God's Old Granite

Let de Sun Shine Down on Me... (O Please!)

Any minute now, the snow will quit. It's been doing this all day:
Wind blows.
Blowing snow.
Snow melts in the cold sun.
Wind Blows...

How many times have I sheltered our rope from the wet spring snow in the last hour alone? How about just a little more of an interval between the the sun and the snow, so the rock will dry out? Or is it too much to ask?

I've never seen so much beautiful granite in all my life. Why, I can look out to the Ferris Range and imagine that an ocean still covers these parts between those peaks over there, and here, where we are huddled against the scything Sou'westerlies and wave-after-wave of suspended moisture. Good Lord, I think, what on Earth did the fish look like then?

We are fed up. God seems to be busy watering the vast expanses around us, so we'd better get busy doing what we came here to do. Jeb dons the rack and leads a "harder than it looks" undercling, huffing and puffing through the surprisingly difficult crux at mid-height. I follow with the grace of a precambrian mud-puppy, just human enough to utter vague profanities about my poor conditioning. As usual, my partner voices delight at my gutteral distresses. But today, he's higher on the evolutionary chain than me. He's like some kinda arachnid, swarming up the rock with all eight legs.

"Pretty groovy," comments the Spider.
"Pretty fisty," says the Skipper.

We scramble off as the weather cycles into its deterioration mode. The snow doesn't last as long this time. Heck, it's the 4th of April: even if there is an El Nino in progress, there shouldn't be this much moisture in the Granite Range now. Yet high above us, in the breach of Split Rock, lies a virtual snow chute. Maybe we'll get up there tomorrow...
We find another interesting line way around to the left. It's the mud skipper's lead, and although the spider has his sights set on difficult prey, the bug-eyed belly-crawler says he's only here to have fun. Even though it's a lie, Spider lets up and follows a fine moderate ramp/dihedral. It's the "death downclimb" though that salvages the moment for Spider, while Skipper complains about the consequences of a slip.

"It's getting kinda dark."
"What did you bring for supper?"

Back at the tents, the wind gets steady, and frigid. We become civilized, stomping ants and hunkering in the nylon doorways to keep warm. Mud skippers love to talk, and this one blathers on relentlessly about Mrs. Mud Skipper and all the little polliwogs back home. Spider just dissects his dinner in silence, leafing through a geology book for entertainment, ocassionally interjecting just enough nonconversation to keep Skipper occupied. Knowing his limits, being after all blessed with a higher level of evolutionary development, Spider retires early. The gregarious mud skipper, on the other hand, has another beer, and fiddles with his clothing selection for the next day's outing, long into the night. It's little wonder that one hardly ever sees a fully alert, wide awake mud puppy: they simply have no brains when it comes to self-discipline.

"Mmmmooooooooooooo."
"Jeb? Is that you?"
"Are you gonna sleep all day?"

God made cows. I think He just wanted to make sure that Jeb would have something to do. It's a funny thing that we say Grace, to me anyway, sometimes. I once spoke to a cow at a friend's wedding (not a bridesmaid, mind you, but a real cow), and at one point in the conversation, Cow licked my hand. I was touched. Several months later, I was greatly shocked to find out that I was dining on said cow, at which point I assumed a position of sincere humility and whispered to myself, "I'm sorry, Cow." Don't get me wrong, I finished the meat. I've spoken with many animals in my day, not to mention plants, rocks, and even man-made objects. Part of being a mud skipper, you know: yack, yack, yack. God heard a great deal from me after my first wife died. Not that he can listen. But then , I spoke to her alot too after that, probably more than I did when she was alive. I don't think she was listening either. The ravings of a belly-crawler probably don't hold a candle to the radiance of the Great Spirit. I think my dead first wife begged God to make me another wife so I'd shut the hell up, then everyone could get on with all that "beholding" stuff. And God said Let there be Light, and for some reason, the primitive belly-crawler was blessed with a higher-life-form, new wife. Thank Me, said God, wiping his forehead and swallowing a handful of Tylenol, now she can listen to him and the rest of us can get on with our afterlives. And the Heavenly Host said, in unison, "Way to go, Big Guy... or... uh... Big... whatever. Amen."

