Climbing Back Down
At the Current’s Rock the Garden festival by the Mississippi River over the weekend, the first day of summer unfolded with the blazing heat of a suddenly unleashed sun, burning away months of static chill, the same as every year.
With dusk cooling the grass and the sky exploring shades of violet, the Flaming Lips took the stage amid their trademark confetti and psychedelic lights, singer Wayne Coyne warbling a line from a song about the rush of youth to find the gold of meaning and the exploding spirit.
They had dreamed and they had loved. They found the grass and the trees and the sun. They said, ‘What do we do now? Spend the rest of our lives climbing back down?’
It was a bittersweet lyric, probably almost entirely lost on an audience in their twenties, the hills ahead of them leading to fantasias of individuality, spectacular vistas of emotional power, indelible experiences tuned perfectly with their infinitely questing spirits.
A month ago I was hiking up a steep narrow trail leading to the top of Cerro Chato, a volcano in Costa Rica that last erupted more than three millennia ago. Today its dormant crater is filled with green water. The hike to the top started with a worker at a kiosk at Chato’s base drawing us a map, looking toward the trailhead, and offering a word of warning.
“It is very hard,” he said.
Balderdash. Our guide book suggested it was a three-to-five hour hike. We’d easily be closer to the three-hour end of that spectrum, what with the shape we’re in, what with our ability to transcend the reality that others find so limiting.
It took almost four full hours to reach the top.
We were lucky not to lose the trail, and our ascent quickly turned dangerously steep, with mud clogging our shoes with sharp pebbles that nipped at the toes and the soles, our hands rough from pulling on trees and roots to help our ascent. Each turn in the trail revealed yet another steep, winding ascent. Each footfall precarious, the idea of it ever ending increasingly elusive. Demoralization set in hard.
Until we made it. A quick trail shot down to the side of the Laguna Cerro Chato, a friendly frog, crystalline water turning cloudy with sand when we eased our blistered feet in. The heat of the day enveloping; a quickly dawning sense that our time to get back down the volcano before nightfall was a narrow and potentially closing window.
Being stuck in the dark on the trail loomed: the snakes, the monkeys, the wild jungle that sleeps during the day but emerges with teeth and curiosity after the equatorial sun dives for the horizon, promptly each day at 5:30.
So it was all business on the way down. Despite our own urgency, we encountered two couples who were making their ascent in our own drying footprints, younger than us, asking about what was ahead for them. How much further? Was the view worth the climb?
The trail was very steep, we reported, but not with enough vehemence to dissuade them. How was it at the top? In truth, not that great. Memorable, but lacking any sweeping sense of panorama and headiness that accompanies a recognizable peak. If we hadn’t known we were at the top, we wouldn’t have guessed it.
We noncommittally recommended they see for themselves.
Because what can you say about the trail up the mountain? That it is very hard? Best we learn that for ourselves.
That the summit bears little resemblance to what we had hoped for on the way up? It’s only once you’ve climbed it that you understand a moment of cool reprieve on your blistered feet rivals landscapes of panoramic splendor.
That a volcano that first erupted almost 40,000 years ago is indifferent to your suffering and fear? Well what did you expect?
It was time to climb back down the side of the mountain.
What do we do now? Look for gold in the experience, as the song finally suggests. Be kind to those who are on the front end of their ascent.
It is very hard.
