Kenneth Reimer's Blog, page 2

“Immensities of Stone”

I have read about it and studied images of its enigmatic stone circles. I have speculated on its possible origins and quizzed other travellers on their impressions. It is one of few monumental sights that I have desired to see for most of my life, and my dream is about to be realized. I have worked past the necessities of travel: the flights, the hotel, the car rental, the entrance fee and the access, and now there it stands.

Stonehenge.

Initially, I have to convince myself that it is real. Accustomed to so many photographs, my brain wants to interpret the panorama before me as just another two-dimensional representation, and it is difficult to accept the reality of what I am experiencing. This is fitting: something so shrouded in history, mystery and mysticism should require effort to comprehend. The mind requires time to gain perspective, and Stonehenge requires perspective. But I assure myself: this is real. This is Stonehenge. I am actually there.

It is a cold day, and the wind blows with insistence across Salisbury Plain. Low-lying clouds cover most of the sky. I’m disappointed, thinking that my photographs will seem lifeless in the flat light, and it turns out that they do; however, the gloomy sky seems an appropriate backdrop for this outpost from my prehistoric past.

When you first gain access to the archeological site, the stone circles are a distance away. They rest lonely on the plain, and without perspective, the boulders seem smaller than they are. The closer you get to the monument, however, the more massive Stonehenge looms, and the impression asserts itself that this is a place of immensities. Of course, the stones themselves are immense—hulking Neolithic monoliths chiseled and configured like dominos set in sequence by gargantuan hands. Yet, at this once sacred site, there is still another immensity: the immensity of time.

Even in its battered state, Stonehenge impresses its viewers with a sense of permanence—it sits heavily in time. I have an idea that is difficult to put into words, but Stonehenge seems to me to be a kind of temporal nexus—a focal point in history. Its incredible weight not only fixes it in place on the Salisbury Plain but also anchors it in time. I envision it as occupying in the central point of an hourglass—a confluence of past and future that pulls the grains of sand toward it from both halves of the glass. As it moves through time, it draws the past along with it, even as it pulls the future toward it. Standing within the henge, I consider not only those who built it, but also all of those people who have visited it throughout the centuries. Did Shakespeare tread this same patch of earth where I now stand? Was Darwin here? Nietzsche? What Roman legionnaire stood on this plain, wrapping his cloak against the wind and cursing the foul luck that condemned him to serve at such a barbaric outpost so far from the dalliances of the Capitol? It staggers the imagination to consider the incredible history that Stonehenge has witnessed throughout the millennia.

It is also fascinating to speculate as to what these stones have yet to see. For a thousand years to come, visitors will continue to be drawn to this location. Whatever destiny befalls us, pilgrims will come to this place and think upon those of us who came before. They will gaze back at me, just as I look forward to them.

For anyone who has not been to Stonehenge, a brief description might be useful. The monument was constructed using two types of rock—sarsen stone and blue stone, and 162 of these stones were organized into two concentric circles with three horseshoe configurations in their interior.

Most of the massive, slowly tumbling boulders that we see in all the photographs originally rose in a circle of standing stones capped with horizontal blocks called lintels. These sarsen stones were brought from the Marlborough Downs nineteen miles away. An inner circle of the smaller blue stones mirrors this outer ring. The closest probable source for the blue stones is a place called the Preseli Hills in Wales—an incredible 150 miles away. Someone really, really liked these rocks. Within the second circle is a horseshoe of five massive sarsen stone trilithons—free-standing “doorways” each built with three blocks. Located within these trilithons stand two smaller crescents of blue stones. In the middle of it all lies the Alter Stone.

This impressive array is only the centre of a much larger archeological site. There is an outer earthen ditch and bank that encloses the entire structure, and it is this ditch which identifies the location as a “henge.” From the air, the outer henge would resemble a ping-pong paddle. From the middle sarsen trilithon, there is an avenue that leads to the far end of the “handle” where the Heel Stone still stands. Almost equidistant between this Heel Stone and the trilithons, there lies the “slaughter stone” with it red-tinged rock. The name is misnomer: the red colour is due to traces of iron in the rock rather than the blood pouring from sacrificial arteries.

Just before I visited Stonehenge, I heard an English politician on the BBC refer to it as a “public disgrace,” and there is some truth to that statement. Two highways have been constructed close to the site, and as you stand at Stonehenge, you are frequently assaulted by the sound of traffic. In addition, Stonehenge is theatre in the round. Every view of the ruins includes a background of diminutive human figures staring back at you. As I circle the stones, I wait patiently, I shift back and forth, tiptoe and crouch, using the stones themselves to hide the tourists from my camera lens. The end result is that my camera records images of a desolate, isolated Stone Age structure that is actually cast in the centre of a human throng.

This kind of image manipulation always causes me moments of guilt, since I believe my photographs should capture truth, not obfuscate it. The camera, however, lacks the selective focus of the human eye. That guy wearing a bright red jacket to a prehistoric site—a pet peeve of mine is that travellers’ clothing should always be thematically appropriate—cannot be overlooked in a photograph: the flash of colour arrests our attention. In person, however, I am able to focus on the ruins and effectively ignore what exists beyond. In this sense, my selective photography is not so much manipulation as it is a reflection of authentic experience.

Regardless of all the distractions, Stonehenge remains an outstanding destination. The stone circles were erected in 2500 B.C.E, and almost five thousand years of history carries considerable weight. Visitors are no longer allowed to wander—and wonder—amongst the stones, as my father once did. They are protected with a polite British barrier of white rope, and tourists follow a path around them. You can, however, still get quite close to them—perhaps sixty feet. Close enough to feel an intimacy and sense the aura of mystery.

