstance. Like a doctor–patient relationship, no matter how extreme my doubt, he is the only one to tell me what’s normal. The closest second opinion is five hours and 5,000 vertical feet away. I unbuckle my seat belt. I think that I have never been so cold in my life but try to rid myself of thoughts like this. There’s nowhere to go but up.
“Your hands are too cold,” Edgardo observes as he watches me not get out of the car.
I am vigorously rubbing my palms together. I would stick them in my mouth if I wasn’t worried about the consequences of them being wet when I removed them. Edgardo reaches across me to open the glove compartment. I want to hug him for warmth. This is hard to reconcile, since the more I get to know Edgardo, the less I want to hug him in general. Maybe what I really want is to gut him Jack London–style and use his kidneys for mittens. We smile politely at each other. He pockets the can of cologne. I’m not sure whom he’s planning on attracting in a frozen volcano crater. Pedro, meanwhile, goes bounding out of the car, all joints and momentum. The prospect of warmth moves me to follow him. I heave my backpack on and try to keep up.
Edgardo yells after Pedro to slow down. I am like an animal too stupid to know to do this myself. Like those parakeets who have to have their cages covered so they know it’s time to sleep. I don’t know it yet, but with no climbing experience and less than twenty-four hours at 10,000 feet above sea level, I will most likely pass out from speed-hiking. But right now I feel okay, almost chatty, for a whole minute before my heart starts banging in earnest. I take advantage of the howling wind to pant as audibly as I wish.
The ground is covered in layers of thick snow that yield to a second layer of volcanic ash. It looks like crumbled Oreo cookies and provides about as much resistance. There’s the occasional flat rock to step on, which helps, but it’s the low visibility that’s stealing the show. I see no sign of this alleged second shelter. When I shout to Edgardo, asking him where the refuge is, I am told it’s in a little place called “Tranquilo.”
I can feel my heart pounding against polyester, trying to escape from my rib cage. I take my thumbs and lean them against the chest strap from the inside to relieve some of the pressure. What has two thumbs and can’t feel either of them? This gal! Edgardo waits about thirty feet ahead of me with one foot up on a rock, as I huff and puff to shorten the distance between us. His befuddlement at my pace feels genuine. Pedro has been granted permission to go on without us. I can only imagine how that conversation went. Just go, man. I’ll deal with this bag of pasteurized milk bones.
*
Turns out the reason I needed to conserve water is because there is no water in the refuge. Correction: there is water in a barrel by the toilets, but it’s reserved for washing away feces. If we want drinking water, we will have to heat snow and then cool it. The irony here being that this is because one of the pipes is frozen.
On the ground floor of the refuge, there is a large space filled with booths that look exactly like the ski trip booths of my nightmares, as well as one inexplicably padlocked cabinet filled with bottles of Fiji water. Someone or someones had to do what I just did but while carting a giant glass door on their backs. They probably had to go back down for the padlock. Now it’s taking about ten minutes to fill one pot and there are three burners for the fifteen people already here. And by people, I mean people with penises. Barring any surprises, I appear to be the only woman around. This is a coincidence. Just last night, a guide from Seattle tells me, there were two female climbers staying at the refuge.
What I can’t understand is how he would possibly know this information. How long has he been here? Does he live here? If he lives here, shou
ld he not have figured out how to get into the goddamn cabinet by now?
It turns out he and his fellow climbers have been acclimatizing at the refuge for two days. They have also ascended a couple of “minor mountains” in Peru in preparation for this one.
“That’s funny,” I say, even though it’s not. “I got here last night.”
“I thought you guys just arrived,” the guide says, gesturing at Pedro.
He is untangling a pile of ropes across the room, a whole apple in his mouth.
“Nope.” I am still watching Pedro. “I flew into Quito yesterday.”
The guide’s eyes widen. He asks if I’m on a medication called Diamox, which prevents altitude sickness by quickening the heart and thinning the blood. I am on no such medication. I have never even heard of it. I know that coca leaves are often chewed at Machu Picchu to prevent altitude sickness. I also know that Machu Picchu rests on a midget of a mountain, clocking in at under 8,000 feet. What should make me wary does make me wary. But despite my fear, it also fills me with pride. Preventive medication is for sissies. Me? I have the red blood cells of a goddamn Sherpa.
