Blue Ribbon

Just a note on this little excerpt. I am currently taking a writing workshop at The Attic (see links list), and one of my assignments was two people in a room. "Blue Ribbon" is what came of that assignment. Enjoy and feel free to comment!

The ribbon had been blue, fluttering blindly as if it were trying to wrench itself free of the branch that held it captive. Sed sniffed the ribbon. Below the ridge where the tree dwelt, wooded hills rolled away, bending before a hazy gold sunset. The dry late summer air croaked its plea to the sky for rain. The darkening sky listened emptily, hiding its secrets behind a blank face. Sed sniffed the ribbon again and smelled Magic.
That much he remembered upon waking. He remembered more than anything the quality of that moment: the world at dusk on the edge of the village. That quality that only exists where human noise is suddenly silenced by its return to nature. That place of transition that is felt as either a great sigh or as an expectant holding of breath depending on whether one is coming or going. Sed remembered feeling nostalgic for another place, a place farther into the mountains where he knew his family and the rest of the Nuin were settling in around their fires. He knew soon the music would begin, but far away from the tree with the blue ribbon touched by Magic on the brow of the hill outside the merchant village.
Sed rolled onto his side away from the memory and into the present. Voices muffled by walls and the long straight spaces of hallways tumbled into his head speaking the language of his enemy. The sound of carts, their axles groaning as they labored over the uneven cobbles creaked through a window he decided was just above him and to the right. They had captured him then. After years of haunting this wretched village he was almost relieved to have it over with. He opened his eyes. What he saw made him think he had stumbled upon another memory. He closed his eyes to extinguish the vision before him, but when he opened them again she was still there looking exactly the same as when he had last seen her ten years ago.
He gasped, choking on his own breath which had suddenly decided to abandon his chest. Tears rushed to his eyes and his throat burned. He pushed himself to sitting and mouthed her name because he could not speak it. As if he were petitioning the one God and her name was a prayer, her presence a divine revelation. He could not remember a night he had not thought of her, whispered her name to the shadows, knowing it was her spirit that lived in the dancing of light and dark.
He sat and blood rushed to his head. The room spun. The walls were yellow, he noticed before everything went black. A moment later she was by his side. She still hadn’t spoken. She lifted him slowly till he was sitting again with his back against the wall. The walls were yellow. The ribbon had been blue. Her dress was red. He forced himself to look into her face. Her eyes were green and tore his heart from his chest with their luminous gaze. She moved to let go of him, but he held her arms, held her gaze. For a moment he felt the years of distance fall away. He remembered the day he had left. How she had clung to him and weeped, begging him not leave. He had stared out from the mountains down on the valleys into the land of the enemy. He had left the next morning without saying goodbye.
Their gaze held a moment longer. Then she pulled herself from his grasp, the way he had pulled himself from hers all those years ago, and sat down across the room from him on a small cushion.
“How is your head?”
“It’s ok.”
For a moment they sat in silence listening to the sounds of the village float through the window. Sed noticed that the room was empty except for the two of them and the cushion. This must be where they kept prisoners. He wondered how she had ended up in this village, how she had ended up captured.
“Are you ok?” he asked her.
She smiled. It was an ironic smile. Suddenly Sed felt the distance of ten years land between them like a weight. She had changed. He was beginning to see it now. There was something about her he couldn’t put his finger on. Some elusive quality he couldn’t name. “I’m not the one with the headache,” she said.
Her voice was mesmerizing. It drifted through the room like incense, fell as evening falls, imperceptible and undeniable. “How did one of your caste get taken unawares?” she asked. “I thought your training gave you special powers.”
She said this last bit without a trace of bitterness, though Sed remembered how she had felt about the Jad ten years ago.
Sed tried to remember how exactly he had been taken by surprise. Magic was forbidden to commoners. The only Magic users were the officials of the village, but his Magic was more powerful than theirs. They would not be able to deceive him. But someone had.
“There must be someone with more skills than I. Someone able to hide themselves from my Magic.”
“Indeed. There must be. Do you have any idea who it could be?”
“No.”
A moment of silence passed between them, then Sed asked, “What have you been doing all these years?”
“I have been here, like you. Only I haven’t been killing people.”
“These people are the enemy. We do what we must.”
She nodded. “Yes. We all do what we must.”
Suddenly she did something that surprised Sed. She called out a summons. Her voice rang in the room and must have reached through the hallway to some other part of the compound because footsteps approached. A man stepped through the curtain that separated the room from the hall. He saluted in the language of the enemy. She stood and spoke to him in the same language.
“Please see to it that this man receives food and water at appropriate times.”
“Yes, ma’am. What if he tries to escape?”
“He can’t leave. My spells will bind him.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The man saluted again and left the room.
She turned to Sed who had not yet recovered from the implications of what he had heard.
“You? But they are the enemy,” he said. His voice had grown hoarse with some emotion he couldn’t name. Betrayal, grief, helplessness, despair, confusion. He couldn’t sort through them all.
“I am your enemy too then. And you are my prisoner.”
Her face was utterly composed, her heart so far beyond his reach he felt he was plummeting.
“Don’t worry, I won’t kill you the way you killed so many others. I have chosen a much different path than the one you chose.”
“What path? Where did you learn a Magic more powerful than the Jad?”
She did not answer him, she only looked down on him with something bordering on compassion. Sed swore he felt the warmth of it touch him.
And then she was gone. Behind the curtain, whispering across the floor as her body brushed through.

