Camp 4

‘If I die, I die.’

The factness of those words
sent a shiver down my spine
as I listened to the climbers talk.
It was late autumn, 1969.
There was a pause after his words
as each face made the slightest nod  
and peered deeply into the campfire.
Tom Bauman had just soloed the Nose.

Slowly, I began to put pitons into
the face of life, jammed my fist
into fissures and ascended slowly –
Delighted when my blood dripped
onto the dark diorite veins in the granite.
For this was life and I believe
in the ascent and to use a life
to outlive it.

It is now the winter of 2014.
I walk through Camp 4
and look into the young, faces
for I am both a pitch above
and below them.  I don’t know what
I’d say if invited to their campfire;
but Tom still lives so I scream
Into the arctic air in tribute:
‘If I die, I die.’