The Climber
Dedicated to Jeremy C. Zaccardi
June 30, 1973 to July 12, 1996
Sunshine + Smiles... Fo sho
WORDS
THE CLIMBER
For one brief year of my life I loved a climber. Made my home with him. Shared my life. Here is how it all began...
Climbing... rock climbing... climbing huge vertical slabs of granite with fingertips and toes... I had never even really thought about rock climbing except for exclamations of “They’re mad!” when seeing pictures of those rock-crazed human spiders clinging beneath tiny overhangs. It always seemed insane (though somehow appealing).
And then I met him. One summer in Alaska. This perfect, passionate man with stars in his eyes and a smile of intense beauty. Skin smooth as silk, a deep tawny olive. These outrageous curls falling across an intelligent face. Perfect body of delicious, rippling muscles. But it was his hands that made me fall in love with him.
One day he was running them lazily across my bare skin and I finally noticed how scarred they were. A thousand marks from a thousand old wounds. and how strong they were, and broad, and sensitive. "Why are your hands so thrashed?" I asked. "From climbing," he said. "Climbing?" "Yeah, climbing. Rock climbing, ice climbing, mountain climbing... you know... CLIMBING."
It was the way he said it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had known he was interested in climbing from some well-traveled photographs he had shown me, but until that moment it hadn’t penetrated that he was way more than just interested in it. That he was a climber. A man who felt as much passion for rock and ice as he did for the warm, welcoming body of a lover. That he would sacrifice his flesh and blood, even his life if fate asked for it, to his beloved mountains, and wear the scars, bear the hurt, with unflinching pride. A climber. My climber.
As it always did, the Alaskan summer drew to a close, the salmon finally made it to their dying grounds, and the fishermen docked their gillnetters for the winter. We had a little trouble my climber and I. Something about another woman and him figuring out where his love lay. We parted on difficult terms. I wondered if I would ever see him again.
Then fate intervened. One thing led to another. I followed my instincts and my whole life changed. I left my native shore. Left the endlessly moving ocean, the giant trees, the blue Sierra lakes, and moved to the Idaho mountains to live with my climber.
Those first moments of seeing him after being apart were moments of passion and grace so solid and real that they swept me up into the sky, and I thought I would never come down... just drift forever. And he smiled at me with this eternal love glowing in his eyes. I knew right then I was caught – as helplessly, irrevocably as the beautiful rainbow trout he hooked for our dinner.
Then came the day that I first saw him climb. "Why didn’t anyone warn me?" I wondered to myself.
I sat and watched as his feet left the ground. Further and further he went into the deep autumn sky. It was hot. Bright sunshine. He took off his shirt. His body shone with sweat. Hanging by his fingertips from impossible little cracks in the rock. He climbed with grace and joy. Fluid movement. As I watched I realized why his gaze was so focused, why his fingertips were so sensitive, why his body was so beautiful.
Overwhelmed, I felt the most primitive emotion I have ever known. Wanting to feel him possess me the way he possessed the rock. I wondered if I were enough for him. If my heart and my mind and my body were enough to inspire in him the same passions he fulfilled when he climbed.
I wondered.
I waited.
I wanted.
Wanted so desperately I could barely keep from calling out to him.
And when he came back down. When he stopped flying and stood on the ground again, he came to me with some yellow wildflowers he had picked from the top of the cliff – giving them to me with a smile full of promises and kisses. "My Mountain Flower..." he whispered.
A part of me died right then and shot straight to heaven. Was this man real? Or was he my desire made flesh? I felt the heavy, light touch of fate, and I asked myself, is this what love is? Then he touched my cheek so softly with one of his gentle hands, the knuckles newly scraped and bleeding, and I knew...
I knew.
[Above penned on October 8, 1995, regarding August-September, 1995.]
For the next year we were constant companions. Closest of friends. We lived together in his home town of Pocatello, Idaho where I had moved after that last summer in Ketchikan. Our beloved friend Kevin Sellers lived with us.
Life was golden. We three celebrated the pure joy of living every second of every day. Happy, free, dirty, barefoot. When shoes went on they were climbing shoes and the hours not wasted on sleep were spent climbing, climbing and more climbing... mixed in with some rafting, swimming, hiking and partying... enjoying an endless and idyllic bliss.
Though we didn't know it at the time, we were lost in the throes of the last summer of our childhood. Lost in those last golden months with no idea of the darkness gathering on the horizon or the abrupt, brutal end that was coming to claim us. So confident in our innocent delusion that love and youth would last forever and conquer all.
We picked apples for a living throughout the fall of 1995. We would drive Jer's old VW bus into the orchards. Kevin would cook lunch in the van, our friend Lila, the songbird, would sing and we would swing from the trees collecting these incredible, perfect apples on Old Man Frazier's farm.