*
The idea of men traveling to push themselves to the limit is a culturally familiar one. Not every man hears the call of the wild, but those who do—the Krakauers and the Jungers—are not startled by the ringing. There is something inherently manly about climbing a mountain. Though, taken literally, that would make a deep-sea dive the most feminine activity on the planet. Perhaps it’s less directly correlated to gender and more that mountaineering allows men to try on an idolized extension of their daily selves. Here is the prize for which a certain kind of man has been aiming with every beer chugged, every Super Bowl watched, every video game won, every drunken piggyback ride given to a one-hundred-pound girl. And now it’s time to let the machismo run amok. You’re on top of the world! Drink a shot of gasoline! Punch a bird! For women, to be on a mountain (assuming you’re not a professional mountain climber) is not an extension of stereotypical behavior but a break from it. Therefore, to be part of a successful mountain-climbing expedition, it’s important to play against the worst assumptions about one’s own gender. Do this by being okay with more or less everything. Never refer to the pile of excrement on the outhouse floor as “icky.” Try to avoid weeping when you feel your life may be in danger.
“I can’t believe you’re climbing this after one day,” says a doctor from Baltimore, part of the Seattle hiker’s team.
He translates for the third member of their party, a Chilean, who is so impressed he repeats it.
“Un día!”
At which point Edgardo, having just returned from the stove with a steaming pot of ramen noodles, gives the group a wave of his finger. He proceeds to rapidly debate with the doctor’s Chilean friend.
“He says that this is not true.” The doctor’s translation has a five-second delay. “He says you have been in Quito for a week.”
I grab his arm.
“Who said that?”
“Edgardo,” says the doctor, eyes fixed on Edgardo’s mouth as he speaks to me, “says you told him this.”
Edgardo and I lock eyes. I look to him as a toddler looks at a parent, checking to see if this skinned knee is worth crying over. Should I flip out about this misunderstanding or not? But his face is inconclusive. He only shrugs optimistically. The doctor tries to comfort me. He explains that altitude sickness is unpredictable. There’s nothing that says I’ll definitely get it. Then again, there’s nothing that says I won’t.
I sit down and inhale as deeply as I can, which isn’t very. The city of Quito, without even trying, is 9,000 feet above sea level. The friend who recommended I go see skeleton paintings is a playwright who came down with altitude sickness for eighteen hours upon landing. The friend who recommended I climb Cotopaxi did not. When I recount this story months later over a sea-level glass of wine, this second friend will remind me that he is a world traveler and Australian and that he told me climbing Cotopaxi was going to be “bloody hard.”
“When we say something’s hard, we mean it.”
The question now is: Do I have theater geek lungs or Australian lungs?
“Tranquilo,” Edgardo offers, putting his hand on my shoulder. “All will be fine.”
I go outside into the crisp germ-free air and swallow a malaria pill with a fistful of snow. Up until now, my idea of coping with changes in atmospheric pressure was a nice big yawn. I look around at the fading outlines of the neighboring mountains. It’s almost 7 p.m. I have five hours to mainline noodles and try to sleep before we head out. This I do in silence, coming back inside and sitting at a booth across from Edgardo and Pedro. There is nothing but the sound of wind and slurping.
*
Up a flight of narrow wooden stairs are a series of Holocaust beds. I wish there was a better means of describing them but rarely have I seen something that looks so much like something else. It’s as if The Brady Bunch were filmed in Nazi Germany and we’re spending the night on set. There’s a flurry of multilingual whisper-shouting as climbing partners bid each other good night in the semidarkness. I heave my backpack onto the top of an unoccupied bunk and it bounces on the mattress.
“I sleep downstairs,” says Edgardo, who will never explain why this is, “but I keep my pack here.”
“Sounds fine,” I say, fiddling with the zippers on my backpack.
I’m not mad at him, not really. My predicament could have been easily avoided with some minimal research on my part. I know that one day I will be relieved that I had not seen a photograph of Cotopaxi prior to being located on it. Because if I had, I never would have come. One day I will try to remember but ultimately forget feeling as sick as I’m about to feel. I’ll just think: Here is something I did. But right now, looking at the clusters of confident climbers around me, I feel like I got saddled with the worst lab partner in the world.
