O ye of little faith…O ye of little faith…this is the refrain I hear in my head lately…O ye of little faith.

In a fifth grade chemistry apprenticeship I learned that the words “Aitch Two Oh” were just the way we said out loud the chemical formula H2O, where H stood for Hydrogen, O for Oxygen and the subscript two in the middle was associated with the Hydrogen, not the Oxygen. Two Hydrogens for each Oxygen. I memorized the sentence, “Two atoms of Hydrogen plus one atom of Oxygen makes one molecule of water.” Said without quite recognizing that I was speaking a deep and fundamental hypothesis of physics and chemistry, of science itself.

And then, The meek shall inherit the Earth. The meek shall inherit the Earth. I know I am meek, if meekness is for the faithless, so why would such bad behavior be rewarded? Unless inheriting the Earth is not such a blessing after all.

While the world of our senses is seemingly infinitely diverse; no two snowflakes are identical, no two blades of grass the same, there is an underlying simplicity, the atomic hypothesis. There are 92 common kinds of atoms in our world, unbreakable under normal circumstances, that through electrical forces may bond together in various combinations into relatively breakable combinations called molecules. All the “stuff” of our world is atoms and molecules, different ways of bonding together combinations of the 92 common atoms into molecules, some of which have thousands of atoms bound together. The molecules can bond together to form more complex structures such as a snowflake, pebble, a skin cell, a leaf of grass.

This atomic hypothesis, in a way, is as far fetched as the idea that things are simply infinitely diverse.

And as far fetched as the idea that logic does us any good. (I am in one of those moods today. One of those days where life seems like drudgery, one of those moods that by now fits as snug as a straitjacket, barbed into the brain as emotions seep through a cavernous walk towards Ye of Little Faith.)

H2O, water, is readily available on earth in liquid, solid or gaseous state; each molecule having two Hydrogen atoms bonded by electrical force to one Oxygen atom.

Even water has its moods.

My Dad says: “it’s important to get a grip on just how small a molecule is,” which he says helps explain why water looks, feels and tastes like water and not like a lumpy or gritty bunch of molecules. “Take one ounce of water, divide it in 1/2, through ½ ounce away and divide the remaining ½ ounce in half again⎯you now have divided twice and have ¼ ounce. Keep repeating this until you have divided 80 times and you now have one molecule left. This is another way of saying that one ounce of water contains 280 water molecules. Water molecules are so small compared to humans who think of even an ounce of water as “not very much” that we are incapable of seeing or feeling any lumpiness to the water. If the atomic hypothesis is to be either verified or discarded, it must be by more indirect means than our own human five senses.”

Today I just don’t feel adequate enough to overcome my family’s pessimism, which is my pessimism now which, if I’m not careful, will be my daughter’s pessimism. My faithlessness could destroy me, I know, but I’m damn sick of always being tested.

Some 14 billion years ago our universe began as a tiny speck of space-time filled with all the mass and energy of our universe. All the mass and energy of our universe compressed into a speck can only mean huge temperatures of trillions of degrees and huge kinetic energy of motion of the masses. Einstein’s theory says that the space-time will expand, the temperature cool down, the masses will have less and less kinetic energy.

At the beginning the masses were: Quarks, electrons, neutrinos

At the beginning, we all had Faith.

And the forces were: Gluons, Weakons, photons, and gravitons

And the only Force we knew was Love.

When all the particles have huge kinetic energy there is no chance of bonding from the attractive forces, but as the universe expanded and cooled, there was bonding. First the quarks bonded with the gluon force:

3 quarks become a proton, a different set of 3 quarks become a neutron, other sets of quarks combine to become a strongly attractive force between neutrons and protons. Neutrons and protons can bond into positively charged nuclei. As the universe expands and cools more electrons (negative charge) are attracted to and bond with nuclei, making atoms.

There was a clear path here. At least it seems clear here. All neat and tidy. Elegant rules for an elegant universe.