In the not to distant South, along the King Barrow Ridge, I can see a row of burial mounds that seem to hunch beneath the trees. I know that they have been excavated, but from my vantage point, they appear undisturbed, and I can imagine the ages of gloomy weather and insistent dread that would have guarded them from intruders.

The boulders of Stonehenge stand silent, yet paradoxically, their mute testimony compels speculation as to their origin and purpose. What hands labored to stand them upright, and what desire drove those mysterious people to engage in such an incredible task? In my youth, I had read that Stonehenge was erected and used by Celtic Druids, and I envisioned strange moonlit rites being performed by darkly hooded figures. Perhaps over the span of millennia, there were such midnight rituals—most likely worse things transpired on that sacred ground, but whether or not the Druids used those circles of stones, they certainly did not create them. Carbon-dating of the site places the creation of the henge at a thousand years before the Celts arrived in Briton.

Why was it built? If you visit the site at midsummer and stand at the Alter

Stone looking East, you will see the sun rise almost directly above the Heel Stone. At midwinter, the sun sets between the gap of the two tallest trilithons. Obviously, Stonehenge was intended to marked the solstices, but beyond that, our collective speculations must fill the void left by millennia of silence.

In one of his novels, William Golding describes a rock on a beach as being “a token of preposterous time,” and I cannot think of Stonehenge without this quotation coming to mind. Excepting the pyramids at Giza, there are few other human structures on this planet for which the idea of preposterous time seems more appropriate. The enigmatic boulders of Stonehenge come to us from a lost past now written only by our imaginations, and no doubt they will carry through to a future that will hopefully transcend prediction. In the unlikely event that our civilization survives another two thousand years, Stonehenge will have borne witness to our entire tenure as a civilization.

Kenneth D. Reimer

“Immensities of Stone” – June 24, 2015

I have read about it and studied images of its enigmatic stone circles. I have speculated on its possible origins and quizzed other travellers on their impressions. It is one of few monumental sights that I have desired to see for most of my life, and my dream is about to be realized. I have worked past the necessities of travel: the flights, the hotel, the car rental, the entrance fee and the access, and now there it stands.

Stonehenge.

Initially, I have to convince myself that it is real. Accustomed to so many photographs, my brain wants to interpret the panorama before me as just another two-dimensional representation, and it is difficult to accept the reality of what I am experiencing. This is fitting: something so shrouded in history, mystery and mysticism should require effort to comprehend. The mind requires time to gain perspective, and Stonehenge requires perspective. But I assure myself: this is real. This is Stonehenge. I am actually there.

It is a cold day, and the wind blows with insistence across Salisbury Plain. Low-lying clouds cover most of the sky. I’m disappointed, thinking that my photographs will seem lifeless in the flat light, and it turns out that they do; however, the gloomy sky seems an appropriate backdrop for this outpost from my prehistoric past.

When you first gain access to the archeological site, the stone circles are a distance away. They rest lonely on the plain, and without perspective, the boulders seem smaller than they are. The closer you get to the monument, however, the more massive Stonehenge looms, and the impression asserts itself that this is a place of immensities. Of course, the stones themselves are immense—hulking Neolithic monoliths chiseled and configured like dominos set in sequence by gargantuan hands. Yet, at this once sacred site, there is still another immensity: the immensity of time.

Even in its battered state, Stonehenge impresses its viewers with a sense of permanence—it sits heavily in time. I have an idea that is difficult to put into words, but Stonehenge seems to me to be a kind of temporal nexus—a focal point in history. Its incredible weight not only fixes it in place on the Salisbury Plain but also anchors it in time. I envision it as occupying in the central point of an hourglass—a confluence of past and future that pulls the grains of sand toward it from both halves of the glass. As it moves through time, it draws the past along with it, even as it pulls the future toward it. Standing within the henge, I consider not only those who built it, but also all of those people who have visited it throughout the centuries. Did Shakespeare tread this same patch of earth where I now stand? Was Darwin here? Nietzsche? What Roman legionnaire stood on this plain, wrapping his cloak against the wind and cursing the foul luck that condemned him to serve at such a barbaric outpost so far from the dalliances of the Capitol? It staggers the imagination to consider the incredible history that Stonehenge has witnessed throughout the millennia.

It is also fascinating to speculate as to what these stones have yet to see. For a thousand years to come, visitors will continue to be drawn to this location. Whatever destiny befalls us, pilgrims will come to this place and think upon those of us who came before. They will gaze back at me, just as I look forward to them.

For anyone who has not been to Stonehenge, a brief description might be useful. The monument was constructed using two types of rock—sarsen stone and blue stone, and 162 of these stones were organized into two concentric circles with three horseshoe configurations in their interior.

Most of the massive, slowly tumbling boulders that we see in all the photographs originally rose in a circle of standing stones capped with horizontal blocks called lintels. These sarsen stones were brought from the Marlborough Downs nineteen miles away. An inner circle of the smaller blue stones mirrors this outer ring. The closest probable source for the blue stones is a place called the Preseli Hills in Wales—an incredible 150 miles away. Someone really, really liked these rocks. Within the second circle is a horseshoe of five massive sarsen stone trilithons—free-standing “doorways” each built with three blocks. Located within these trilithons stand two smaller crescents of blue stones. In the middle of it all lies the Alter Stone.

This impressive array is only the centre of a much larger archeological site. There is an outer earthen ditch and bank that encloses the entire structure, and it is this ditch which identifies the location as a “henge.” From the air, the outer henge would resemble a ping-pong paddle. From the middle sarsen trilithon, there is an avenue that leads to the far end of the “handle” where the Heel Stone still stands. Almost equidistant between this Heel Stone and the trilithons, there lies the “slaughter stone” with it red-tinged rock. The name is misnomer: the red colour is due to traces of iron in the rock rather than the blood pouring from sacrificial arteries.

