Searching for a Dream

Climb every mountain,

ford every stream,

follow every rainbow,

till you find your dream.

           The Sound of Music

At some level I suppose everyone comes to know their kids. And if you have more than one, you know that what applies to one doesn’t apply to the other. And over the past several years, my two sons, Geordie and Andrew, have shown my wife, Jackie, and I their differences time and again. But recently, Andrew, the younger, has been bitten by a challenge bug.

A few years ago, an old high school friend of his Emil Iqbal, suggested they bike from Colonial Heights to Key West during Spring Break from their respective colleges. While such a journey is really not a bad thing to attempt, we thought it might behoove him to have at least ridden a bike for a few miles before attempting the 1000 mile trek to the most southerly point in the US.

“But mom, he said, I am a grown (up) man!” His choice of language was slightly more emphatic than up, if you catch my drift. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed and the trip fell by the wayside. But the bug was planted. Extreme sports, or whatever you want to call it, were now firmly implanted in his brain. We could only wonder what he would come up with next. It seemed anything was fair game, and we prepared ourselves for the next adventure whatever it might turn out to be.

It didn’t really take too long, but about a month ago, Emil approached him about climbing Mount Whitney. It was, Emil assured him, a relatively easy climb that was in fact more like a hike than actually “climbing.” Immediately, Andrew’s blood surged. Mountain Climber—yeah that’s what I want to be this week. A quick look at the Internet and sure enough there it was, Mt. Whitney, at 14,494 feet it was the tallest peak in the contiguous U.S. It is in fact a full 400 feet taller than Mt. Rainier in Washington.

No question about it for Andrew, he was all in. But first they needed to get a permit. The permit arrived quickly and easily. In the final week before he was to leave, he decided it was time to get prepared. Does anyone besides my wife and I see a flaw in this plan?

His flight was scheduled to leave Friday morning, and Tuesday night my wife had him out at Dick’s purchasing such necessities as boots, crampons (attachments for boots that help grip ice and hard packed snow), and a number of other necessities. She managed to borrow a tent, a sleeping bag, and a back pack for him to use. He also needed to purchase an Ice axe, but more about it later.

With all of that going on, he did think about borrowing a camera from me in order to record his alpine adventures. “Dad,” he said. “Do you have a camera I can borrow?”

The words sent shockwaves up and down my back. I could feel the follicles along my spine start to stand, and I know my hair turned a shade or two more to the grey side. My thoughts went immediately to my cameras. If you know me, I have some nice camera gear that I use to take all kinds of pictures. My cheap cameras are expensive, and his past history with electronic gadgetry made me worry.

I thought about his past performance:  how many phones had he lost, broken, drenched. It was too many to count. Once he got a new phone and ruined it the same day. Once we bought him a new laptop for college, and he shattered the screen in a week. Even when he was very young, his luck was pretty much the same and I remember him coming to me with a brand new GameBoy with a broken screen.

“Well, I think it would be best if we got you something more suitable to your quest,” I defended.

We went to Best Buy and canvassed the pocket point-and-shoots they had on sale. I found a Canon camera and a 16-gig SD card combination that came in at a bit over $120. As we checked out, the sales person asked if I wanted to purchase insurance with it? See the paragraph above. I immediately said yes, and gladly plunked down the extra money. Safe, I said.

So Friday came and off he went. We didn’t hear from him until the following Tuesday, when he called and said he made it to the top and didn’t we get insurance on the camera? At first, I thought he was kidding. But then I realized it was no joke. The camera, he said, was gone.

When he got back home, I found out the real story behind the now missing camera. It seems that while climbing up a 1,000 foot incline from Iceberg Lake to the saddle 400 feet below Mt. Whitney’s summit, he had to pass through some very tight bushes. When he got to the other side, they faced a trail covered in ice and fallen rocks. He reached for his ice axe, but it was gone. Lost somewhere in the dense brush they just passed through. And he wasn’t the only one. Emil, it seems, had also lost his ice axe. Back they went to find them.

At that point, Andrew moved the camera from one pocket in his jacket to another in front. He zipped the pocket closed and went on his way. A short time later and they were back with the ice axes, and that’s when he realized that the brush had pulled his zipper open and the camera was no longer in his pocket.

They finished the climb that day. At the peak, one of his climbing partners talked mountain-climbing philosophy and said that they did not climb the mountain, but that the mountain “allowed us to make the ascent.” That worked for everyone, but Andrew still thinks it cost him a camera. The bigger problem to me was that I paid for the camera. Oh well, at least I was able to get a refund on the insurance.