Gravity attracts all masses exactly according to the amount of mass, and wants to pull things together even in an expanding universe. So the mostly hydrogen and helium of the early universe gravitates into a clumpiness and as the matter accumulates and compresses stars are formed; as stars are formed they attract each other into galaxies. The gravitational compression that forms stars re-heats the mass, breaks the electromagnetic bonds and provides the kinetic energies (temperature) for fusion reactions which create the light that comes from stars.

Stars shed light, and yet they exist among darkness, millions and millions of miles away from one another. Do they recognize one another, do they feel alone, do they know?

Fusion takes the simplest elements, hydrogen and helium, and by adding further neutrons and protons, creating energy through the strong force, build the other elements in the periodic table, the heavier elements. The energy released from the nuclear furnace in the core of the star maintains a pressure on the outer shells and gravity’s collapse to the middle is balanced by this pressure outward.

When the nuclear fuel run out, as it does, there is no longer any radiation pressure to counteract the force of gravity and the outer shells quickly collapse towards the core, heating the core by compression until it explodes as a nova or super nova. This spreads the heavier elements formed by fusion within the star out into space, where gravity can begin its attractive process of forming new second generation stars, this time with the heavier elements present.

There is never peace for a star.

If the gas and dust that is undergoing gravitational collapse into star formation has rotational energy and a certain amount of swirling eddies the star can form and eddy remnants become planets rotating about the star; this is what happened in our solar system⎯we got the not-so-common combination of a star with heavier elements and a planetary system where the inner planets, earth in particular, got a particularly rich set of the elements.

Lucky Earth.

The earth, amongst the planets, is a distance away from the sun (92,000,000 mile +-) that the temperature (determined almost solely by the amount of solar radiation received) .is around 500o F above absolute zero. This temperature is above the freezing point of water and not so high that atoms are broken apart because their kinetic energy is high. I.e. atoms and molecules can form, interact, bond, and fairly peacefully coexist. Thus the earth is a place where chemistry is the appropriate way to describe most of what goes on.

Just one big hippie fuck fest.

The other planets Venus and Mars a bit have some chemistry, but the rest of the planets, stars, nebula, distant space etc. don’t have chemistry.

Conventional wisdom says that if you have a wet planet some 500 degrees above absolute zero with a rich set of elements, particularly carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, then random accidental chemical reactions will spontaneously occur and complex molecules will happen, complex molecules interacting with other complex molecules, kept warm by the sun, and using oxygen as an essential component of energy production will lead to life and biology. Chemistry is applied physics, biology is applied chemistry.

Chaos is applied biology. Life is applied chaos.

A many body system is necessarily completely described by many variables. For example, the solar system, ignoring things like storms, volcanoes, earthquakes etc. on the individual planets and moons, requires several hundred variables. The state of the solar system, at any point in time, is a point in the space of these several hundred variables.

The characteristic signature of a chaotic system is that two systems that at one point in time are arbitrarily close in the variable space, will at a later time become arbitrarily far apart in that space.

Is Divorce inevitable within a chaotic system?

A fundamental question of science is this: if I figure out the rules of behavior of “stuff” here and now, will the rules be the same tomorrow and will they be the same elsewhere? A way of phrasing this question is; “If a certain bank shot in pool works here and now, will it still work tomorrow or in Paris? The usual assumption is yes to both questions, but the assumption can be tested. Through telescopes we can look at the light from stars that are billions of light years away and which light was emitted billions of years ago. The light follows the same rules of behavior as light emitted today here or by our own star, the sun.

Many body systems may also be in a state of order. The operating description is that two points close in variable space remain close in variable space as time passes on. The exterior characteristics of order are a robust regularity, pattern, and a resistance to changes caused by small perturbations.

No change. No movement. Steady on. Order. Is this the viable state of Marriage?

