Shiftless Seattlite Tour : Austin (Stop 3)

As I stared at the scorpion mere inches from my face, its swollen stinger-tail raised and flicked in repeating staccato. I froze there on my hands and knees, my head lodged underneath the futon where I had been sleeping. Soon, I would be dead. He’d whiplash that thing around, catch me between the eyes, and that would be it. Venom would course through my body, and I’d fall like a stone.

My companion was dozing away peacefully in the other room, no doubt dreaming about buttercups and blue turkeys, but still I dared not move a muscle to shout out for help. No, it was just me and the devil bug, face to face, mano a buggo, and only one of us would make it through the night. To think that I had survived the mountain only to be brought down in my bed. An ironic tragedy, that.

The day had started with an early morning rise, weak coffee and very good eggs, which had the effect of making the weak coffee taste even worse than it did. That should have been my first clue. As a Seattleite, you learn to divine the future by the cut and quality of the coffee at any given moment. Natives have over two thousand local language terms for the bean and the grind of the bean, and at the best of times having a simple cuppa equates to a full-sensory I Ching reading mixed with half and half.

The drive to Enchanted Rock was uneventful, full of visions of rain and mist-hazed blue bonnets along greenways, the poppy thump of 80’s mix tapes, and the faint odor of cattle. We arrived at the Mountain’s parking lot and pulled in next to the only other car, which as luck would have it belonged to my traveling companion’s former boss. He rambled something of a warning to us that I missed because I was trying to figure out the best way to slide a cold water bottle into the deep pockets of my cargo shorts without freezing my cockles. It was something about rain and the stone and death. I brushed it aside as I frantically tried to shift the bottle’s position away from the old how’s-your-father, fixed my hair, and cheerfully set out along the path.

Enchanted Rock lives up to its name, or at least the second part of its name, which is to say that it’s one big rock. And I don’t mean that it’s a pile of rocks that together make a mountain. It’s one…big… rock. It’s like two thousand miles high or something and glistens pink. Yes, pink. Here in the middle of Texas is a big, two thousand mile high chunk of solid pink granite. It is every drag queen’s dream, and I was no exception. I had jumped at the chance to come here, me and my gold lame.



Now, however, as I stood at the bottom of Enchanted Rock and stared up at its immensity, the sloping grace of the approach to the summit, the sparse vegetation, the exposed peak with scattered, random outcroppings – sharp-edged granite that grew in dangerous angles from the landscape, I only had one thought. There is no way under heaven or on earth that I’m going to be able to climb this thing and live. I’m no slugabed, no sloth-monkey, but then again I’ve had my fair share of cartoon marathons with a bag of Kettle Chips and a case of Tangerine Soda at my side. I like my jeans to be loose-fitting, if you catch my drift.

The sun emerged from the clouds and my companion was all chipper and companion-like and said to me, “We are going to walk straight up that thing!” in a very chipper, companion-like way. I could only crack my mouth into a smile and nod with a desperate jerking motion. The poor bastard, I thought, he’d be carrying me down the mountain before this was over.

We began the climb and engaged in our usual banter, which included the varied topics of computer games, friend gossip, conditioners, and upcoming movie releases, you know, real geek fodder. And this continued until we were halfway up the side of the mountain when our conversation suddenly went in this direction:

“So… puff… puff… see… puff… that rock… huff huff… over there?”

(Looking) “Wheeze… pant…. Yeah?… wheeze.”

“Sweat…. Huff… pant…. That’s the… huff…. Puff… place… where… whew… we left my mother.”

(stopping) “You…pant… your what?”

“Hufffffffff pufffff…. Yeah…. Pant…. Choke…. She… couldn’t make it… up…. Pant… pant… So we had… to leave her.”

It was then for the first time, there clinging to the side of Enchanted Rock, that I realized my companion was insane. This whole trip idea had been some elaborate plot, some twisted, nefarious scheme. If he had abandoned his own mother on the side of the mountain, what was he likely to do with me once my heart had given out? I grinned stupidly and remarked something about lettuce, I think, or gardenias. I can’t remember. But I kept my eye on him the rest of the trip up, which probably took the better part of a week.

When we finally reached the summit and I asked somebody what year it was just to make sure, I was greeted by such beauty that had I any breath to take away, it would have been gone. Likewise, any suspicions I may have had about my companion’s intentions vanished as well.