Just before I visited Stonehenge, I heard an English politician on the BBC refer to it as a “public disgrace,” and there is some truth to that statement. Two highways have been constructed close to the site, and as you stand at Stonehenge, you are frequently assaulted by the sound of traffic. In addition, Stonehenge is theatre in the round. Every view of the ruins includes a background of diminutive human figures staring back at you. As I circle the stones, I wait patiently, I shift back and forth, tiptoe and crouch, using the stones themselves to hide the tourists from my camera lens. The end result is that my camera records images of a desolate, isolated Stone Age structure that is actually cast in the centre of a human throng.

This kind of image manipulation always causes me moments of guilt, since I believe my photographs should capture truth, not obfuscate it. The camera, however, lacks the selective focus of the human eye. That guy wearing a bright red jacket to a prehistoric site—a pet peeve of mine is that travellers’ clothing should always be thematically appropriate—cannot be overlooked in a photograph: the flash of colour arrests our attention. In person, however, I am able to focus on the ruins and effectively ignore what exists beyond. In this sense, my selective photography is not so much manipulation as it is a reflection of authentic experience.

Regardless of all the distractions, Stonehenge remains an outstanding destination. The stone circles were erected in 2500 B.C.E, and almost five thousand years of history carries considerable weight. Visitors are no longer allowed to wander—and wonder—amongst the stones, as my father once did. They are protected with a polite British barrier of white rope, and tourists follow a path around them. You can, however, still get quite close to them—perhaps sixty feet. Close enough to feel an intimacy and sense the aura of mystery.

In the not to distant South, along the King Barrow Ridge, I can see a row of burial mounds that seem to hunch beneath the trees. I know that they have been excavated, but from my vantage point, they appear undisturbed, and I can imagine the ages of gloomy weather and insistent dread that would have guarded them from intruders.

The boulders of Stonehenge stand silent, yet paradoxically, their mute testimony compels speculation as to their origin and purpose. What hands labored to stand them upright, and what desire drove those mysterious people to engage in such an incredible task? In my youth, I had read that Stonehenge was erected and used by Celtic Druids, and I envisioned strange moonlit rites being performed by darkly hooded figures. Perhaps over the span of millennia, there were such midnight rituals—most likely worse things transpired on that sacred ground, but whether or not the Druids used those circles of stones, they certainly did not create them. Carbon-dating of the site places the creation of the henge at a thousand years before the Celts arrived in Briton.

Why was it built? If you visit the site at midsummer and stand at the Alter

Stone looking East, you will see the sun rise almost directly above the Heel Stone. At midwinter, the sun sets between the gap of the two tallest trilithons. Obviously, Stonehenge was intended to marked the solstices, but beyond that, our collective speculations must fill the void left by millennia of silence.

In one of his novels, William Golding describes a rock on a beach as being “a token of preposterous time,” and I cannot think of Stonehenge without this quotation coming to mind. Excepting the pyramids at Giza, there are few other human structures on this planet for which the idea of preposterous time seems more appropriate. The enigmatic boulders of Stonehenge come to us from a lost past now written only by our imaginations, and no doubt they will carry through to a future that will hopefully transcend prediction. In the unlikely event that our civilization survives another two thousand years, Stonehenge will have borne witness to our entire tenure as a civilization.

Kenneth D. Reimer

“Child in the Garden”

“It’s just a nightmare.”

“Perhaps that’s true, but things are rarely just things. Sometimes a cigar is not a cigar.”

Ralph looked up sharply, more irritated than he should have been. “What?”

“Nothing. A psychologist joke.”

“I thought you were just a counsellor, not a psychologist. Isn’t that what you said that first day?”

“Yes, that is what I said.” A chill entered the woman’s voice. “Now, may we return to the matter at hand? You were describing your nightmare.”

Ralph shrugged, “What’s the point? It’s always the same. It’s been the same since before I started seeing you. Nothing ever changes.”

“You can’t believe that, or there’s no hope for these sessions.”

“No, I didn’t mean….” Ralph paused, momentarily confused. “I said the nightmare never changes; that doesn’t mean…. Oh, forget it.” God damn it. The sessions had begun to upset him as much as the nightmares did.

The counsellor waved her skinny hand. “Okay, never mind the dream.” She placed a strange emphasis on the word dream. “How are you functioning in your regular life? Have you experienced any flashbacks since last we spoke?”

“No. Things have been good.” Good, of course, is a relative term.

“How is your son?”

Ralph tensed. “I told you: He will not enter into these conversations.”

She shrugged in an unprofessional gesture of frustration. “And how do you expect progress when you place limitations on these discussions? You cannot compartmentalize your life and hope for reintegration.”

“Lady, if I didn’t put up barriers, I wouldn’t function at all. That’s how I survive. Jesus, have you looked around lately?”

Her eyes grew as frosty as her voice. She glanced perfunctorily at her watch then chilled him with an icicle stare. “I believe that’s quite enough for today. I trust you can see yourself out.”

Ralph chuckled as he got up to leave. At some level, he realized that his behaviour was self-destructive, but it always amused him to get under her skin. Had he reflected on it, he would have also realized that his jabs were a puerile, but successful attempt at avoidance. There were places that Ralph simply did not want her to take him. Whenever she probed too deeply, he twisted like a pig stuck with a spear.

Ralph stepped from the makeshift office building into the twilight city. The streets were charcoaled grey under a thin layer of ash, and he felt the immediate, familiar assault on his lungs. He wanted to turn back inside just to breathe the conditioned air, but Peterkin would be home already, and Ralph knew he should return to the projects. He also knew, however, that there was an occasional midweek rations shipment that came to the central city distribution depot, and he was desperately short on provisions. The centre was only a few blocks away, so he turned and set off in that direction.

