Mind Off the Ache

We set out in the light rain.  I tried to remind people of how much worse it would be if it were hot or freezing cold.  Still, it was drizzling.   And the vinyl ponchos we’d bought had strong smells and runny colors.  Overcast, we couldn’t see the mountain nor form any undue sense of intimidation.  Spring leaves and blossoms stretching moist, colors muted.  

This is the fighting nun’s temple.  Here is “Balking Horse Ridge,” where the emperor’s horse refused to go any further.  And this is the temple to the god of medicine.  Unlike imperial pilgrims of old, we can track our progress on Baidu maps.  And we tell the little one we’re three-fifths of the way to the mid point. 

Hard earned, we rest at the mid point, sucking in air.  This is where half our party will be able to ride the chairlift up to the top.  My older daughter and my stepson all want to continue on foot.  And it strikes me that this five thousand plus foot peak must be just about the same height as Mount Marcy in New York.  And I climbed that peak with my father when I was exactly the same age as my daughter is now. 

I took to counting steps to take my mind off the ache.  “Do you know how many steps it has been since our last break?”  “Huh”  “One thousand and twenty.”  “You’ve been counting?”  Limited as a conversational lubricant, it keeps me going up towards each new ridge.   And as luck would have it the clouds were beginning to part and we could see the fullness of what stood ominously before us for the final stretch of stairs.

A sign suggested there would be sixteen hundred more stairs.  I’d just been through a few series of thousand step count offs.  Though it was clear that this would just be straight up, on a remarkably steep gradient.  Plodding, panting.  I tried to get my comrades to count.  But by this time, everyone had developed their own private strategies for enduring. 

The indignity of reaching the sixteen hundred count only to realize it was a few hundred stairs off, settles in, like a very low cloud.  My left foot, which can get sore easily, was singing out on each step up. A birch walking stick I’d brought along proved essential.  Leaden legs up and up again.  Head down, plodding.  Assuming that anyone sensible on the way down would get out of my way.  Don’t look up.  And when you do suddenly you feel the pull of gravity backwards, dangerous, and overwhelming for a brief second.  On now and somewhere around two-hundred and fifty of my final count I got up to see my daughter waiting and hit her with a high five and exchanged a wet hug at the top of Mount Tai.