Just as the mountains were meant to be climbed, we were destined to be friends.

You wrote that in your first letter. I was pretty sure you were making fun of me and vowed not to write back. Then I did and everything changed.  If I’d known what would happen after we started writing—if I’d known what you’d do—I’d make the same choice. 

I’m a climber. And the journey is always about more than the fall.

Chapter 1

“No! We’re not going that way,” I snap.

Whiskey gives the leash a shoulder-jolting tug and looks quizzically at me with his mismatched colored eyes questioning why we aren’t heading across the parking lot to the lake like usual.

“You stink,” I explain trying hard not to breathe deep or get too close. 

“This way will be faster.” I lead the dog off the pavement, past one of the park’s outhouses. Behind the small building is a rarely used shortcut that leads up to East Bluff Trail. Compared to our typical morning walk by the lake, this path is steep and the rocks are slick with dew the rising sun has yet to burn off. But unlike the route by the water, this way is almost never used, even during the park’s busiest hours. I also plan on it being a whole lot shorter. No doubt Mr. Zimmerman will complain when I return Whiskey a half hour early. He insists on getting his money’s worth, but our deal doesn’t include an hour and a half walk the morning after his dog encountered a fully-loaded skunk. Mr. Zimmerman didn’t even have the decency to tell me about the stench himself.  He just left a note on the door saying Whiskey was out back then peered through the curtains to see if I would bail. I still can’t decide if my surly neighbor is going to be proud of me for rising to the challenge or disgusted, I didn’t have the self-respect to walk away.  As far as I’m concerned, fifteen bucks is fifteen bucks. 

The wind gusts. I jam one hand in my jacket and grip the leash with the other while lamenting not taking the time to fish my gloves out of the hall closet before leaving the house. By the time school starts, I won’t need them, but that does nothing for my frozen fingers now.

The brisk temperature keeps Whiskey happily scrambling up the rugged incline until finally we crest the hill and intersect with the well-marked East Bluff Trail. Back on well-tended ground, we pick up the pace past trees decked with crimson orange leaves that just days ago had been green. Whiskey pees on almost every bush as we approach Elephant Rock. The large gray stone had to have been named by someone with only the vaguest idea of what an elephant is supposed to look like. It’s rounded on the sides and as big as an elephant, but unless you squint really hard or are incredibly drunk, that’s where the similarities end. 

I check the time on my phone and decide to turn back. Whiskey doesn’t agree.  One minute he’s sniffing at rocks, the next he’s darting off the main path and down the hillside almost yanking me off my feet. Normally, I can stop him, but add gravity to the pull of eighty pounds of Shepherd/Husky and I’m completely outmatched. The leash flies out of my hand and disappears down the slope.

“Damn it!” I follow, half-hiking, half-sliding along the dirt, stone and fallen leaves.

My feet hit rock at the bottom of the gorge and I look for my wayward charge. I spot him sitting on the slightly slanted ground near the base of a tree, his tail furiously wagging at my approach. He whines at me, looks up into the branches and barks his head off.

Panting, I grab hold of the leash and spy the squirrel perched on the tree trunk about twenty-five feet up.

“This is about a squirrel?” I sigh. “Didn’t you learn your lesson last night? Chasing wild animals is never going to be worth it.”

Whiskey barks at the squirrel again.

Whiskey is sweet, but not very bright.

“Come on.” I give the leash a tug. “We have to start back if I’m…”

A glint of silver wire high up on the rust-gray granite wall behind the squirrel’s tree catches my attention. I step to the right where I can get a better look and grin. A piece of climbing gear used to secure safety ropes during an ascent has been left in a small crack about twenty feet up the wall. The climber forgot to clean the nut from the rocks. Either that, or the gear was wedged so tightly they hadn’t been able to free it. From here, the nut looks like it could be one of the more expensive ones. 

Once a climber leaves the area, any gear left behind is fair game to whoever comes across it. Finders’ keepers.

I check the clock on my phone again. 

6:22 am. 

It’ll take me and Whiskey ten minutes to make the return trip to the parking lot and another twenty to get back to our street. Less if we cut through fields and yards.  Technically, I have to try cleaning the nut off the route now. The real question is whether it’s worth taking the risk.

I’ve been scavenging abandoned gear off the rocks for the last two years. But while I always carry climbing shoes in my backpack, I don’t have my helmet or extra safety gear with me. At this time of morning no one is near enough to offer assistance if something goes wrong.

Whiskey barks and I absently scratch his head. This rock wall isn’t that high—only thirty or so feet—which is why it isn’t as popular with climbers as the hundreds of routes to the west, east and south.  There’s a decent chance no one will be in this area until I can return later this week with all my gear. Then again…

I’ve climbed in this crag a few times. There are a bunch of cracks and small ledges on the wall that should give me decent footing on the way up. My biggest concern is that without ropes to keep me secure, I won’t have the use of both hands when it comes time to remove the abandoned nut.

Still—I want to give it a whirl.

“Great news!” I dump Whiskey’s poop bag onto the ground and loop his leash around the tree trunk. “You get to bark at the squirrel a little while longer. Isn’t that exciting?” 

It’s not simply the cost of the gear that has me digging climbing shoes out of my pack and clipping the nut cleaning tool to the loop on my jacket pocket. The value of the nut isn’t as important to me as my learning if I can actually get it.

I test the tie of the leash to make sure Whiskey won’t escape, plan my route and start forward.

The squirrel chatters. Whiskey whines.

“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” I promise, mostly to myself. If I don’t think I can get good enough grips, I’ll abandon the attempt and come back another time.

I’ve read about way too many climbers who died scaling rock faces and summiting mountains. I’m not going to be one of them. But I do plan on doing whatever it takes to get out of the middle of Wisconsin to study high altitude science while exploring the tallest mountains in the world. Getting this nut out of the wall will take me one step closer to that goal.

I get a good hold on a ledge above my head, put my right foot onto a small jut in the rock two feet off the ground and begin my ascent, hyperaware of the unforgiving granite under my fingertips.

Five feet up.

Ten.

The rock is damp and cold and slicker than it will be later under the warmth of the sun. Still, I keep going, inch by inch, foot by foot.

Fifteen-feet above the ground, I place my left toe on a small lip in the rock, slip and I find myself dangling by my fingertips above the jagged stone below.