The damp ash made the concrete slick, and Ralph adopted the walk/shuffle that had become ubiquitous on the city streets. Had there been any humour left in the world, people might have smiled thinly at the unlikely comedic-tragic succession of dead-eyed figures acting out the choreography of a macabre dance—zombies on Soho. Except, of course, there was no Soho anymore, and the new medium of dance was brimstone and fire. The falling curtain was ash. The encore would be lung cancer.

Not the South Pacific paradise I read about as a kid, Ralph thought, and a cascade of remembrances rained darkly in his mind. He shook his head, trying to dispel the destructive images. They plagued him so frequently, they had taken on the aspect of a ritual. Thank god he had Peterkin.

“Hi, chief,” the man at the distribution centre greeted Ralph. He did not know Ralph’s name, nor did Ralph know his. Hardly anyone used names anymore. Humanity had become an indistinct smudge of misery, and names rang false—no more than echoes of everything that had been traded away. So Ralph was always either “captain” or “chief,” two cheerful, non-specific monikers unwittingly applied by a man happy to have a work placement that allowed him to bring relief to others. The therapist helped Ralph wrestle with the demons of his mind; this man appeased the demon of his belly. That demon always returned, but at least when it was fed its silence was absolute. Ralph could almost forgive the man the use of the word “chief,” but that simple appellation negated the half-hour Ralph had just spent with his therapist.

The man knew why Ralph was there, why anyone came there; however, he followed the protocol of his own ritual—something only he understood. He smiled and waited for Ralph to ask.

“Anything come in?”

“Sorry, cap. The cupboard’s bare.” Yet there was a conspiratorial glint in his eyes, and Ralph understood that the cupboard wasn’t completely bare—there was food to be had, only it had not been issued by the provisional government. Occasionally, there was a certain black market meat that could be obtained provided one was willing to sell one’s soul.

Ralph disregarded the silent invitation, nodded and turned to leave, then he paused and glanced back. “Thanks.”

The man’s face brightened, “Maybe next time.” The smile was infectious, and despite his earlier machinations, Ralph found his lips tracing a grin as he walked away.

 

He had walked a block towards Peterkin when he heard a nightmare voice from behind him. “Ralph, is that you?” At first, he thought he was suffering another of his episodes, but no, this was real—still the realm of nightmare but real none-the-less.

Once he recognized the voice and discounted the possibility of delusion, Ralph’s first impulse was to walk faster—to flee. The ash underfoot, however, made that impossible, and he did not welcome the humiliation of falling.

Falling…. Not like…no, not like that. Ralph shivered.

He stopped and turned.

“It is you.” The man stopped as well. He was thin, emaciated. Not so tall. A far cry from the boy that Ralph had known, yet there was still something familiar in the eyes.

“Yes, it’s me,” Ralph said. “Where’s your other half?” Pain etched sudden, dramatic lines on the other’s face. Ralph let the question drop.

“How are you?” The absurdity of the question made Ralph laugh. How am I? He was alive; they were all alive—almost all.   Satan had shaken loose the bond of atoms, but he had failed in his final retribution. For the present, he had failed. And there was Peterkin. At the end of it, at the beginning of it, there was Peterkin.

The man on the street smiled uncertainly at Ralph’s response, so incongruous with his expectations.

Ralph extended his hand, and they shook. “All things considered,” he said, “I’m fine. I have a son.” Perhaps it was an odd thing to say, so suddenly, devoid of context, but Ralph knew why he had said it. His conversation with this man had to be predicated upon that declaration.

And, he reminded himself, the person before him was a man, not the boy he’d known so long ago. The sins of the child should not be laid upon the adult, even when the opposite was so terribly true.

“Do you have time for a coffee?”

Ralph was startled, but quickly recognized the anachronism. Obviously, neither one of them could afford a coffee. “Steamed weed?”

This time they both laughed. “Good for…,” the man began to reply, then paused as if waiting for someone to complete the common expression.

“…what mists you,” Ralph finished.

They found a nearby shop, ordered drinks then sat facing one another across a worn tabletop.

For a while, they rallied with small talk—news of the shattered world that struggled to rebuild itself and inevitably fell into the same instinctual modes of self-immolation. The Sydney Doctrine had been ratified, essentially outlawing the use of thermo-nuclear weapons, but everyone knew that genie would not be forced back into the bottle. The wars in Central America continued. The word of the week was that a fish had been caught off the coast of Refuge City, but no one really believed that story. Rumours upon rumours. All they knew for truth was how the ash continued to fall, and the sun had little warmth in it.

Soon, though, that shallow well of topics ran dry, and the two sat in uncomfortable silence. Into that emptiness, the past began to flow, seeping through the porous walls of memory.

Finally, Ralph asked a second time, “Where’s your twin?”

That same flash of pain. “He’s dead.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Ralph knew it was wrong to ask, but the niceties no longer seemed that important. “How’d he die?”

“Suicide.” The single word fell heavily between them.

Of course it was suicide. Ralph had become accustomed to the idea. But for Peterkin, he would have gone that route himself. He wondered how many of them from the island had taken that way out.

As if reading his thoughts, the single twin asked, “Have you heard of any of the others?”

Ralph grimaced. “Why would…?” he began and then caught himself. He had been asked “of” not “from.” Ralph sighed; he knew he had to let that anger go. That’s what the therapy was all about, but before he could surrender the anger, he had to identify its source: he needed someone to blame.

At first, it had been easy to hate the other boys from the island, but the more time pulled him from the tragedy, the more difficult it became to place blame on a group of children. He grew to pity them, and himself not most of all, for he had not been driven to do all that they had done. Not all.

