Together (2 page)

"What about this one, Uncle
Smitty?" the boy was saying as he pointed to a dog next to him. "I
like this one."

"Well, Danny, you might have
picked just the perfect one," the man said. "She looks like a
combination of spaniel and . . . let's see . . . maybe . . . hm. There might be
border collie in her. That would be an interesting combination because she
would be playful with you. In fact," the man laughed, "she'd probably
chase you around, biting your feet, herding you like you were a sheep. That's
what border collies do. And she'd have that spaniel kind of quality; just the
perfect dog to cuddle at night. Let's see if we can take her out of the cage
and go into a room where we can sit on the floor and socialize with her."

While the man was speaking, his
practiced eye was watching the black Lab. The young animal's eyes showed
intelligence, and the man instinctively moved to the big animal's cage, placing
his palms against the wire and dropping down on his knees to the level of the
dog.

"Hello, boy," he said.
"Why are you in here?"

The dog liked the sound of the man,
so he stood up, placing his nose against the wire and wagging his tail. The man
put his face against the cage from the other side and blew gently into the
Lab's nose—a sign of love and connection going back to the wolf. The dog
responded, trying to lick the man but only rubbing his tongue on the wire.

"Good boy," the man said.
"You really are a good boy, and you're handsome. Gosh, you're handsome.
You're a perfect-looking black Lab. Somebody really made a mistake abandoning
you. I'll bet you even have papers. You certainly come from good breeding. You
know what? Let me help Danny find a new friend, and I'll be back to see you,
okay?"

The man turned back to his nephew,
and involuntarily—for the first time since he had been in captivity—the dog
whined.

The man laughed. "Okay, pal,
okay," he said. "I told you I'll be back, and I will."

Over the next half hour, the man
helped the boy socialize with his new friend, and it could not have gone
better. The little border collie/spaniel mix loved to play and cuddle, and the
boy could not have been happier.

"What are you going to name
her?"

"I don't know, Uncle
Smitty," the boy said furrowing his brow, "but I think I might name
her Abigail."

"Abigail?" the man said,
surprised at the choice. "Why Abigail?"

"Well, my sister has a doll
named Abigail, and I like the name."

"That's good," Uncle
Smitty said. "You could call her Abby for short."

"What do you think of that,
Abby?" the boy asked. "Is Abby or Abigail okay with you?"

On cue, the little dog licked his
face, drawing a peal of happy laughter.

"All right, then," the
man said, "Abigail it is. Now, Danny, you stay here with Abigail for a few
minutes. I just want to take another look at the dog that was living next to
her, okay?"

The man borrowed a leash from one
of the SPCA volunteers and got permission to take the young Lab out into the
parking lot. The animal was surprised, but the man's voice and the way he
touched him and scratched his ears just so made him happy enough to keep
wagging his tail.

"I don't know if you've had
any training," the man said. "You're pretty young, but let's fool
around a little, okay?"

The man began to teach the animal
to heel and sit, and the big dog loved it. When he got the idea what the man
wanted, it was natural for him to want to please, and the man saw it
immediately.

"You know what? You might just
be one of the good ones; one of the very, very good ones. And I might just have
the job that will make your life special. What do you think of that, boy?"

The dog
looked up at the man as if to say,
I think that would be fine, just fine.

A half hour
later, the man's car pulled out of the SPCA parking lot with the man and the
boy in front and two very happy dogs sharing the backseat.

chapter
two

The young man stood, silhouetted
against what he believed to be the bluest sky on earth. As always, he felt at
one with the mountain, never conquering it, only sharing its beauty with all of
nature's creations lucky enough to ascend its peak. For a brief second, he
shivered as the whitest of white clouds passed overhead, temporarily blocking
the intense noonday sun. It was the summer solstice, June 21, when the great
orb stood above the equator and time was suspended as the earth balanced precariously
on the edge of the changing seasons.

Today, Brenden McCarthy was in the
Elk Range above Aspen, Colorado, at the top of the Maroon Bells. In actual
fact, his feet were planted firmly on North Maroon, the toughest of the Bells
to climb. It was a moment of utter happiness.

In McCarthy's short
life—twenty-five years and six months, to be exact—he had climbed all
fifty-four peaks of fourteen thousand feet and above in the state of Colorado.
Climbing was his passion—or rather, one of them. He was just as passionate
about becoming a great orthopedic surgeon.

Having just graduated from the
University of Colorado medical school, he was in his first year of residency at
St. Joseph Hospital, overwhelmed by work but somehow loving the experience.

That's who Brenden McCarthy was—a
young man who loved the experience of being alive. This morning he drove up
from Denver on his prized possession—a rebuilt 1959 Harley Panhead motorcycle
that took every penny he could scrounge from jobs he worked all through
undergraduate school at Colorado State. The bike was a total trip as it roared
along I-70 traveling west and turned onto Route 82, crossing Castle Creek and
then turning south on an access road that allowed him to be more aggressive. He
pulled in and wheeled to a stop in the parking lot of Maroon Lake Campground.

He knew he was showing off, but on
this Thursday there wasn't anyone around. And frankly, he just couldn't help
himself. With this perfect weather, he figured the climb would take around six
and a half hours with the descent actually slower than the ascent because of
having to be so careful of a mountain climber's most deadly enemy—scree—loose
rock that at any time could send even the most experienced climber plummeting
to— what? Injury? Death? Brenden didn't want to know.

He shook off the thought as he
began to prepare for the climb. Today he chose a familiar route to the top of
North Maroon. Though he was dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, heavy socks, and
hiking boots, he was experienced enough always to be completely prepared. In
his daypack he carried a simple but appropriate hiker's first-aid kit—a bottle
of water, along with a filtering pump that would allow him to take water from
mountain springs, power bars and a banana for energy, and a gigantic tuna fish sandwich.
He also never climbed without a signal mirror, compass, and topographical map
that he certainly didn't need but was never without. As an Eagle Scout, he
never forgot the axiom "Be prepared."

