Part I is about Thaddeus' adventures in the territory around Marquette, Michigan.
A UP Weekend I
by Thaddeus
Perhaps the greatest irony of my life
is that for a person who measures 6’4” tall, I am terrified of
heights. Full disclosure: I am talking about a fear far beyond which
is indicated by symptoms of wobbly-knees or dizziness. At the apex
of my six inch vertical leap, I begin to get very angry with Sir
Isaac Newton and question what possessed me to leave the surface of
our most wonderful planet Earth. I have considered how self-secure I
am to withstand to the public ridicule that would befall someone in
my age range without a disability using walking canes, if for no
other reason than to enter into a more pleasing consort with land.
One of my earliest memories is of my
parents taking me to a public library. The library had two floors,
and the children’s section was on the second level. If memory
serves, the elevator was shrouded in the cobwebs of several
generations (if not whole civilizations) of numerous species of
spider with a dusty OUT OF ORDER sign that was placed in front of its
entrance sometime in 1958. The staircase at this library consisted
of large, rectangular marble slabs held together by approximately
half the steel distributed from Pittsburgh. A very sturdy structure
and a testament to the talent and skill of its designers to say the
least. Problem was, there was a gap of about a hand’s width between
each offset step that allowed for the necessary incline and the
visitor to be able to see through the stairway as they made
their way to the second floor. I was so paralyzed by this evil
creation as a child that my current stage of literacy is a credit to
the wonderful teachers on the ground floor of the elementary school I
attended.
The simple truth is that the more of my
surface area that is in contact with objects permanently affixed to
the ground, the more comfortable I am. This is known by people who
know me. “Bob” is one such person who knows me. He and I go
back a few years and we have spent not an insignificant amount of
time developing a friendship.
A quick note about Bob: he likes to
have fun. He loves hiking, fishing, kayaking, biking, building
beautiful log furniture…in other words someone who fits in
perfectly in Marquette, Michigan.
Another quick note: Bob is absolutely
crazy.
I visited Bob this past weekend in
Marquette. We had dinner on Friday night at the Vierling restaurant
on Front Street. If you have never been there, order a pint of a
delicious hand crafted hoppy beverage and don’t be shy about
looking through the large windows overlooking the bay or the old
black-and-white photos on the walls before your food arrives. (The
whitefish, by the way, is phenomenal.)
One picture shows Marquette harbor
sometime after the turn of the century. The photo succeeds in
representing how busy the port was in a time long since past as the
viewer sees immense sepia toned tree trunks waiting to be shipped off
to lumber yards. On the horizon, there is a promontory that reaches
towards the sky, the tallest landmark of the area from that photo’s
perspective. Naturally my eyes were led to this peak, and my throat
started to constrict as sweaty hands tried to grasp a fork.
“What’s that hill there, in the
back?” I ask, trying to allay burgeoning anxiety through dialogue.
“Oh yeah, I think that is Marquette
Mountain,” Bob says. “Cool photo, huh?”
My voice squeaks as I attempt a
response and the conversation eventually drifts elsewhere.
Later that evening we discuss plans for
the weekend and a couple of ideas were tossed around. Things with
Bob always seem to move fast and before I knew it the first
suggestion of a crisp autumn-in-August Sunday morning was floating
through the open window of my guest room.
“So we’ll head up to Jeffrey’s
for breakfast and then hit the cliff?”
“Um, sure sounds like a good plan”
I mumble, still in a sleepy haze without having consumed the several
cups of coffee required to alert my senses every morning.
It wasn’t until the third cup that I
became aware of myself seriously discussing climbing a rock face.
Was this actually presented as an option on Friday for things to do
over the weekend? What’s more, it seemed as though we were talking
about climbing the same peak that I had seen in the photo at the
restaurant two days before. I’m not one for hyperbole, but as the
server dutifully refilled my bottomless cup of coffee, my mind
recalled every detail of minutiae in the photo of the Mt. McKinley of
Michigan, from the sherpas leading pack mules up narrow trails to the
base camp with wind-tattered tents and spare oxygen tanks.
I won’t bore you with the details of
how I managed to scramble up the side of that mountain; frankly, I
have no recollection of anything that happened once I started
climbing. However, I will say that I think I may be the first person
in recorded history to have the ability to consciously decide against
having multiple heart attacks, something I learned about myself while
I was clutching a shrubby oak tree some 70 feet above where my feet
last touched flat ground. Photographic evidence shows a rope knotted
to a harness into which I was strapped leading through a pulley
anchored by two trees at the top of the cliff to Bob’s own harness
at the foot of the cliff. This technique, I was told later, is
called “top anchoring” and once the nausea that still accompanies
any association with Sunday, August 5th subsides in a week
or so, I might read up on how exactly the physics behind it works.
It’s good to have friends, but it is
better when crazy friends live a few hours away.
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