He shook his head, “No.”

The twin leaned forward. “I’ve heard things. Here and there.” Ralph nodded, feeling numb. “The chief was murdered a few years ago. At least, that’s what I was told: stabbed to death in a bar. He got what he deserved.”

The chief. The image of a child laying broken in the surf rose unbidden to Ralph’s mind. He gasped. No one deserves that, or if one does then we all do. He glanced down at his hands. “What about…Roger?” he heard himself rasp.

The twin flinched, as if the name itself inflicted pain. “He’s in New Hydra.” There was more; Ralph sensed it. He waited. “He’s running a company—CEO or something.” It was obviously painful to say it. The other story had an element of poetic justice—evidence that the world was righting itself. Roger finding success was simply wrong, and Ralph knew he would have a difficult time dealing with the unexpected and unwelcome news.

Ralph studied the twin for a moment. Was this really an accidental meeting? he wondered. Is this why he stopped me? To tell me these things?

“What about you?” Ralph asked. “Are you living in the city?” That same flinch, and there came no answer. Ralph glanced around the room, noting how much darker the day had become. Including his companion, he sat in the company of ghosts.

It was time to go.

The twin sensed it too. There was nothing to be gained from this meeting—no shared memory of youthful joy that they could draw on, nothing to counterbalance the world as it was.

Time to go.

Ralph needed to see his son.

Their farewell was brief and without emotion. Ralph hurried out the shop and almost welcomed the leaden streets beyond.

 

The shuffle home took Ralph less time than usual. He was driven to distance himself from the twin and the other ghosts awakened by their short conversation. A single twin, he wondered, are there phantom pains when one twin dies? Does the sense of being incomplete ever fade? As much as Ralph felt a need to escape, he was compelled by a more intense desire to reach home: He needed Peterkin. He needed his son to bring colour back into his existence.

When he reached the projects, however, Peterkin was not home, and there was no note to explain his absence. Emptiness hang thickly in their tiny refuge. Their apartment was small—two cramped bedrooms, a bathroom, an open space that functioned as kitchen and living room. There was no place where they could sit at a table and eat, but there was rarely any food anyway.

What made this tiny space endurable was one window that overlooked the green area in the centre of the project complex. Ralph had deluded himself into believing that it was a garden, even though the few plants growing there were stunted and only just hovered on this side of subsistence. Still, it was a protected area where children could gather to play safely even after darkness had fallen. Ralph spent many hours by that window, staring past the shadow veil of grey and losing himself in the innocent pastimes of the children who gathered below.

Ralph rummaged a meagre meal, then carried the food to the threadbare couch positioned before the window. When he looked below, he almost immediately spotted Peterkin at the far end of the enclosure. He was with two other boys.

Ralph let his head drift forward so that the glass cooled his brow. Peterkin was smiling as he spoke with the other boys, both near his own age of eleven years. No, one boy looked younger and stood a little apart from the other two. Their clothes were smeared by the ubiquitous ash. They must have been rolling in it to get as filthy as they appeared.

Ralph signed, Peterkin was his panacea. Ralph clung to the innocence of the boy like a castaway fanning the embers of a dying fire. His breath caught in his throat. Peterkin was such a small, small boy—just a littlun—a wholly inadequate premise for the redemption of a species, but such was the role that Ralph had thrust upon him. There he was; boney, narrow shoulders standing as a bulwark against the essential nature of humanity.

Ralph drew a long, shaking breath and blew it out between tense lips. The window fogged momentarily, obscuring his vision of the boys.

He remembered the day that Ann told him she was pregnant. She had cried, and Ralph had burned with an anger he could not understand. She had wanted to abort the child—kill it in the womb, an attitude that further enraged Ralph. He hated her for being careless enough to bring an innocent into that world, yet, paradoxically, the thought of killing another innocent drove him into a fury. Her determination to abort fueled his determination to save the fetus. It was this that drove them apart. She was more than happy to leave him and the child.

Ralph shook his head, dispelling the memory. Years had passed. It was done, and he had Peterkin.

The boys in the garden played a game that Ralph did not recognize. His son had picked up a sharpened stick and was waving it about. A remembrance stirred in Ralph and forced him to suppress a shudder. That damned meeting with the twin….

What game was this? What kind of play could be found in such a world? Ralph set aside the plate of food and stared below, seized by a sudden apprehension of what he might see. He noticed that he had begun to wring his hands and forced them flat on his thighs. The question rose again: What kind of play could be found in such a world?

Then, as he watched, Peterkin said something harsh to the younger boy. The exclamation was followed by a sudden strike with the stick, and his son’s target was driven down. The attack seemed without provocation. The third boy began laughing, enjoying the pain masking the face of the victim on the ground.

Ralph jerked back from the window. There was a momentary tableau where Peterkin stood above the injured boy, the stick held at the end of a bony arm, poised to inflict another blow. There was no anger, no viciousness. Peterkin seemed intrigued. He was exerting control over another living creature, and the sense of power fascinated him. Ralph felt momentarily transfixed with terror.

Then he turned from the window, unwilling to watch the scene play out. All the colour had drained from his face. With movements of wooden hopelessness, he arose and went silently to his bedroom. He closed the door behind him and lay down. He turned his face toward the wall, his back to the garden.

And he waited.

 

A black rain began and drove the boys inside. It washed the ash from the leaves, coating them with an obsidian sheen. Peterkin found the apartment empty, and not caring enough to look in on his father, went to his own bed and the satisfaction of sleep.

Hours later, Ralph rose in the darkness and made his way to Peterkin’s room. It was cold. Frail, artificial light filtered in through a grimy window, casting a Rorschach test pattern of blotches on the sleeping boy. The walls in the tiny room were unadorned, but Peterkin had lately taken to sketching strange, hollow-eyes figures on the plaster.