Steam is a chaotic state of many water molecules. Ice is an ordered state of many ice molecules. Both can be described in rather simple terms. Steam is a state of random motion that everywhere looks much pretty much the same and has measurable properties of temperature, pressure and density with one mathematical relationship between these three variables. Ice also is pretty much the same throughout, but the knowledge of the location of one molecule allows the knowledge of the location of many of its’ neighbors. The measurable properties are temperature, density and pressure and also a description of the crystal structure, e.g. body centered cubic.

Complexity is neither order, in the above sense, nor chaos.

Complexity is a compromise of states.

It is a richer, wetter state that emerges by itself from the system, is organized, is a collective state, and likely is adaptive. There is a character of self organization about the system, the whole is greater than the sum of its’ parts …There is only a crude measure of complexity at this time: the amount of complexity in a system is, in some sense, proportional to the length of the efficient (human) description of the system.

Where does that leave us?

It has left us in a state where, as humans, we have described ourselves as the only life form that has consciousness. Does life depend on alphabetic languages to experience consciousness? We seem to understand our place in the universe about as much as other life forms do, if not less.

I find little reason not to believe what is now conventional wisdom in the sciences, that man is simply today’s status of an evolutionary process begun some four million years ago as a novel variety of chimpanzee, presumably leaving the tropical forest and adapting to a habitat more plains-like. This statement in no way bothers me or concerns me about my sense of being different from animals, my use of language, my sense of my own consciousness, or my ability to reason and to plan ahead. It seems entirely reasonable to me that, over a period of four million years, the 4 percent difference between my DNA and chimpanzee DNA would amount to exactly these differences between my mental functions and the mental functions of the chimpanzee. To understand ourselves is to first understand the chimpanzees.

Today’s status of the species “Homo sapiens sapiens” is, in fact, quite interesting. Man is the dominant species on the planet, able to determine which other species shall thrive or which become extinct. Man is found in the widest variety of habitats of any other species, able to find food and to fashion shelter in environments as varied as the banks of the Euphrates, the frozen tundra of the North, the tropical forests of the equatorial regions, and the mountains of Pakistan. Along with tool-making, language, the ability to form cohesive social groups, man’s huge - amongst all other species - capacity to adapt to different habitats must account for the specie’s incredible fitness in the Darwin survivability business.

If the story is right, or even half right, our ancestors differentiated as a species in the rift valleys of Africa, and gradually spread, through migration, around the entire planet. The tracks are left in today’s geography of DNA and language. This ability, even willingness, to migrate, to move on to unfamiliar habitats, is primarily responsible for man’s dominance over essentially 100 percent of this planet. Surely an evolutionary force this powerful deserves the name of instinct. Man is born with the instinct to wander, a passion to explore, comfort in moving away from the familiar: Wanderlust.  Lust?

Evolution has developed a desire/arousal/satisfaction process regarding instincts that are important for a species survival … just think about food and sex. Man, today as a million years ago, feels some chemical stimulus, some flow of endorphins and neurotransmitters, when he stands before a plain that extends beyond the horizon, a sea that stretches beyond sight, or a wall of mountains soaring into the sky. Evolution has designed this feeling. It is built into our DNA in order that the survival instinct of migration is triggered. Because this is fundamentally a good feeling, we are constantly in jeopardy of addiction. History is filled with stories of the addicts: Magellan, Marco Polo, John Smith, Admiral Perry, Maurice Herzog. And our own instincts are aroused and vibrate to these tales. The historical travel addicts become our heroes.

From this viewpoint, it makes utter good sense that I should feel restless on a beach and inclined to walk at length at water’s edge; that the sight of a mountain, particularly one covered in snow, should make my lungs fill and my mouth to open. The very reason why I am here, and why my own species has survived: Wanderlust.