By late October, we had scraped together just enough cash to hit the road and go try some early winter mountaineering - the first ever for me. All that shiny new gear just begging to be broken in... crampons, ice axe, Goretex... all singing the siren song of the peaks of the Lost River Range - site of the highest mountain in Idaho, Mt. Borah, 12,662 feet, home to "Chicken Out Ridge" and some seriously wicked vertical faces. Our first try we failed to make the summit. The weather drove us off. It was just one of the shadows that followed us that weekend. Jer had a severe asthma attack at base camp during the night and we almost lost him then. Yet, even with this foreshadowing, we remained blind to the future. We abandoned the mountain and spent the weekend over in Sun Valley, engaged in meaningless partying and annoying one another. All of us frustrated by our failure. How young and green we were not to see then that every moment Jeremy lived and every step he took was a huge success. A vast triumph of his indomitable soul and will to live defying the odds stacked against him since he was a small child.
A week or so later, with a different fourth on the team, Kevin Johnson, Zaccardi, Sellers and I went for Mt. Borah again. It was November, and a full-blown winter storm and whiteout closed in on us during the climb. But this time we made the summit.
It Was Epic.
By the time we hit the summit Jer was in his element and as frisky as a spring lamb. Kev and I were totally thrashed. He and I had gone off route during the climb (that storm that had moved in wiped out visibility.) He and I wound up having to ascend straight up the South West face of Borah, complete with its 2,000-foot vertical drop yawning below. And no, we had no ropes or pitons as we had not planned to leave the main trail. We were each equipped with naught but a single ice axe and crampons and a pure, mountain madness.
Sellers told the tale in this amazing story he wrote -
Blown Away With Zaccardi: A Memoir
By Kevin Sellers, 2009
http://www.summitpost.org/trip-report/522547/blown-away-with-zaccardi-a-memoir.html
After Borah, our year went on as it began... the only real difference was that the fall apples and rafting were replaced with winter snowboarding and working as lift operators at the local ski mountain, Pebble Creek.
In late May 1996, Zaccardi headed back to Alaska to work one more salmon season with Sellers in Ketchikan. I stayed behind as I was no longer able to can (work-related wrist injury.) I bought a plane ticket to K-town with the plan being I would fly up there for Jer's birthday on June 30 and visit. I arranged an excellent summer job working as a biological research assistant. My entire summer was to have been spent hiking and counting frogs in the wilderness.
But before any of that could happen, I got into a brutal motorcycle wreck and was hospitalized, surgeries required, three limbs in a cast, bed-ridden for weeks, followed by several months of grueling physical therapy. So I never did make it to K-town for his birthday. Never did get to see him and celebrate with him on that day.
As fate would have it I never would see him alive again.
The salmon season was slow getting going that year and the boys had free time on their hands. The yearning to climb, climb, climb took over again and on July 11, 1996, Zaccardi and Sellers flew to Seattle, Washington with our friend Matias Saari to meet up with a few other folks and go climb Mt. Rainier. Jeremy called me from the airport, absolutely overflowing with excitement to finally be heading up Rainier - a route he had been wanting to take on for several years. He said he would call me after they summited, promising to somehow find a cell phone to do it with (cells were still rare back in that day.) We talked awhile longer, sharing love and laughter and then a quick goodbye.
It was our last goodbye.
On July 12, 1996, at the 9,500-foot base camp on Emmons Glacier known as Camp Schurman, Jeremy C. Zaccardi suffered a fatal asthma attack and died.
He was 23 years old.
Sellers stood with Zaccardi on their Last Mountain together. Tried to save him. Then caught him when he fell as he left this earth... launched back out of his mortal coil into space by asthma induced respiratory failure followed swiftly by cardiac arrest.
Shortly after Jeremy collapsed Kevin was able to drum up a cell phone and called me in Pocatello to break the news. It was not the call I was expecting to get.
By the time the phone rang and I answered, it was already done. The last chapter of our story was being written and although I was a principal player I had no say over how it would end or what was said. Far away from me, on the side of a mountain, two dearer to my heart than any had ever been before were suffering. And I could do nothing. Futility and helpless, shocked anger... one of them dying... dead... my lover and my brother and the other, also my brother, there to be witness to the passing of one of the kindest, deepest, most loving, gentle, and passionate humans this earth has ever had the privilege of having along for the ride.
Here is the brief account I wrote about the call and the few days that followed -
"Last Chapter"
At 5:30 pm, mountain time, my phone rang. It was Jeremy's closest friend and climbing partner, Kevin Sellers.
"Jax?"
"Kevin? Where the hell are you calling me from? I thought you guys were on the mountain?"
"We are. I'm calling you from somebody's cell phone. Jeremy's had a really bad asthma attack and I don't think he's going to make it."