Oregon's South Sister

No one ever said climbing mountains was easy and Oregon’s South Sister is no exception. I began the trip as I begin all my trips, with a mountain. This time it was South Sister. When I was packing for the three day and two night backpacking trip I packed what I always pack. Two pairs of long johns, an extra pair of socks, hat, gloves (even these were a stretch for me), sunscreen, stove, water filter, sleeping pad, 20º F sleeping back, three season water proof tent, etc. After seven years of backpacking in Colorado I have never needed any more or any less. As I was standing over my pack, cramming in a few last minute items (toothbrush and toothpaste, lighter, Advil) my mom stuck her head in the room and said, “I was just watching the news and they said to expect snow at elevations of 7,000 or more. Are you still going to go?”
Of course I was still going to go. I had picked my mountain and that was that. To combat the snowy doom that lay before me I added an extra pair of socks and an extra pair of long johns, a scarf and the down liner to my water proof jacket. As an afterthought and without much confidence I packed my waterproof pants. I have packed them many times and never needed them.
As I was walking out the door after hugs and kisses from mom and dad (yes I am 31 and living with my parents), Dad asks, “Are you bringing your snow boots?”
I smile as if he is joking. Yeah right. Let me take a moment to point out some of the differences between backpacking and car camping. The first main difference is that in car camping, well, you have a car. In backpacking, you don’t. The other differences pretty much stem from there, that is to say that when you car camp you can pretty much bring an extra of everything, an outfit for every season, a pair of shoes for every activity. You can certainly take anything you want on a backpacking adventure provided that you are willing to carry it for many miles on your back. As far as that goes I am a minimalist. Just the basics. No camping chairs or flip-flops, no fancy back country cuisine for me. Nope. No extra shoes, no extra anything if I can help it. After all, this wasn’t Mt. Everest, this was South Sister.
The drive from Portland to Mt. Bachelor was beautiful, as always. I wonder, though, where Bend went. It seems to have gotten swallowed up by a larger Californian city. Some mysteries are not for solving I suppose.
The trail starts at the Green Lakes trailhead and passes for 3 or so miles through dense forest. All along my right is a talkative creek tumbling through lots of little waterfalls. When I finally reach Moraine Lake the wind chill is definitely below freezing and I have put on my wool hat. I want to stop and put on my gloves too because the wind, like a vampire, is sucking the blood from my fingers, but I am not ready to relinquish my load just yet. What I am ready to do is find a campsite, but at first glance there aren’t any to be found. I hike all around the lake and spot zero signs of the little posts with the tent carved into them. Finally I ask someone coming off the trail that leads to the summit, the trail I will take the next day. I follow his directions up a trail along a ridge into the woods. Of course all the sites are taken. It is labor day weekend after all. I end up camping well beyond the lake (where I have to go to pump my water) on a ridge with a spectacular view.
After setting up my little one person tent and walking half a mile to the lake to pump water I decide it is time for dinner. I have camped with people who make a point of creating fantastic meals in the back country (one of my favorites was the MacNasty, Mac’n’Cheese with tuna fish, that didn’t live up to its name at all). I have never been one of these people. For one, I will eat just about anything. Secondly, I don’t have that much patience. Thirdly, cooking good food in the back country requires more forethought than I have the motivation for. So for me it is sardines, avocado, cheese (Irish Cheddar is my favorite) and Bavarian rye bread with sunflower seeds. For snacks I bring nuts, raisins, sesame sticks. You know, snack food. Breakfast is the only meal where I actually cook something: oatmeal. Instant of course. The one luxury I do allow myself is tea, in the morning and in the evening.
This evening after eating my simple little meal attended by many doting ants, I sit in front of the tent boiling water for tea and watching the sunset. Here I will note that making tea serves two functions, one of which is obviously to create an enjoyable beverage. The other is for warming your hands when you can’t have a fire, which I couldn’t. I mentioned previously that the wind had sucked the life out of my hands. Well by the time I sat down to make tea several of my fingers were completely numb despite my gloves. A few minutes in front of my little camp stove warmed them right up. By the time the tea was done and I was wearing three pairs of long johns, three pairs of socks, two long sleeve shirts and my jacket with the down liner, and of course my hat and gloves ,I was starting to feel down right cozy. I drink my tea and watch the sun go down on broken top. The peaks glow as red as embers as if the lava that formed these lands were come back to life.