We stood, looking out over the blue hills painted upon the horizon, and all sense of time and space shifted in on itself. That pink-rock Martian landscape was a vast, solid desert that stretched out in all directions, catching and perverting the light and shattering any real sense of depth perception. Small oasises were tunneled into the stone, filled with shallow, blue-green water and surrounded by alien plant life that hoarded and shadowed space like a thick, scraggly beard. Scrub trees tangled their limb fingers and stood swaying like some beginning theoretical acting class’ idea of what a tree should look and act like. And the hawks and buzzards spiraled lazily in the upcurrents, calling out to each other with a sound that bounced repeatedly off the hollow granite walls of the valley, mixing and merging into each other, a natural symphony of challenge and response.

We wandered over this landscape largely alone, explored a small cave system, and fell into the silence of being in silence. And so it was that seated on a gentle slope and overlooking another chunk of pink rock in the distance, my companion said something idly about killing me. Well, actually, that’s when my companion said something idly about the approaching clouds, which in a round-about way would turn out to be something about killing me. In our best, male, ignore it unless it is charging you and about to run you down way, the conversation went something like this:

“Looks like there might be some rain approaching.”

“Yeah.”

“If it rains while we are up here, we won’t be able to get back down.”

“That would suck.”

“Yeah.”

Naturally then, we did nothing but continue to marvel at the clouds as they rolled low over the tree line and the sky darkened. We marveled at how the wind picked up. We marveled at how quickly the little sprinkles of rain fell. We marveled at the speed in which other people left the mountain.

Now, the thing I have learned about pink granite, or rather a chunk of unending pink granite that reaches like two thousand miles into the sky is that it tends to be one continuous surface, or in geological terms, one face. Climbing or descending is like walking up a seemingly unending urban street hill in San Francisco or Seattle. When it’s dry, it’s a good workout. Add water to the smooth, shiny countertop, however, and you have the world’s biggest slip-and-slide. If, say, you were foolish enough to climb up while it is dry, remain at the top until it got wet, and then attempt a descent… well, nobody would ever be that foolish so it’s not worth the conjecture. Needless to say, it’s not a good idea at any time.

“It sure seemed like a good idea at the time,” my companion said as we headed to the cave for shelter, right on cue. Well, actually, he said this after we had yelled, “Make for the Cave!” or something to that bravado effect. I slip-clambered down the hill to the rocks outside the entrance to join him and we looked at each other, looked up the hill, looked down into the cave and had the same thought. I imagined if I lived through this to write about it, the scene would be as follows:

I stared at my companion, my guide, the seasoned climber who even now was sinking dejectedly onto the rock at the entrance of the cave. He tossed back a few swigs of pure grain alcohol and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

The rain came down in sheets, ripping my manly, stubbled cheek to shreds and the torrent of wind billowed my sweat-stained shirt out behind me. I licked my lips and tasted blood, winced painfully. Vultures sat waiting with a surly silence, the cold stare of inevitability.

My companion began giggling even as the storm picked up. He smashed the bottle against the ledge and grinned manically at me.

This was bad news, I thought to myself. Grown men shouldn’t giggle. My companion had gone mad - mad from the heat or the altitude or the lack of women in our party.

Together, we clung to the slick, pink stone, unable to move lower into the safety of the cave for the danger of falling to our deaths, unable to climb any higher up the glass surface of the mountain. We were trapped at the mercy of the elements, exposed to God’s Mightye Wrathe.

He spit and turned to me, his breath hot and putrid from drink. “It seemed a good idea at the time, Will.”

I knew those words would haunt me for the rest of my life, which I knew now would be mercifully short.

But that’s a slight exaggeration and I’m not prone to that sort of trickery. Rather, there we were sharing a rock, stuck in the rain, unable to climb, unable to descend, two pale-skinned geeky guys in shorts. Like any good men when faced with certain death from all sides, we chose to do nothing. And so we got wetter and wetter. And the day got older and older. And we got wetter and wetter.

Finally, he half-yelled into the wind, “I think it’s starting to let up”. The sheer illogic of this statement stunned me. It was so horribly untrue that it started at truth and wrapped all the way around it to the other side, almost making it back where it began. And really, faced with that amazing level of untruth, all you can do is agree with it.

“Yeah, it does”… were the words coming out of my mouth, which at the sheer untruth of what was being said, instantly shriveled up and retreated inside my jaw. I grinned, lipless at my insane partner and then followed him up the mountain again, barely able to move a few inches without a misstep and a stumble.

