Choosing to Continue
Peak after peak, in photos I saw as a kid, the Karakoram
were standing alien blades of granite, more like myth
than earth, not just across the world but somewhere
else completely. In the ruin of high camp on Denali
there was a mangle of gear, one climber frozen
while gripping a tent pole, two more at the base
of the Arches Tower, frozen upright and braced.
If all goes well is an echo in transcripts: If they join
a more experienced team, if the four who went for
the top get back before dark so everyone can regroup
at camp six. If the rest falls into place as nothing else
has, they'll be down to base before the storm they’d
always known was coming. On Everest, climbers step
tragically over the dead. On Denali, being blown off
the mountain is always considered when climbers
can’t be found. I’ve scrambled up cliffs but never
trained for years to stand where those climbers did.
Still, they’re not unique in choosing to continue
as if all could still go well for them, as if making
the top was everything. Finding fault for need-
less deaths is hard. Sometimes it’s also clear.
When a Hammer Is All You Have
Even if you were never inclined
this way, how many repetitions
would it take, how much time, for
everything to look like a nail, train
yourself to see that way or become
it on your own, is largely what he
said. In our current climate of one
only, this not that, there’s no finding
other uses beyond weapons, no
gauze of options confusing the view.
Hammer as a way of thinking sim-
plifies things, wastes no time with
exceptions. In much the same way,
if you were born a Miller, underneath
what you’ve become or appear to be
as an individual, you’re compelled
to see the world through the lens of
work after harvest, through crops
bursting or building toward it, the
critical work of grinding grains into
flour. You are drawn to heavy wheels
of stone and how they are all the same.