Sleeping On The Edge

[realitycheck44]

Sleeping On The Edge

He edged his way over the sharp ridge, struggled over it… and was free. The crust of the snow broke when he stepped. He sunk in waist deep. Surprised, he looked around. What was happening? It took every ounce of strength left in his tired body to pull himself out, sucking at air as though he was drowning. He took another step. He sunk in again. Why was this happening? Thinking was too much of an effort. The next step was a challenge he would surely fail. The step after: inconceivable. The hard part was over. He needed to cross the snowfield. He needed a place to camp. The snowfield was flat. This was important. He set down his pack. The snowfield was flat. When was the last time he ate? He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. He needed a place to camp. The snowfield was flat… he would have to build a wall. What was happening? Finally, it hit him. He needed his oxygen mask.

With his glorious oxygen mask on, he clearly and quickly assessed the situation. The blue slope he just scaled constituted the hardest section of the entire climb. He checked his multifunctional watch. It told him he went two miles and gained over six thousand vertical feet in eight hours. Except for two ice pitons he could not remove, his gear remained intact; it had held up perfectly. The miraculous equipment kept him completely safe nearly all of the time. Gazing over the mountains, he took a second to reflect on the day and eat a rock-hard power bar. The Arctic moonrise was in full flight, turning the brilliantly white snow a pale golden color. It was amazing. Civilization has advanced so far for him to do this as a living. His wasn’t all that different from any other career: like the rest of us, his intelligence understood and exploited technology to conquer and tame nature. The smell of cold permeated his sinuses and burned his lungs when he inhaled. He had better get to work before the snow falling in the distance moved his direction.

Removing his ultralight crampons enabled him to walk around atop the snow nearly effortlessly. He took off the shovel and unzipped the front part of his Gregory pack to withdraw a metallic blue down parka. His thin waterproof shell came off to reveal a bright polar fleece, the kind that actually merits the use of the word “polar” before fleece, and donned the heavy parka. It always amazed him that the textile industry had advanced far enough that it took only 51 ounces of material to keep him warm in even the most vicious conditions- even when the temperature was past fifty degrees below zero. With his down jacket on, he could now turn to the enormous task of making camp. The wide, flat snowfield meant he would have to build a snow wall to protect his tent from the wind. His 6.8 ounce titanium saw cut through the snow amazingly quick, almost as if it was doing it by itself. What once took most of a day was now a matter of hours and minutes. As he cut blocks of snow, he placed them around the rim of the hole from which he was cutting.

By the time he finished the wall, snow fell in sheets around him and the howl of the wind began to deafen his ears; by the time he finished cleaning out the hole, a full blown blizzard raged on around him. Hardly able to walk, he forced his way to his pack and scrambled back down into the hole. His hands freezing, he struggled with the side access zipper to the main stowage compartment, from which he was able to pull his tent out quickly without emptying the rest of his pack. He grabbed two stakes, drove them into the snow to keep the tent from completely blowing away, unzipped the front of the dismantled tent, and threw his pack in, diving in after it.

After zipping up the fly before any more snow could blow in, he fumbled around in the yellowish half-light filtering through the tent walls. He found his headlamp where he always kept it. The tiny halogen bulb shot a piercing beam of light exactly where he needed it. He extracted the tent poles from his pack, laid flat on the floor, and, laughing at the thought of standing out in the cold, proceeded to erect the tent from the inside. Next, he hung a miniature candle from the tent roof and set up his sleeping pad and bag. Interestingly, his “expedition-weight” down sleeping bag was lighter than most textbooks, yet was able to keep him warm regardless of the temperature.

Extending out the vestibule of his tent allowed him to cook his dinner without damaging his tent or surrendering his warmth. Tonight’s dinner was beef stew. He unpacked his stove and white gas. The stove could burn on three different fuels, but jet fuel was by far the lightest and most efficient. It took him less than five minutes to set up the stove and bring the water to a boil. When the water was hot enough, he simply poured it into the bag of freeze-dried stew, stirred it around, and zipped it shut. While he waited for the stew to cook, he scraped up and boiled snow, as he had used all of his water. For dessert, he selected raspberry crumble. Somehow, it sounded better than freeze-dried ice cream at the moment. Finally, the beef stew was done. It wasn’t quite as good as the real stuff, but better than some restaurants. And it would provide most of the nutrients needed for another hard climb tomorrow.

As he finished his tea and raspberry crumble, he smiled at the thought of his wife worrying. The storm shook the tent violently. He crawled peacefully into his sleeping bag.

Zak

[realitycheck44]

I posted this on The Forum a while ago, but somehow it never made it on here. It was written a year ago, just after my other essay The Fire Inside. Given the semi-recent thread on the outdoors, I thought it may be of some interest. Here's what I originally wrote about it:

This is the only part that I don't especially like my writing. I don't like that I used "was" twice in a row. And I don't like the the "so far" in the second sentence. I'm also not sure about "his intelligence understood...".

The problem is I also don't like any of the alternative I've thought up. For example, changing the first sentence to "In full flight the arctic moonrise turned the brilliantly whit snow a pale golden color" eliminates the active verb "turning", but I want the reader to visualize the physical line where the snow is turning from white to gold. Changing the second sentence to "It amazed him." leaves it less ambiguous as to what amazed him- the moonrise or the advancement of civilization.

So, if anybody has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Zak

[Maarten]

Perhaps you can use: "his intellect understood"?

I think that would fit the sentence better than intelligence would.