I was born in northwestern Ohio, a place of the flatness of the last glacial advance, and knew hills but not mountains as I grew up. It makes sense that this should not matter to my ultimate disposition towards mountains, for surely evolution could not have designed that suck-breath feeling, that lust, into the immature body.  It is not good survivability to have the young wandering off prematurely. The migratory instinct must remain latent until the body has developed the capacity to actually take the trip. And so, sometime around my own sexual maturity, I took notice of the National Geographic magazines that came monthly to our home. These were the days when Everest was known, but unclimbed, when Picard flew hydrogen balloons to heights such that the Kodachromes showed the sky as black. Later, when I bought mountaineering books, I would see that same blackness in the sky as photographed from the heights of Nanga Parbat, Annapurna, and the other Himalayan peaks that captured my passion, fired my instincts, and created a lust.

These were not the thoughts that went through my head in the spring of 1983. At that time, at the age of 51, I had developed a bit of a mountain habit. I had spent twenty seven summers hiking in the Rockies, and had completed four treks in the Nepalese Himalayas. That spring I felt the itch, the prurience, the desire to return to the big mountains. Previous treks had developed into a ’style’ of trek that was quite satisfying. A trek might include about a dozen, including whatever of my children and their current wives or girl friends were up for it, a wife of my own, if there was one at the time, and filling out the team with adventurous friends. The last three treks had included Michael Covington, a climber and friend of Bob Craig, who had been on the 1953 American expedition to K2 and whose book “Storm and Sorrow in the Pamirs” is a classic. Cov was included because he was a technical rock and ice climber with an international reputation, and, well, you just never know when that would be an important person to have on a trek. Also, at that time, he was living on the ranch and trying to run his Fantasy Ridge guiding business from here in Woody Creek. In other words, perhaps his primary suitability for the trip was, simply, availability.

Where to go this time? The logical choices were the Makalu region of Nepal, or else the Himalaya of some other nation than Nepal, which while not mined out, was pretty familiar. Afghanistan was not an option, and the Karakoram easily captured my fantasy and those who committed early to the trek. My library had a sufficient number of books, beginning with Houston’s “K2, The Savage Mountain,” and including Herrligkoffer’s “Nanga Parbat, Shaller’s “Stones of Silence,” Keay’s “Where Men and Mountains Meet,” Messner’s “K2; Mountain of Mountains,” and Galen Rowell’s “In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods” to get us excited and to pick the target of K2 base camp for the destination.

In the spring of 1983 then, I began talking up the prospects with my family. My son Patrick and his wife Tammy, son Stuart and my former step-daughter Arleigh, and daughter Brie signed up for the planned fall trip. My wife Patti was eagerly on, and her childhood friend Patty Reilly would bring her boy friend Tim MacKay. My nephew Josh Stranahan was at loose ends, and family myth has always been that an exotic trip would correct that situation. Loose ends also fit Doug Carpenter, an old high school buddy of Patrick’s and then, as now, a Woody Creek resident. Cov had been climbing with Lester Thurow and wanted to invite him; OK, we thought, Lester should be an interesting character to travel with. I had always admired his column in Newsweek, and the little picture that appeared at the top of each column presented a curly headed high brow that, along with the column, looked like someone worth going to the mountains with.

Getting mail one morning at the Woody Creek post office, and wondering if the party was full or could stand another member, I was chatting with Gaylord Guenin about the proposed trip. Gaylord had been part of my life as editor of the “Mountain Gazette,” and upon the demise of that publication had been living in Woody Creek, working for Bob Beattie, and holding down the end stool at the Woody Creek Tavern. At that instant it seemed absolutely appropriate to invite Gaylord on the trip, and I did.

My own personal experience in mountains has been the subject of some introspection. The excitement of anticipation, for me, has a manic quality. I talk too much, speak too quickly, jerk and wave my hands. And there’s a juvenile quality to the way that I demean, through jokes, too many of them crude and course, the potential dangers. I am a little aware of the inappropriate language about death and mutilation, and a little excited about the possibilities, and there’s a piece about the jokes that is simply coming to grips, through humor, about realities. Drinking brings excess in this department; perhaps excess is required before facing these primal events that justly have huge components of fear.