Ralph squeezed beside his son on the bed and reached an arm across the boy’s shoulders. Despite his new resolve, tears began to blur Ralph’s eyes, and he was forced to smother a cry. Peterkin was really such a small boy. Ralph knew it had been unfair to place so much on so tiny a figure, yet there had been nothing else to cling to. Civilization lay in ruin, and all that remained was his earnest hope in the innocence of a child.

Then that play in the garden…. Their tormenting of that boy…. Had they been about to chant? Had Ralph perceived movement at the periphery of the garden? Something circling the boys, waiting for an opportunity? He had seen all this before, and he finally understood how he had deluded himself—how a desperate hope had blinded him to the truth. Peterkin was no salvation, he was just another one of them. No more. No less.

How could Ralph have brought such a child into such a world? Ann had been right. They should have aborted their son.

Ralph lay still for some time then. He knew what had to be done, but it was pity, not hope that stayed his hand.

It was also pity that compelled him.

The tears flowed freely now, eroding the sorrow until resolve was laid bare. Ralph lifted Peterkin’s pillow from beneath his head, gently, so as not to wake him, then he lowered it back down and pressed tightly.

The boy only struggled for a little while.

Outside, the rain continued to fall.

 

Kenneth D. Reimer

 

“Child in the Garden” – May 7, 2015

“It’s just a nightmare.”

“Perhaps that’s true, but things are rarely just things. Sometimes a cigar is not a cigar.”

Ralph looked up sharply, more irritated than he should have been. “What?”

“Nothing. A psychologist joke.”

“I thought you were just a counsellor, not a psychologist. Isn’t that what you said that first day?”

“Yes, that is what I said.” A chill entered the woman’s voice. “Now, may we return to the matter at hand? You were describing your nightmare.”

Ralph shrugged, “What’s the point? It’s always the same. It’s been the same since before I started seeing you. Nothing ever changes.”

“You can’t believe that, or there’s no hope for these sessions.”

“No, I didn’t mean….” Ralph paused, momentarily confused. “I said the nightmare never changes; that doesn’t mean…. Oh, forget it.” God damn it. The sessions had begun to upset him as much as the nightmares did.

The counsellor waved her skinny hand. “Okay, never mind the dream.” She placed a strange emphasis on the word dream. “How are you functioning in your regular life? Have you experienced any flashbacks since last we spoke?”

“No. Things have been good.” Good, of course, is a relative term.

“How is your son?”

Ralph tensed. “I told you: He will not enter into these conversations.”

She shrugged in an unprofessional gesture of frustration. “And how do you expect progress when you place limitations on these discussions? You cannot compartmentalize your life and hope for reintegration.”

“Lady, if I didn’t put up barriers, I wouldn’t function at all. That’s how I survive. Jesus, have you looked around lately?”

Her eyes grew as frosty as her voice. She glanced perfunctorily at her watch then chilled him with an icicle stare. “I believe that’s quite enough for today. I trust you can see yourself out.”

Ralph chuckled as he got up to leave. At some level, he realized that his behaviour was self-destructive, but it always amused him to get under her skin. Had he reflected on it, he would have also realized that his jabs were a puerile, but successful attempt at avoidance. There were places that Ralph simply did not want her to take him. Whenever she probed too deeply, he twisted like a pig stuck with a spear.

Ralph stepped from the makeshift office building into the twilight city. The streets were charcoaled grey under a thin layer of ash, and he felt the immediate, familiar assault on his lungs. He wanted to turn back inside just to breathe the conditioned air, but Peterkin would be home already, and Ralph knew he should return to the projects. He also knew, however, that there was an occasional midweek rations shipment that came to the central city distribution depot, and he was desperately short on provisions. The centre was only a few blocks away, so he turned and set off in that direction.

The damp ash made the concrete slick, and Ralph adopted the walk/shuffle that had become ubiquitous on the city streets. Had there been any humour left in the world, people might have smiled thinly at the unlikely comedic-tragic succession of dead-eyed figures acting out the choreography of a macabre dance—zombies on Soho. Except, of course, there was no Soho anymore, and the new medium of dance was brimstone and fire. The falling curtain was ash. The encore would be lung cancer.

Not the South Pacific paradise I read about as a kid, Ralph thought, and a cascade of remembrances rained darkly in his mind. He shook his head, trying to dispel the destructive images. They plagued him so frequently, they had taken on the aspect of a ritual. Thank god he had Peterkin.

“Hi, chief,” the man at the distribution centre greeted Ralph. He did not know Ralph’s name, nor did Ralph know his. Hardly anyone used names anymore. Humanity had become an indistinct smudge of misery, and names rang false—no more than echoes of everything that had been traded away. So Ralph was always either “captain” or “chief,” two cheerful, non-specific monikers unwittingly applied by a man happy to have a work placement that allowed him to bring relief to others. The therapist helped Ralph wrestle with the demons of his mind; this man appeased the demon of his belly. That demon always returned, but at least when it was fed its silence was absolute. Ralph could almost forgive the man the use of the word “chief,” but that simple appellation negated the half-hour Ralph had just spent with his therapist.

The man knew why Ralph was there, why anyone came there; however, he followed the protocol of his own ritual—something only he understood. He smiled and waited for Ralph to ask.

“Anything come in?”

“Sorry, cap. The cupboard’s bare.” Yet there was a conspiratorial glint in his eyes, and Ralph understood that the cupboard wasn’t completely bare—there was food to be had, only it had not been issued by the provisional government. Occasionally, there was a certain black market meat that could be obtained provided one was willing to sell one’s soul.

Ralph disregarded the silent invitation, nodded and turned to leave, then he paused and glanced back. “Thanks.”