Of the myriad garbled mutterings that spew forth from Edgardo’s mouth, it is unfortunate that his paranoia about crime is not one of them. He knows how to say “Watch your shit” in English as well as he does in Spanish. I can feel us being overheard as my bunkmates climb into their squeaky beds. I can sense them bristle in the dark, as they’ve nothing better to do than listen to our conversation. I worry that by sheer association with Edgardo, I will be the victim of punitive theft or molestation. The latter of which would be welcome so long as the molesting process consists of a vigorous foot rubbing.
“Keep all of your eyes on my stuff,” Edgardo practically shouts.
He gestures at my borrowed backpack, which also happens to have his new climbing helmet strapped to it. Go to sleep but also watch his stuff? Sleep with one eye open? That’s more of an expression than a possibility.
“And what is this?” He points at my bunk.
“What is what?”
I can’t imagine to what he’s referring. The bare mattress you’d cross the street to avoid if you saw it in New York? But then he plucks a small leather case from my bed. Along with my dwindling bottle of water and sleeping bag, that’s all I have on me.
“You have too many things,” he says, gesturing at my series of invisible steamer trunks. “We need to go light.” He rattles the leather case in my face. “You need this?”
“Yes.” I grab it back. “I do.”
“It goes in the backpack.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
Everyone in the room not magically asleep by 7 p.m. is hushed and listening, waiting for the squall to pass.
“Fine,” I hiss. “You want to do this? Let’s do this.”
I mumble under my breath as I open the case. My thumbs are numb. There has to be as much of a male aversion to open discussion of feminine hygiene on this continent as there is on mine. I hold up three tampons, fanning them out like cards. Or scissors. Scissors for hands. Edgardo squints at them, momentarily confounded by the foreign packaging. Recognition sets in.
“Okay, okay
,” he says.
“Okay?” I snap.
Great. Now I’ve completely blown my chances at molestation. A Frenchman on the bunk next to mine starts snickering and Edgardo glares at him. The Frenchman rolls over in his sleeping bag, where he whispers to his partner on the other side. At one point in the night I shake so uncontrollably, I climb down to the ground and move my whole bunk a few inches away so as not to put his bed on vibrate.
*
The following cannot be overstated: Had I known what I was getting into, the thing I would have left home with—my emotional EpiPen—is a friend. Someone I trusted. Someone I had slept with. Someone who already knew my name. Someone to whom I owed money and who thus had a vested interest in seeing me make it off Cotopaxi in one piece. All the mountain-climbing accounts I have read post-Cotopaxi seem to say the same thing: You’d be an idiot to climb a major mountain alone. More than experiencing dehydration as your feet punch through the very substance that might otherwise hydrate you, loneliness is one of the elements. And no mountain guide in the world, good or bad, can protect you from that.
There is a rip in Pedro’s sleeping bag. As the night ticks on, I want to spread the extra fleece jacket lent to me by the Seattle guide over my already layered body, maybe stick my hands in the sleeve ends. But every time I move to retrieve the fleece, the sleeping bag rips a little more. The rip is cunning, a worthy adversary. It will not be tricked by me slowly lifting my knees or gradually extending an arm down from the side.
Frustrated, dizzy, and desperate to get to the outhouse, finally I just sit up. The rip shows no mercy and now runs the full length of the sleeping bag. When I return, I have to clamp it shut between my knees. I experiment with comfort, using my forearm as a pillow. But the skin exposed by being forced out of the sleeping bag gets cold too quickly. It’s unacceptable for my hands to be anywhere but my armpits or between my legs. I think of the expression “chilled to the bone” and wonder what comes after that. Chilled to the marrow? Then what? If you hit the center of the center of the center, do you just start blowing icicles out your nose? I think again of my apartment in July. My goal is to convince myself that it’s too hot for sleep, that I have just kicked the comforter to the ground and a simple sheet is oppressive to my skin. I strain to hear the sound of that summer rain falling on metal.
Look Alive Out There Page 8