I withdraw for awhile at the beginning of a trip; this seems to be a time of putting on some kind of spiritual armor. The armoring may take only 15 to 30  minutes for a day hike, or may take as long as a day for an extended trip such as this one. Once armored and into the trip I am a happy and irrational optimist. No harm is possible, no inconvenience, no rain or sleet can hold promise of anything but slight and temporary discomfort. I am overcheerful and appear to be paying little attention to proper planning, concern for safety, etc. In fact, I look at my watch often, calculating time since start, estimated rate so far, time to get to camp, and I’m looking at the sky, which way is the wind coming from, how fast? Mental arithmetic, mental mapping, where is the sun, which way will be in shadow, my mind chews on these things as a puppy plays with a bone, cheerfully, animatedly, and apparently without care. Everything checks out, the numbers are OK, there’s nothing to worry about, and we’ll have tea at the end of the day.

I have no arguments on the mountain, anyone there is clearly OK, the only thing to negotiate is how far, and where is camp tonight? I love everybody on the mountain, it is such a happy time; how could we argue? No food or drink is ever inadequate, no song poorly sung, no sunset anything but splendid.

As we get higher, closer to summits, there is another emotional phenomena, it’s “I knew we could.” This emotion is someplace around Maslow’s “peak experience.” I feel a deep we’ness of the endeavor. A mountain climbed alone has little meaning. I’ve done some, and that particular vessel is half empty at best.

And this is not always true. There are times when it is not right, times of trouble, altitude sickness, exhaustion, quicksand, or ennui of some kind. How does the sometimes calm and implacable manic deal with this? Calmly and implacably? On the surface, perhaps; these are the difficult times, the lonely moments, the thought comes up “why are we here?” “why did we try this foolishness?” and the bargains are offered, “get us out of this one and I’ll never again  …… whatever.”

Covington had planned a trip into the Karakoram for the summer of ‘83, and it suited his plans to stay on after his attempt on the Mustagh Tower to come along with us yet one more time. Because Cov was organizing porters and permits for his trip, we tagged onto his planning process and chose the same outfitter, Mohammed ??.

Travel arrangements, passports, gathering gear, finding totally inadequate maps, this is the arousal stage of the migratory process. Beyond just getting to K2 Basecamp we plotted other options. Just east of K2 is a lovely snow mound of 22,000ft named the Angelus. The Angelus had never been climbed, any visitor to the area had eyes only for K2, the big one. We might just bag a peak! Just East of Masherbrum, about half way down the Baltoro glacier, is a pass that is not difficult except for the last 200 vertical feet; with rope, crampons and ice axes it should be doable and provide a return route for the trip different than the entry.

Once the commitment for such a trip has been made there are many opportunities to fuel the fires of migratory desire. Gathering gear, weighing gear, talking about the trip, waterproofing boots, practice packing, laying all the gear out. Each step stirs the endorphins, the body, the brain, begins to feel good; the brain drugs are taking effect. The migratory euphoria is started, the addict is feeling some satisfaction, the monkey on the back smiles and relaxes for a few moments.

And so it was that so and so left Aspen on such and such a date.

You may appreciate, as we did not at the beginning of our journey, that the Braldu Gorge, the Baltoro Glacier, are places for the professionals to visit. Only the hardy, trained, strong, experienced, and brave belong in these places. It is place taken from old National Geographics and all the wonderful adventure books. The sky is dark in the Kodachromes. It is not a place for the innocent.

Why then this group of twelve, unhardy, untrained, soft, weak, and inexperienced? What Reason, what right, what purpose for them to go where they don’t properly belong? No reason, no right, no purpose. To be honest, we didn’t really think about, let alone find reason, right, or purpose. It was like going to a party—a costume party—dress up in crampons and ice axes and have a great time; it seemed like a good thing to do together. Looking back, I’d say it was a good-timing bunch, at loose ends at that point in their lives, willing to dress up, shrug, and try out a new kind of party in the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan.