The man’s face brightened, “Maybe next time.” The smile was infectious, and despite his earlier machinations, Ralph found his lips tracing a grin as he walked away.

 

He had walked a block towards Peterkin when he heard a nightmare voice from behind him. “Ralph, is that you?” At first, he thought he was suffering another of his episodes, but no, this was real—still the realm of nightmare but real none-the-less.

Once he recognized the voice and discounted the possibility of delusion, Ralph’s first impulse was to walk faster—to flee. The ash underfoot, however, made that impossible, and he did not welcome the humiliation of falling.

Falling…. Not like…no, not like that. Ralph shivered.

He stopped and turned.

“It is you.” The man stopped as well. He was thin, emaciated. Not so tall. A far cry from the boy that Ralph had known, yet there was still something familiar in the eyes.

“Yes, it’s me,” Ralph said. “Where’s your other half?” Pain etched sudden, dramatic lines on the other’s face. Ralph let the question drop.

“How are you?” The absurdity of the question made Ralph laugh. How am I? He was alive; they were all alive—almost all.   Satan had shaken loose the bond of atoms, but he had failed in his final retribution. For the present, he had failed. And there was Peterkin. At the end of it, at the beginning of it, there was Peterkin.

The man on the street smiled uncertainly at Ralph’s response, so incongruous with his expectations.

Ralph extended his hand, and they shook. “All things considered,” he said, “I’m fine. I have a son.” Perhaps it was an odd thing to say, so suddenly, devoid of context, but Ralph knew why he had said it. His conversation with this man had to be predicated upon that declaration.

And, he reminded himself, the person before him was a man, not the boy he’d known so long ago. The sins of the child should not be laid upon the adult, even when the opposite was so terribly true.

“Do you have time for a coffee?”

Ralph was startled, but quickly recognized the anachronism. Obviously, neither one of them could afford a coffee. “Steamed weed?”

This time they both laughed. “Good for…,” the man began to reply, then paused as if waiting for someone to complete the common expression.

“…what mists you,” Ralph finished.

They found a nearby shop, ordered drinks then sat facing one another across a worn tabletop.

For a while, they rallied with small talk—news of the shattered world that struggled to rebuild itself and inevitably fell into the same instinctual modes of self-immolation. The Sydney Doctrine had been ratified, essentially outlawing the use of thermo-nuclear weapons, but everyone knew that genie would not be forced back into the bottle. The wars in Central America continued. The word of the week was that a fish had been caught off the coast of Refuge City, but no one really believed that story. Rumours upon rumours. All they knew for truth was how the ash continued to fall, and the sun had little warmth in it.

Soon, though, that shallow well of topics ran dry, and the two sat in uncomfortable silence. Into that emptiness, the past began to flow, seeping through the porous walls of memory.

Finally, Ralph asked a second time, “Where’s your twin?”

That same flash of pain. “He’s dead.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Ralph knew it was wrong to ask, but the niceties no longer seemed that important. “How’d he die?”

“Suicide.” The single word fell heavily between them.

Of course it was suicide. Ralph had become accustomed to the idea. But for Peterkin, he would have gone that route himself. He wondered how many of them from the island had taken that way out.

As if reading his thoughts, the single twin asked, “Have you heard of any of the others?”

Ralph grimaced. “Why would…?” he began and then caught himself. He had been asked “of” not “from.” Ralph sighed; he knew he had to let that anger go. That’s what the therapy was all about, but before he could surrender the anger, he had to identify its source: he needed someone to blame.

At first, it had been easy to hate the other boys from the island, but the more time pulled him from the tragedy, the more difficult it became to place blame on a group of children. He grew to pity them, and himself not most of all, for he had not been driven to do all that they had done. Not all.

He shook his head, “No.”

The twin leaned forward. “I’ve heard things. Here and there.” Ralph nodded, feeling numb. “The chief was murdered a few years ago. At least, that’s what I was told: stabbed to death in a bar. He got what he deserved.”

The chief. The image of a child laying broken in the surf rose unbidden to Ralph’s mind. He gasped. No one deserves that, or if one does then we all do. He glanced down at his hands. “What about…Roger?” he heard himself rasp.

The twin flinched, as if the name itself inflicted pain. “He’s in New Hydra.” There was more; Ralph sensed it. He waited. “He’s running a company—CEO or something.” It was obviously painful to say it. The other story had an element of poetic justice—evidence that the world was righting itself. Roger finding success was simply wrong, and Ralph knew he would have a difficult time dealing with the unexpected and unwelcome news.

Ralph studied the twin for a moment. Was this really an accidental meeting? he wondered. Is this why he stopped me? To tell me these things?

“What about you?” Ralph asked. “Are you living in the city?” That same flinch, and there came no answer. Ralph glanced around the room, noting how much darker the day had become. Including his companion, he sat in the company of ghosts.

It was time to go.

The twin sensed it too. There was nothing to be gained from this meeting—no shared memory of youthful joy that they could draw on, nothing to counterbalance the world as it was.

Time to go.

Ralph needed to see his son.

Their farewell was brief and without emotion. Ralph hurried out the shop and almost welcomed the leaden streets beyond.

 

The shuffle home took Ralph less time than usual. He was driven to distance himself from the twin and the other ghosts awakened by their short conversation. A single twin, he wondered, are there phantom pains when one twin dies? Does the sense of being incomplete ever fade? As much as Ralph felt a need to escape, he was compelled by a more intense desire to reach home: He needed Peterkin. He needed his son to bring colour back into his existence.

When he reached the projects, however, Peterkin was not home, and there was no note to explain his absence. Emptiness hang thickly in their tiny refuge. Their apartment was small—two cramped bedrooms, a bathroom, an open space that functioned as kitchen and living room. There was no place where they could sit at a table and eat, but there was rarely any food anyway.