McCarthy was a young man exacting
in all things, and it was this quality of exactness that allowed him to seem to
others to be a completely free spirit. His father had always said preparation
and perspiration allow for expectation and inspiration. McCarthy believed that
was true, so additionally, his clothing consisted of a heavy woolen cap that
could be pulled down over his ears, a woolen scarf his mother gave him that
seemed a little effeminate but that he secretly loved, a long-sleeved shirt
that could be covered by a down vest, and a Gore-Tex windproof jacket. He also
carried long underwear that could fit under his shorts and heavy Gore-Tex pants
with plenty of pocket space. Two pairs of gloves, extra socks, a flashlight,
whistle, and ice axe completed his equipment.

As he checked over his stuff one
more time, he read the history of these great peaks on a large plaque at the
base of the ascent. The Maroon Bells were so named because of their pyramidlike
shape and astounding native maroon color that changed to fire red when
emblazoned by the sun.

Mountain historians Lampert and
Borneman referred to the

Bells as red, rugged, and rotten
because of the unpredictability of their sedimentary surfaces. The history went
on to say that North Maroon Peak was the fiftieth highest of the fifty-four
Colorado peaks, measuring 14,014 feet.

He was surprised to read that the
mountains were sometimes called "The Deadly Bells" because more than
on any other Colorado peaks, unprepared climbers lost their lives. The complexity
of the tree roots and the rock often spelled disaster. In 1965, for example,
six climbers ascended the Bells and never came down.

The Haden and Wheeler surveys in
the mid-1890s first mapped the Bells, and the first documented ascent had been
completed in 1908.

So, here was Brenden, a century
later, feeling like the luckiest young guy in the world as he began to climb.
The route for his ascent was based around a series of ledges that measured
eight to ten feet in height. Brenden always thought of this particular climb as
being like ascending the Washington Monument or maybe the Lincoln Memorial.
There were literally hundreds of these steps, and he was forced to snake his
way up them very much in the way one might ski down one of the sister slopes of
Aspen.

As he moved laterally back and
forth across the mountain, he kept his eyes down in search of stone
cairns—piles of rock left by other climbers indicating the places where he
could scramble up to the top of the next ledge.

Brenden's climb began from the
campground at 9,600 feet, moving southwest along a well-beaten hiking path and
skirting

Maroon Lake. He continued for about
a mile and a half before he stopped and caught his breath at the beauty of
Crater Lake, a volcanic crater filled with water as pristine as anyone had ever
seen.

Then came a half-mile climb up the
steep Minnehaha Trail that forced even this very physically fit young man to
take deep breaths as he exerted his will on the mountain. Arriving at the top
of the trail, he looked back and saw the last of the campgrounds at Buckskin
Pass.

Then, turning south and fording a
small creek, Brenden began the main part of the climb up a prominent gully that
reached to what looked to him like a round island of rock surrounded by green,
thickly layered mountain meadow grasses. Then it was time to cross the Ancient
Glacier, being oh so careful of loose rock, until he reached the northeast face
and began ascending a couloir. These couloir, as they were called, were like
divots in the mountain, allowing the climber to press himself against the
sidewalls as he worked his way up.

Brenden breathed like a bellows
when he reached the top of the couloir. But he gathered his strength while
crossing a flat ledge that took him to a second couloir and a final ascent to
the north base, bringing him to the summit.

So, here he was with his chin
tilted up to the warmth of the noonday sun, believing that Robert Burns was
right: all has to be in its heaven. All has to be right with the world, or at
least that's how God designed it. Brenden was comfortable in the thought that
there were screwups in the environment. But these were all on man's shoulders.
God had nothing to do with them.

Brenden felt a lump in his throat
as his eyes swept over the panorama that surrounded him. The combination of
toylike forms and colors as seen from this mountaintop delighted him, giving
rise to feelings of joy, appreciation, and sheer awe in the vivid majesty
before him.

He was two thousand feet above
timberline, and the scrubbed pine below looked like miniature Christmas trees
decorated with the sunlit yellow-gold of thousands of aspens reaching hungrily
skyward.

Brenden reluctantly remembered that
he had not yet honored the climber's tradition. Moving a few feet to his left,
he reached the summit block, a stick in the ground with a two-foot-long piece
of PVC pipe wedged tightly between two rocks at its base. Unscrewing one of the
ends, he removed a folded parchment, a document on which all climbers logged
their dates and times of arrival.

These scrolls were kept by the
Colorado Mountain Club and published in various climbing publications. Climbers
didn't sign for glory. They respectfully stated their achievement of the summit
with gratitude to the mountain for allowing them to succeed.

He sat down on a rock outcropping
and began to wolf down his lunch.

Boy, am I
hungry,
he thought.
I missed breakfast, and this tastes delicious. Something
about altitude air, I guess.

In the distance he noticed the
white contrails of a jet leaving the Aspen airport as it cut its way through
the crystal blue sky. Between bites, he let his eyes wander back to the valley
below.

He noted the minimansions across
from downtown Aspen looking like dollhouses built by the hands of
miniarchitects.
There
is civilization
, he thought,
interacting fairly well with the natural order of
things in these mountains.

Still looking east but above and
beyond the town, he could see Mount Massive and Mount Albert, the highest of
the Colorado fourteeners. Turning slightly to the north and shading his eyes,
he could make out the outline of Mount Holy Cross, though the cross itself was
hidden from view on the east face. A little more to the northwest, he traced
the slender outline of Snowmass and Maroon Peak, the second and third of the
Bells.