There have been some painful times in my life when I’ve been caught up with Alcoholics Anonymous or some other twelve step program. While I’m a fan of twelve-stepping, I always had some trouble with step one, the Higher Power thing. (Is it that “we recognize that we are helpless and in the hands of a higher power?”) I know that all cultures throughout history have wrestled with the Higher Power thing, and that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of off-the-shelf-answers about the HP. Nothing from off-the-shelf seemed to fit me, and it seemed easier for me to do without than to wear one that didn’t fit. At some desperate point in m life I made a commitment, to myself, to come to terms with the Higher Power: even if it took all year.

Two times before I had committed to such year long projects. Once I set out to learn to like sardines, and the second time to learn to like Martinis. The sardine year was a struggle, perhaps even a failure, I consistently walk by that section in the super market. The martini year—well—maybe something to do with my appearances at AA.

My imagination came up with a little vignette; the ever-so-ordinary fireman. He is 35 and has a wife and two young children; this year the oldest one got a puppy for her birthday, and this year the family is planning a big vacation trip to the Rockies. While fires can often be exciting and dangerous, most are not. The day-to-day life of a fireman is waiting for something to happen, practice and drill, and cleaning equipment. He is happy enough with the work, his wife and children are proud of him, and his family is very important to him. Oh, he has his faults; pretty stubborn, doesn’t like new ideas, and there are times when it seems his buddies down at the Tavern are more important than the family. Like all families, there are tensions so old, so usual, so obvious, that they are best left unexamined.

And one day there is a pretty exciting fire; the family is saved and little else. The little girl sobs, “My puppy!” And the fireman runs back into the house, not having any idea where the puppy might be, or even if it is still alive. Without a thought he risks everything, his life, being a father for the family, hanging out with the guys. What got into him? One minute, hell, one second, of clear rational thought would clearly deliver a different decision. Or maybe it’s clear that the fireman didn’t act on the basis of any decision. He acted on an inner obligation, some higher power. At that instant, he was totally innocent.

All over the world there are such spontaneous, unthinking acts that deny our normal nature of greed, avarice, envy (what are the seven deadly sins?). The whole of these acts of commitment, I found, were the Higher Power of my search. My little vignette didn’t have an ending, I don’t know if he saved the puppy or died himself. The endings to these stories is still nearly so important for me as the beginnings, these moments of transcendent bravery and calm dignity. Man, in the grip of the Higher Power, is in a state of total innocence. The equation does not work backwards; the innocent are not necessarily experiencing Higher Power, yet, there is something close about it …

The innocent don’t know, are unaware, that what they are about to do is not a sensible act. The innocent mean no harm, even to themselves. And in our little trek, it certainly could be said that we were inexperienced and naive. The innocent don’t know any better, for if they did, they wouldn’t even try it.

Upon reflection there is another piece of this innocence—anger. Anger that the world might possibly assume that we couldn’t do it; anger that it is assumed that we aren’t up to it, only the special can do the special. A piece of this anger is the same that caused Rosa Parks to take her seat on the bus, Septima Clark to start her literacy schools. It’s “don’t tell me what I can’t do, muthafucka, that ones up to me to decide.” Anger, innocence, together.

Some eleven years after this trek we looked back and realized that we hadn’t looked back on the experience, hadn’t reflected on the adventure, hadn’t talked to each other about it. Was there a loss of innocence, a shame that crept into this march?

Perhaps a yearning to preserve whatever it was, and not attack it through verbalizations or varied lenses. Sometimes I think that our language makes us dumber, that we depend too much on the analysis and documentation, and less on instinct, on our other senses. That as humans, the purpose for our obsessive storytelling was (and is) not ultimately for mating, not for a higher understanding, but for recording what Earth is, what it was, what happened here…what was meant by “we.”

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