Having read the above passage, you can easily agree that it resembles a conversation with a mud skipper: aimless; almost saying something but not quite; self-absorbed. Qualities of a lower life form. Now imagine what the Spider had to look forward to as the breakfast water was beginning to boil. Skipper has a bevy of inane questions about the cattle scattered around the campsite. Sentries? No. Spies for the ranchers? No, just plain old cattle. Part of a collective animal soul? Don't know, but they certainly are meat-on-the-hoof, water's ready, here's your java, put this bagel in your mouth please, and don't talk with your mouth full.
God made cows to give all the mud skippers something to wonder about. The cows maintain their distance from the tents, lest Skip decides to lasso one of them into a conversation.

"How long will it take to get over to the Southeast Face?"
"Coupla hours, I guess. Can't recall how long it took me last time."

In 1991, I was here with Tom, and all we did was a few abortive attempts on Split Rock itself. I've been quite distracted since then. It was too many Polliwogs ago.
We follow the Sweetwater River for a while until we can enter an open meadow beneath an amphitheater of granite walls. A trail seems to lead right to where we want to go, but Spider disdains the Way More Traveled By for tiers of labyrinthian boulders. We find shedded snake skins as we founder along. The guys at the ranch were right: the snakes are out already. But it's warmer here than where we were this morning, as protected as this meadow is from the prevailing winds. Eventually, we concede that we have made a crucial error in navigation, which is mostly Jeb's doing. Hard to say we lost that much time, though: Spider's with Skipper, whose other nickname ought to be "Pokey." Just ask Mrs. Mud Skipper, and she'll confirm that.
Jeb gets to lead the first long pitch, one with little pleasure as it is obscenely wide. Luckily, this wall is several hundred feet high, and there appear to be ample opportunities for Spider to sieze the day. Mud Puppy slithers up an easy ramp next for a full rope length, telling God what a swell view He made from this balcony. Jeb joins Skipper on the big ledge, and since the last pitch was a mere walk, allows me to tackle the most beautiful hand-sized crack we've ever seen, atleast since yesterday.
As I'm climbing, the wind finds me, snatching away my hat for a souvenir. It was a brand new hat with the logo of Jeb's ranch emblazoned on it. I complain. He complains back.

"My hat! The wind took my new hat and my old balaclava too!"
"Last time I give you a new hat."

I run the rope out and belay the happy Spider up. This route isn't difficult, but it sure is pretty. He leads the final steep, blocky pitch to a gently-sloping area, where I lead dragging the rope behind me, just incase of any unforseen challenges. Now we're on the spine of Split Rock.

"I'll betcha that's the summit, Jeb, over there."
"I knew it! You want to go stand on top of a rock!"
"Well... yeah. Ofcourse. Spirit of Mountaineering, y'know."

Spiders are highly intellectual creatures. They actually read. Ask anybody who has a spider in their home. Arachnids read all the time. They let their household chores slip for the sake of increasing their knowledge base. That's why there are so many cobwebs in a spider's house.
Jeb's been reading Edward Abbey, and I think it's starting to affect his sense of Manifest Destiny. Why, he's gettin' downright green inside, I sometimes think. All he wants to do is coexist with nature and all that stuff. Oh, brother. If it weren't for Genesis giving human beings dominion over all the earth, we'd never have made flush toilets. Moses wouldn't have had a job.

(Ouch.)

I start to think about Moses climbing Mount Sinai in his Tevas as I start to feel the pain of my tight rock shoes on my toes. With the summit so close, however, I shall endure. This wind would've lifted Moses' knickers right over his head.
We eventually stick our necks out to climb on top of the South Summit of Split Rock. We survey the bounty of granite that surrounds us. God perks up his ears and smiles at the sounds of human awe, then goes back to sleep (it's Sunday, dontcha know).
The descent is tedious, the route-finding hit-and-miss, but after two or three hours, we arrive back at the campsite. It's time to go.
And today, I give thanks, because God was too tired to water anything.

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