Climber 53

I had just arrived in Seattle on a flight from the O.C.  It was an evening flight and I had starred in that movie hundreds of times before.  It starts with arriving at the airport North Satellite and continues with baggage delays, interminable waits for shuttles, etcetera and etcetera.  Many small aggravations later, you arrive home mentally and physically whipped. 

Why should this night be any different?  So I resigned myself to it and tried to get into a Zen state in order to minimize stress on my psyche.  This process had actually already begun when I boarded at John Wayne Airport, saying goodbye to the warm sun that had beat down upon me over the weekend in Canyon Country and steeling myself for the gray and rain of the Pacific Northwest.  Now I was home and needed to see it through the final stretch.

And so it went like this…

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Lately, it seems that every time I turn around someone is telling me that I’m grumpy.  If they don’t have that impression of me in the first person, then I am told that they heard from someone else who was commenting that I seemed grumpy.  It is one thing to have someone brace you on first-hand knowledge of grumpiness.  It is quite another matter to hear about it through a third-party.

I expect that I will soon be reading an article in the New York Times that describes my attempt at the consecutive-days-of-grumpiness world record.  It will be written by someone I never met or spoke to, who got the information from a friend of a friend’s cousin.

Let me say that I take no particular pleasure in being grumpy.  My grumpiness is purely unintentional.  It is not my natural emotional state.  So I must ruefully acknowledge that I simply have not been myself.  Actually, I have not been myself for the better part of a year.  I have been someone else and someone else has been me.  It’s sort of like an exchange student program but for older adults.

If you have never met me and only know me through these written words, then my grumpiness has had no effect on you.  For those of you who are my direct friends and acquaintances, I ask your forbearance during these times.  A pat on the shoulder, a smile or a kind word will go a lot further than your wild sprint for the hills as you try to put as much distance between your lightheartedness and my unyielding grump.

And if you can give me the name and phone number of a wise and physically fit single woman—age thirty-five to forty whatever—who has a strong libido and might be interested in dating, why send that along to me!  As the song says, I’ve been lonely too long.  And that makes a man exceedingly grumpy. 

Hot summer nights are meant to be spent in impassioned embraces—flesh entwined, sweat running, hearts pounding, senses burning with electric life.  They are not meant to be spent in front of a computer with the fan blowing mechanical air at you while life seems to have wound down to a complete standstill.

After being an effing idiot in my last post, I took Ernie’s advice and headed into the hills.  Of course, there wasn’t a lot of choice in the matter since I had the responsibility of running the Intermediate Climbing Course Ice 1 field trip again this year.  Unlike last year, I didn’t take any photos.  Fortunately, my student Dwayne did.

 Climber 53 heads out on the Nisqually Glacier (Mount Rainier)
  — photo courtesy of Dwayne Campogan

Heading out onto the Nisqually Glacier under the broad southern reaches of Mount Rainier did not make me grumpy.  Not once during the day was I anything but happy.  Ken and Rachel were there to make my job easier and I love their company and wonderful personalities.  The students in this year’s class are accomplished, enthusiastic and a joy.

The good feelings left over from that weekend continue but the insufferable northwest heat wave is causing me sporadic outbursts of grumpiness yet.  Yet I am not as grumpy as I was a couple of weeks ago—things are beginning to change. 

Raw emotions from recent deaths are beginning to fade and nerves are healing.  I’m not letting the new company aggravate me as much, either.  My daughter Angelina has returned from her Arctic National Wildlife Refuge expedition and I’m not lying awake late at night wondering if a grizzly has snatched her.  The foot injury from my leader fall a couple of months ago has finally healed and I’m starting to get some decent cardio work in again.

All in all, I would say that I am at the beginning of the comeback trail.

I suppose that it’s time to try and get this blog moving along a bit.  Let me say that it is a huge effort to comment on anything going on in my life or in the world.  My motivation for commentary has its needle bending into the E and I feel like I’ve been running on fumes for the past hundred miles.  When it gets like that, I know it’s about time to pull over to the side of the road, get out and just walk—leave the gas guzzler to rust in the rain and beat feet for the cool air heights…

That’s the big problem, though.  Ever since returning from Denali last year, I’ve been suckered into maintaining a real job… whatever the hell that’s supposed to be!  It’s just another trap meant to keep you from living a real life, if you ask me.  I suppose I could do like the coyotes and chew my leg off—make my big escape into the desert.  But not only did I acquire a job, I have somehow also acquired obligations.  There’s the monthly payments on the vehicle that gets me to my job.  Once in a blue moon, it even gets me out of the city for a day or two.

And I’m still paying alimony and helping my grown kids in their endeavors.  I have a sister who is ailing and I’m trying to help her, too.  Don’t get me wrong—I’m no saint!  But I am in the unique position of having skills that are currently in demand and pay good bucks.  I have no aspirations to own a boat or a fancy house, but I do like to help out my family—just like a million other guys who want to do the same and have to work three jobs to do it.  No, I can’t complain.

Yet with each passing day I grow increasingly agitated, angry and uneasy.

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