The Most Difficult Ascent

Home is the place where, when we go there, they have to take us in.

Robert Frost

My husband is fond of saying, “I always wanted our kids to grow up to be better people than we are. But do they have to be so damn much better?” Apparently they do. But when they were young, some of them seemed a lot less likely to develop into useful citizens than others. Son #5, for example. At age four, he taught himself to ride a bike like the big kids by gliding down the slope at the top of our street, legs swinging free in the breeze, and flying over the handlebars when he hit the curb at the bottom. He didn’t learn to use the brakes until about six months later. He was also the child that inspired my first and only  purchase of a leash. He loved Walmart because he could climb under the clothing racks, roll up in a little ball, and disappear until one or the other of his parents got down on hands and knees and crawled in after him. At least when he was on the leash, we could figure out which rack to crawl under.

Son #5 is in his forties now. He has four kids, the oldest of whom is going to graduate from high school this year. He still likes mountain biking down treacherous terrain and leaping over the handlebars (at one time or another he’ s ruptured both his Achilles tendons), but maturity has taught him that thoughtful preparation is the key to balancing adrenaline with precaution. Last week that knowledge saved a woman’s life.

Whenever the teenagers in Son #5’s local church congregation head for any kind of adventure, they invite Son #5 along. Not only is he fearless, but he is also a nurse who specializes in surgical anesthesia, so he has broad experience with all kinds of possible trauma. Those proved to be useful skills when the group decided to tackle Mr. Borah, Idaho’s tallest peak at 12,600 feet. It’s a 12 hour round trip. Definitely not for the faint of heart or lungs.

Once his group completed the grueling six-hour assault and crested the mountain, as they headed down, they encountered another group who identified themselves as a “hiking club”. They were middle-aged and obviously not prepared for the rigor of the trail they had chosen several hours earlier. Sliding down across the scree (a steep slope covered with small loose stones) after their ascent to the peak, one of the women slipped, damaging and probably breaking her wrist. Since the next approximately 1,000 feet down was largely steep rock face, narrow ledges, and drop-offs of hundreds of feet, though she didn’t know it, there was no way she could safely descend with two legs but only one healthy hand.

She and her friends were perched on the side of a slope trying to determine what to do next when Son #5 and his church group came upon them. The younger crowd stopped immediately to render aid. Son #1 examined the woman’s swollen wrist, slipped a climbing glove on it and secured it with as much compression as he could to keep it from additional swelling. He pulled out his first aid kit and administered both Tylenol and Ibuprofen, then he positioned himself below the woman on the slope and began instructions to walk her down safely.

With each movement of her single good hand and feet, he advised her exactly where to find the next handhold or step into a safe crevice. Together they slowly descended for couple of hundred feet. Son #5 could see that the woman was in shock or else suffering from altitude sickness because after each instruction he gave, she seemed confused, clearly not thinking logically. Keeping his voice low and steady, sometimes he had to give the same instruction up to four times before she complied. At one point he had barely found a steady foothold himself when he looked up to see her slipping down the face of the cliff toward him. He grabbed at her ankle and guided it into a foothold to allow her to find enough traction to stop her slide.

About 45 minutes later both groups had come down to the point where a vertical shaft descent required a sharp left turn ½ way through. If a hiker missed the turn, there was a several hundred-foot drop straight down. Son #5 lowered himself into a secure stance and checked above him, ready to talk the injured hiker through the next few feet. When he looked up, he was horrified to see her hurdling headfirst toward him. Either she had slipped or she had left go instead of waiting for his instruction. Leaning too far back, she was now threatening to slam into him, dragging them both over the precipice to the unavoidable death waiting below. He reached out with one hand and jerked her body away from the edge, barely managing to halt her descent and drag her back onto solid ground.

Hours later, both groups landed beyond exhausted at the end of the trail. I’m guessing the woman was effusively grateful for her safe return. I don’t know. Son #5 didn’t say. He did tell me that the next day she sent him a gift card for a swanky restaurant in Boise. Included was a note thanking “Big Mike” for saving her life.

When the children we love are small, sometimes we stew about the slightest indicators of behaviors that might later magnify into some self-defeating barrier to healthy adulthood. In our anxiety to protect and direct them, it’s easy to stifle their opportunities to figure out for themselves how to effectively manage their own strengths and weaknesses. Like the ascent of a formidable mountain, it’s a precarious balance between guiding and trail blazing. Turns out my husband nailed it. If we are lucky enough that our children become better people than we are, that is exactly the lofty goal for which we had aspired all along.