"Don't FUCK with me Kevin."
"I'm not Jax," and he started to sob. A strange, desperate, choked howl that cut straight to my soul... forcing me to realize it was true, that this was really happening. "Tell me what's going on Kev..."
"I don't know Jax. He had an asthma attack and now he's down and they've been doing CPR for a half hour and there's no sign of a helicopter." A long, desperate pause and finally all I could say was, "Try and call me back when you know what is going to happen to him."
And then the line went as dead and black as the inside of my head.
I was lost in that darkness. You see, I already knew it was long since over. I already knew he was dead and gone. Dead and gone. Dead and gone..."Now he's gone, gone, and nothing's gonna bring him back."
I am an EMT and a Ski Patroller and I know CPR for that long is not only a hopeless waste of time, but you god damn well better pray that body doesn't jump start again cause that beautiful brain would be devoid of anything resembling the man we once knew.
So... how do you feel when the person you love is suddenly, abruptly dead? How helpless can you feel? How empty and desperate? How bitterly angry? How achingly sad?
I could have never guessed the answers to those questions until that moment and then I learned them with a brutal vengeance.
What do you do?
What needs to be done...
How strange that just before he left for Alaska we had talked about What I Was Supposed To Do if he went on a climbing trip and didn't come back. If his beloved mountains claimed him. He knew he was going to die climbing, said he had always known and that it didn't matter anyway because, in truth, he had given his life to them long, long ago. But for some reason we both figured it would be an avalanche or maybe a fall that would take him, not the frailties of his own body. Not his damn asthma. Not so soon.
As it turned out, I was the only person on earth who knew his wishes and so I became the one not only responsible for sending his family on a swift ride into hell with the news, but also the one responsible for his belongings, his corpse, his memorial...
The rest of that night was dark and cold. I called his family. They filled up our house. All of them burning with meaningless hope. They waited for official word from the mountain. I could not bring myself to tell them what I already knew. They couldn't hear it anyway. Their ears were filled with those last desperate hopes.
Finally, at 10:00 pm, the sheriff knocked on the door. There was no more hope. His mother lost her mind and I will be forever haunted by the screams ripped from her soul as her heart shattered in the anguish of losing her beautiful son, her only son. She screamed and screamed and never stopped screaming until the paramedics came and mercifully sedated her, taking her away to the hospital for observation and the care she needed in that moment. Confusion reigned and I snuck away into the dark, blessed silence of my bedroom where I listened to the sound of my own heart breaking. Finally, his devastated relations left for the evening and the first of many months of eternal, sleepless nights began for me.
Two days later, Kevin arrived in Pocatello. A broken man bearing the humble possessions Jeremy had with him on Rainier. Climbing gear, a filthy Donald Duck t-shirt, worn photographs, creased letters, a journal... all but for the clothes he had been wearing when he died and his brand new, Marmot sleeping bag into which they had placed his body before a helicopter flew him away from the last mountain he would ever climb. It was a long time before I could bring myself to wash that Donald Duck shirt, losing the last scent of him down the drain.
A few days later, on July 16, 1996 we held a memorial service for The Climber on Scout Mountain just south of Pocatello. It was one of Zaccardi's favorite places upon earth and was the spot where I spent my first night in Idaho with him, camping and fishing.
Hundreds of people shared that day. It was the most beautiful experience to be imagined. We had photos of Jer out in all his glory, and his pack and gear all buffed and on display, his rope and helmet placed in honor atop his pack.
It was not possible to be sad. For reasons I cannot explain my heart was full of the most abundant love and joy. It was a perfect summer day. Sunshine, blue skies, wildflowers and butterflies... all I could do was smile and feel the wind move across my face and laugh with Sellers, clutching each other, hiding behind a large tree, as the Catholic Preacher Man somberly intoned, "The Womb and The Tomb... The Womb and The Tomb..." The foolishness of the man of cloth's solemnity in the face of Zaccardi's blissful, wild, free spirit was so incongruous that we howled with delight. My mother, who was in attendance, is still mortally ashamed of Kevin and I for our laughter but we both knew Jeremy would understand completely.
After the service, everyone headed back to our place for a wake that lasted until the next afternoon and, to this day, was one of the funnest fucken parties I have ever been to - the perfect celebration of Zaccardi's life.
I didn't know at the time, but it was the last day I would feel joy and peace again for a very, very long time.
[Above penned on October 20, 1996.]
A few weeks after Jeremy died, I took a trip to K-town to pick up all the rest of his gear and take it back to Pocatello. Anastasia snuck me into the AGP bunkhouse and I stayed with her, hiding out for a week. We cried for days. Matias was storing Jer's stuff at his house, and on the night I went out to his place to do the pick-up, Stasia fled the cannery and came along for moral support. The two of us, T, and his two roommates proceeded to party all night in honor of Jer. We were absolutely destroyed come dawn. I left town the following day and it was the last time I ever set foot in Alaska.
