Beaded Buffalo

“Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods,
a man should himself lend a hand.” ~Hippocrates

The ashes of a cremated infant barely fill the palm of an adult’s hand. Like the cinders in a cold campfire, they are soft to the touch, almost delicate, and when scattered on the mountain wind they drift like a faint gray cloud, carrying with them thoughts of a life that will never be fulfilled.

When our firstborn son left us, the word “burial” was never uttered. We knew what we had to do. We took him high into the Blue Ridge Mountains near our then-home in South Carolina and set his spirit free.

In the days that followed, we wrestled with previously unfathomable sorrow, searched for something or someone to blame, and were haunted by unanswerable questions. Our house was suddenly unfamiliar, our jobs meaningless, our lives as we’d known them gone. Again, we knew what we had to do. We headed west for the Rocky Mountains.

Through the ages, people have been drawn to mountains like iron filings to a magnet. To some, the high places are sanctuaries steeped in the sacred. Mt. Sinai in Egypt, Olympus in Greece and Fuji in Japan attract pilgrims seeking spiritual enlightenment and answers to hard questions others cannot address, answers unattainable in the day-to-day goingson down below.

Still others view mountains as a symbol of supreme effort. To reach a summit requires extraordinary physical and mental stamina, going beyond what’s considered normal human capability. At the same time, the mountain must be approached with respect and caution. Make a slight misjudgment and you fall; ignore the weather and you freeze to death, even in the dead of summer.

Because of the ease with which mountains can turn on you, many cultures have long viewed them as dangerous haunts of malevolent gods and demons, and places of holy terror.

One day, somewhere in Rocky Mountain National Park, on the side of a mountain I don’t remember the name of, I stared at the rivers and forests and valleys below. When you’re down there surrounded by it all, you can feel closed-in and small, able to see only what’s obvious and right in front of your face. But when you’re up high with a bird’s-eye perspective, the pieces fit neatly together, interlocking like a magical puzzle. River cleanly divides forest, forest runs thick and green up the mountain’s flank, then gives way to rock stretching toward the clouds. The pinnacle is a meeting place between heaven and Earth, the realm where the physical merges with the spirit world.

I realized then why I was in the mountains: I was searching for a way to ascend, trying to reach the little one whose imaginary cries I’d heard all those lonely, empty nights after he left us. As I sat there and cried, I knew I had gone as high as I could and that he was forever out of reach. That acceptance filled me with an emptiness so vast, so utter and deep that I’ve never been able to put it into words.

Mountains are the result of cataclysmic events: the breaking apart of the land, stresses mighty enough to move continents, eruptions that send ash into the sky, blocking the sun and darkening the days. Traumatic episodes shape our world and shake our lives. How we respond determines whether we’ll forever stand on bedrock or crumble into dust.

At the weakest moment in my life, I found the energy to stand when everything in me wanted to lie down and give up. Like mountaineers who get temptingly close to the summit only to be forced back down by dangerous conditions, I knew there would be another day, another chance to create life, and I had to live for that moment. Those days in the mountains had yielded bedrock after all, and it was time to start building a new life on that rock-hard foundation.

Today, we have two teenage sons, both enamored with the high country. I don’t get them into the mountains as much as I’d like, but the seed has been planted in both. That’s all it takes to breed a lifelong fascination and respect for all things mountainous. And even though my aging body won’t let me go as high as I once did, I still venture into the hills whenever I can because there I’m reminded of how delicate life is, how bad times can turn good, and how memories of a son forever live on the mountain wind.

A variation of this story appeared in Backpacker Magazine.