Lost in the Mist

“Really?” I asked incredulously.

“Well, I have not reached the top, but I will try again someday” said my new friend confidently.

My friend had just told me that she had attempted to climb THE Mount Everest.

I had only read about heroes who had done that but never met one.

This week, although it was a regular Monday morning at the library, I discovered this fantastic detail about my friend. It was hard to believe that this mother of two young children, who tied her hair in a ponytail and nonchalantly tidied up bookshelves in the library, was a mountaineer.
I hung to her every word as she told me anecdotes from her adventures.

One incident, in particular, made a shiver run down my spine.

Once while climbing a mountain, my friend felt sick and exhausted. She saw bodies of unfortunate explorers on the way, frozen in the snow. She decided that she didn’t want to be one of them. So she thought it would be a good idea to turn back.

The others in her group carried on towards the top while she turned downward.

As she trundled down by herself, she was suddenly enveloped in a cloudy mist. She couldn’t see anything except for the ground below her. She did not have a compass and didn’t know which direction to take.

Alone and exasperated, she exercised because if she didn’t keep herself active, she would lose her hands and feet in the cold.

 

Lonely,

freezing,

and sick,

she stood by herself on a mountain range at the top of the world.

Not quite, but almost the top of the world.
 

 She remembered her grandfather.

Her grandfather was a war veteran from Belgium and frequently took his grandchildren on adventures to teach them survival skills. When they sometimes got lost, he taught them to “look inwards”.

Standing mid-way on the white Himalayas, my friend took a deep breath, closed her eyes and “looked inwards”.

The call of the mountains had been irresistible. That was the reason why she was climbing. It gave her inner peace and strengthened her inherent connection with raw nature. And as she drew strength from her whole being, she knew that she was going to survive this.

The clouds still held her in a close embrace and visibility was poor. With eyes closed, she listened for sounds. In the beginning she could only feel an eerie silence. Then from a certain direction she heard faint voices. She knew that they belonged to her friends who were climbing to the summit.

“Okay” she said to herself “That is the direction which I must NOT take.” She made a mental note of the direction.

She tried to remember the path when they had climbed up and knew that they had crossed a stream somewhere along the way. She sharpened her ears to hear the bubbling water. When she detected it, she headed in that direction.

"Yes, that is the right direction" she said to herself.

As she walked downwards, she found the stream and crossed it. The thick cloudy envelope opened and closed around her at intervals.

She went further down and noticed something moving at a distance below. It was blue – a very artificial manmade blue. It kindled a ray of hope in her heart.

Then the blue-whatever-it-was vanished in the mist. She made another tight mental note to remember the direction and the distance at which she had seen the blue object as the clouds enveloped her in a heavy fog once more.

One step at a time she kept walking in that direction. After what seemed like eternity, the cloud cover disappeared altogether. She saw a Sherpa woman carrying something in a heavy blue bundle to her camp.

My friend called out to her. The woman waved and waited.

They did not have a common language between them but the Sherpa woman understood that this foreign mountaineer was sick and needed comfort. She pointed to the bridge which would lead to the lodge where my friend could rest.

My friend has not reached the Mount Everest.

Not yet. Someday, she will, by divine grace.

To me, she is a hero, even today.

 

(Picture courtesy: Google images)