On August 14, 1996, I took a solo trip up Mt. Borah. My first and last solo climb. It would have been our one-year anniversary and I wanted to honor Zaccardi with a proper tribute that would make him squeal with pride and joy.
I slowly gave away all Zaccardi's possessions to his friends and family, as he had asked. Sellers took up residence in his bus, parked at our curb.
I never did see his beautiful body again. He was cremated in Washington and all that ever came home was his sleeping bag, a handful of soiled clothes, two necklaces I had made him that they had cut from his lifeless neck, and a strangely small box of ash and tiny fragments of bone that only weighed seven pounds. This entire, unbelievably vast person, reduced to a mere seven pounds of powdery dust and debris.
In early September of 1996, a bunch of Jeremy's nearest and dearest gathered in Pocatello. We spent many days together celebrating the life and times of our beloved Zaccardi, culminating on September 14, when we all climbed to the top of Mt. Borah and scattered his ashes into the wild winds of Idaho during the first snow storm of the season.
We took the small, 7-pound box of Jerry Dust and parted it out so all carried a piece of him that day. Most of his buddies placed theirs in climbing chalk bags. I spent a lot of time sewing and beading a buckskin pouch that I carried mine in. It is heavy medicine, hangs on my wall and, to this day, still has a little of his ash clinging to the soft leather inside... it just never would blow free.
Kevin was accompanied by a new friend of ours, Cerro Torre, on the way up Mt. Borah to scatter Jeremy's ashes. During Zaccardi's wake, some friends showed up with this abandoned puppy they found. Sellers kept him and named him after Jer's Himalayan dream peak - one that, along with Devil's Thumb in Alaska, he had been determined to summit. He was a Damn Good Dog indeed.
If you loved Jeremy and were not there with us but would like to see inside this experience (from my perspective at least) here is a poem I wrote about that moment in time a few weeks afterward -
"Last Mountain"
I stood on the mountain top.
There were people all around.
Yet I was completely alone.
So deep within myself I traveled,
That my world turned inside out,
And my spirit drifted in front of me,
Drifted with the snow falling all around.
I poured you out,
And held you in my hands.
So soft you were.
So white and pure and different.
Over and over my fingers touched you.
Held you.
Loved you.
And then it struck me.
Then it became real.
Of all the times I held you,
So intimately,
Held your body so close within my own,
Never had I held you,
The way I did now.
Nothing could ever be so intimate.
So real.
So overwhelmingly fucking real.
Far beyond any imaginings about the world I have ever had.
And it was the last time.
The last time I would ever hold your body in my hands again.
The last time I would ever...
Smell you.
Touch you.
Taste you.
What did I know before now of words?
Forever?
Pain?
Sorrow?
Anger?
Despair?
Loneliness?
Love?
It was so hard to let you go...
You blew with the snow,
And the wind.
Got lost in the clouds.
Covered the rocks.
Covered me.
I breathed you,
And I loved you so much.
Each handful pulling another piece of my soul apart,
My love and feeling and pain scattering with you,
Suffocating me.
Finally,
It was done.
You were gone.
And I was empty.
Except for a thought...
How strange,
How fitting,
How full of truth,
That your ashes looked just like the dust from a climber's chalk bag.
Mountain climber be free.
Be at peace.
Our love is with you,
And you are gone.
[Above penned on October 7, 1996, regarding September 14, 1996 on Mt. Borah.]
I will never have the words to describe the depths of despair I plummeted into over the next year. Unless you have lost someone you truly love you can never know what that is like. I fell into a deep depression that lasted for months without end. It killed the girl I was. It was the watershed between my childhood and adulthood. It was my life's Nadir.
During that time, I burned my past on a bonfire, did terrible things, hurt people I loved, and alienated almost all of my friends... basically going insane with grief for a time. And it was a madness I had to travel through alone.
Eventually I learned that grief will never go away but that time heals because it simply allows for more distance from the moment that crushed you and creates ever longer spaces between when grief washes you away.
Somewhere in November of 1997 I came out of the fog and started walking again... And so... Here we are... RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Love + Gratitude... an Ocean of it,
Jax
PS - If you ever make it to the summit of Mt. Borah you will see a big chunk of granite with Jeremy's name and dates carved into it. In the spring of 1997 three of his lifelong friends from Pocatello dragged it to the top of that mountain and left it there as an offering of Timeless Love Beyond Measure... sumthin' Zaccardi taught all of us who knew him with every beat of his Evah Lovin' Heart.
Blessings BE, Soooper Friends.
xoxox
Jax