All night long, sleep comes and goes. I always expect it to be a little chilly in the back country, but even mummified as I was, the chill crept in. I manage to catch enough z’s though, and I wake up in the morning ready to execute my plan of action. First things first: breakfast. I open the door of the vestibule and a thick layer of frost flakes off. I thought it was cold in the tent, but coming out in the early morning makes the tent feel like a sauna. I make tea and then oatmeal with the rest of my tea water. Then it is down to the lake to pump water for the ascent. Then back to the site to drop off the filter and get ready to go. I take my B vitamins and apply sunscreen. The sun is barely above the lowest peaks and I still feel like I am getting a late start. I remind myself that this isn’t Colorado, and I don’t have to worry about monsoons. Still, urgency drives me. Gotta get on the trail. I am about to leave and I look down at my jacket, which I have just shed. I always take my jacket, wear it for the first fifteen minutes, get hot from hiking and then carry it the entire rest of the way. Today I decide, screw the jacket. I don’t want to pack the weight.
The hike to the summit of South Sister starts along a sloping ridge looking down on Moraine Lake and across at Broken Top. From here you really begin to see how lava shaped the land. The slope isn’t that steep yet. The morning chill is like a vice and I hike fast and hard to ward it off. After about a half a mile of gradual slope the trail abruptly turns to an almost 90º angle and continues this way for the remainder of the three miles to the top. It is at about this point also that I notice the clouds off to the west. They are still a good ways off, but anyone who has ever spent any time around mountains knows that the sky can be deceiving and the weather changes swift and fickle. I begin to worry. This worrying takes the form of me cursing myself for not bringing my jacket. “You idiot!” “You know better!” “Freaking amateur!” This followed by the swift decision. If I don’t have my jacket it just means I’m going to have to summit this mountain as fast as I can. In retrospect it is good that I left my jacket, otherwise I would have taken my time and gotten stuck in a blizzard on the side of a mountain. Jacket or no jacket, getting stuck in a snow storm is never any fun.
There isn’t much else to say about getting to the top. It pretty much went like this. One foot in front of the other. Usually people tell you not to look down, but in this case it was don’t look up. If you look up you will see how far you have left to go, and there were points where my view of the right angle trail was very discouraging. All the while I am climbing one laborious step at a time up the steep red-faced South Sister, I am aware of the clouds rolling in below me and of the cutting blades of the wind. Every time I want to stop for more than a few breaths I look down at the clouds and think of what the cold wind will do to any precipitation it touches. There will definitely be snow, it is only a matter of when.
When I finally make the summit I linger for a total of two minutes, enough time to drink a packet of electrolytes, take a few pictures and adjust my wool hat against the biting wind. Coming down I pass a group I had seen at the top.
“Didn’t hold your attention?” one of them asks.
I immediately want to protest. Are you kidding? It is spectacularly beautiful up here. But when you are racing against the wind which is driving an army of snow laden clouds in your direction, time is of the essence and I don’t waste any trying to explain myself.
“I am worried about those clouds,” I say, and continue my descent.
About a half an hour later it begins to snow and I am half way down the mountain. Better than being on the summit I think. The same man who referred to my attention deficit disorder remarks to me, “Good call on the early dismount.”
I want to laugh but gravity is pulling on me and John Mayer is singing in my head. The last couple of miles I am running, sliding, glissading, and snow is flying horizontal to the ground, pushed by wind that is (I was told later) 0º.
When I get back to my camp site the sun is shining. I have, for the moment, outrun the snow. Wind driven, intermittent flurries tell me that my respite won’t last long, and I need to hurry. I get everything loaded into my pack in fifteen minutes flat and head for the trail.
For a while the wind chases me, breathing snow through the trees, but after a while it stops. It appears the storm has snagged on the west side of South Sister and I am heading east, toward the dry side, where it is as sunny as can be, though a little chilly.
All in all I hiked a total of 14.4 miles and climbed 4,900 feet. This was the longest, steepest, coldest mountain I have ever climbed and I loved every minute of it.