I returned to my previous premise. Indeed, it was clear he was trying to kill me just like he had tried and failed to kill his own mother, who being older and wiser than I, saw through his attempts and escaped. It was then that I realized I hadn’t asked him if she ever made it back down to the parking lot. This, I decided, was not the time for that question.

By the time we had crested the peak, the wind was very high and the rain had stopped being rain and started being one continuous plane of water. The good news was that it was now blowing sideways so that all of it collected on our bodies and not on the stone beneath our feet. In our unerring logic, then, it seemed like a good time to try for the full descent to base camp. It was either that or wait out the storm and begin the long debate as to which of us would be eaten. (It had been almost five hours since breakfast, I was to learn later. I’m surprised we had the energy to continue. It just goes to show you the strength and endurance that lies in the untapped recesses of the human spirit.)

The climb down took a few more years. We hobbled like little old ladies, randomly slipping and waving our arms with the characteristic old lady “Woooo” or an “Oh Dear!”
Eventually, however, my companion discovered natural cracks in the stone which provided at least some friction. We began to follow these cracks and were for a time buoyed up by our trail-smarts and skill and made very good progress. What clever lads we were.

That was until we heard somebody shouting at us from below.

I believe the words were, “Don’t follow the cracks!!!”

There was another small party of people trapped at the end of a very large crack, not sure where to go or what to do. My companion chose to look at the warning as some sort of Divine Intervention that in his religion was a sign to continue with the crack-following. I brought this logic to his attention and he pulled a gun on me and warned me that if I didn’t follow the crack like he ordered, he’d put a cap into my knee. Or maybe I just followed him because I didn’t know what else to do. The details are spotty.

It’s like when your mother asks you, “If Paul were to follow the crack down the cliff, would you?” I guess I know that answer now.

Around the time we reached the end of the crack, the other trapped party of people had slid to their deaths, or in other words, slid down the rest of the way safely to the gravel area below them and were walking to their car. We, however, were frozen in indecision, stuck, unable to move in any direction yet again. There we were, crouched, squatting, dripping wet in our little shorts, water bottles bulging from our pockets. We were like some perverted Austin bobsledding team who couldn’t afford a bobsled, or apparently from our position, modern plumbing facilities.

I’m not sure exactly what happened next, but it involved a brief discussion about why the human body has a butt, some rudely drawn diagrams, an overview of exactly what was going to happen, and then one accidental slip of a shoe.

I can’t imagine the sound we made as we slid half on our asses and half on the soles of our shoes down to the gravel, holding on to each other for dear life. I’d like to suppose that it was a very manly, triumphant howl or even maybe a devil-may-care whee. Let’s just pretend that was indeed the sound. And let’s forget the sudden head-jerks upward of families below us, the finger pointing, and the picture taking.

The important thing is that we had survived. Not even lunch surrounded by a gaggle of well-meaning, purple-clothed, red-hatted ladies could quench the glow of our accomplishment. No swarming, snot-webbed worms on the forest path could diminish us. No gay country-western dancing could faze us. We had beaten the mountain. We were no longer boys, but men. We ate M&M cookies and drank iced tea to our good fortune.

As the sweat beaded on my forehead and the scorpion poised to strike, I thought about all of this. What a waste that I would not live to tell the tale to generations of children so that they might learn from it. This small Jurassic creature would close out my final chapter. I readied myself for death.

And then suddenly, my companion, my Passepartout swooped down from the heavens above me, a deus ex-machina in a white terry-cloth robe, brandishing an instrument of doom. I shrank back from him, knowing in my final moments that all of this had been planned, the mountain adventure, the rain, the scorpion under the bed. The sharp instrument angled past my face…

“Cool, a baby scorpion. I’ve never seen one this small before. I’m not sure it could even break the skin,” he said. With the tweezers around it, he walked cheerfully out of the room and down the hall, fading into the yellowing glow of the bathroom light and was gone.

That had been his chance, I realized, to kill me. And yet, he had not. Our time together on the mountain had made us comrades. Our differences had been set aside. The ordeal of our journey had forged our hands in a grudging friendship.

Maybe that, truly, is the meaning of whatever metaphor you can draw from any of this.

As for me, I’m only happy that I have lived long enough to tell you the story.

Farewell, Austin, land of pancakes and longhorns. Farewell.