What made this tiny space endurable was one window that overlooked the green area in the centre of the project complex. Ralph had deluded himself into believing that it was a garden, even though the few plants growing there were stunted and only just hovered on this side of subsistence. Still, it was a protected area where children could gather to play safely even after darkness had fallen. Ralph spent many hours by that window, staring past the shadow veil of grey and losing himself in the innocent pastimes of the children who gathered below.

Ralph rummaged a meagre meal, then carried the food to the threadbare couch positioned before the window. When he looked below, he almost immediately spotted Peterkin at the far end of the enclosure. He was with two other boys.

Ralph let his head drift forward so that the glass cooled his brow. Peterkin was smiling as he spoke with the other boys, both near his own age of eleven years. No, one boy looked younger and stood a little apart from the other two. Their clothes were smeared by the ubiquitous ash. They must have been rolling in it to get as filthy as they appeared.

Ralph signed, Peterkin was his panacea. Ralph clung to the innocence of the boy like a castaway fanning the embers of a dying fire. His breath caught in his throat. Peterkin was such a small, small boy—just a littlun—a wholly inadequate premise for the redemption of a species, but such was the role that Ralph had thrust upon him. There he was; boney, narrow shoulders standing as a bulwark against the essential nature of humanity.

Ralph drew a long, shaking breath and blew it out between tense lips. The window fogged momentarily, obscuring his vision of the boys.

He remembered the day that Ann told him she was pregnant. She had cried, and Ralph had burned with an anger he could not understand. She had wanted to abort the child—kill it in the womb, an attitude that further enraged Ralph. He hated her for being careless enough to bring an innocent into that world, yet, paradoxically, the thought of killing another innocent drove him into a fury. Her determination to abort fueled his determination to save the fetus. It was this that drove them apart. She was more than happy to leave him and the child.

Ralph shook his head, dispelling the memory. Years had passed. It was done, and he had Peterkin.

The boys in the garden played a game that Ralph did not recognize. His son had picked up a sharpened stick and was waving it about. A remembrance stirred in Ralph and forced him to suppress a shudder. That damned meeting with the twin….

What game was this? What kind of play could be found in such a world? Ralph set aside the plate of food and stared below, seized by a sudden apprehension of what he might see. He noticed that he had begun to wring his hands and forced them flat on his thighs. The question rose again: What kind of play could be found in such a world?

Then, as he watched, Peterkin said something harsh to the younger boy. The exclamation was followed by a sudden strike with the stick, and his son’s target was driven down. The attack seemed without provocation. The third boy began laughing, enjoying the pain masking the face of the victim on the ground.

Ralph jerked back from the window. There was a momentary tableau where Peterkin stood above the injured boy, the stick held at the end of a bony arm, poised to inflict another blow. There was no anger, no viciousness. Peterkin seemed intrigued. He was exerting control over another living creature, and the sense of power fascinated him. Ralph felt momentarily transfixed with terror.

Then he turned from the window, unwilling to watch the scene play out. All the colour had drained from his face. With movements of wooden hopelessness, he arose and went silently to his bedroom. He closed the door behind him and lay down. He turned his face toward the wall, his back to the garden.

And he waited.

 

A black rain began and drove the boys inside. It washed the ash from the leaves, coating them with an obsidian sheen. Peterkin found the apartment empty, and not caring enough to look in on his father, went to his own bed and the satisfaction of sleep.

Hours later, Ralph rose in the darkness and made his way to Peterkin’s room. It was cold. Frail, artificial light filtered in through a grimy window, casting a Rorschach test pattern of blotches on the sleeping boy. The walls in the tiny room were unadorned, but Peterkin had lately taken to sketching strange, hollow-eyes figures on the plaster.

Ralph squeezed beside his son on the bed and reached an arm across the boy’s shoulders. Despite his new resolve, tears began to blur Ralph’s eyes, and he was forced to smother a cry. Peterkin was really such a small boy. Ralph knew it had been unfair to place so much on so tiny a figure, yet there had been nothing else to cling to. Civilization lay in ruin, and all that remained was his earnest hope in the innocence of a child.

Then that play in the garden…. Their tormenting of that boy…. Had they been about to chant? Had Ralph perceived movement at the periphery of the garden? Something circling the boys, waiting for an opportunity? He had seen all this before, and he finally understood how he had deluded himself—how a desperate hope had blinded him to the truth. Peterkin was no salvation, he was just another one of them. No more. No less.

How could Ralph have brought such a child into such a world? Ann had been right. They should have aborted their son.

Ralph lay still for some time then. He knew what had to be done, but it was pity, not hope that stayed his hand.

It was also pity that compelled him.

The tears flowed freely now, eroding the sorrow until resolve was laid bare. Ralph lifted Peterkin’s pillow from beneath his head, gently, so as not to wake him, then he lowered it back down and pressed tightly.

The boy only struggled for a little while.

Outside, the rain continued to fall.

 

Kenneth D. Reimer

 

"The Pride" - A Visual Poem

“Yamnuska: Climbing the Severed Mountain”

John’s disembodied voice drifts down from the cliff above, and he cautions me that this next section of the climb is “delicate.” With his English accent, it sounds like he’s commenting on scones during teatime, but his use of the term engenders a sense of dread. I know that it shouldn’t—delicate is normally reserved for such things as the aroma of a fine wine or the caress of a lover. As I cling to the vertical face on the southern side of Yamnuska Mountain, however, “delicate” stirs apprehension.

I lean back from the rock and glance down between my toes. Below, a few hundred feet of empty air end abruptly at the base of the cliff. How long does it take to fall such a distance? Do you have time to think, or is it just a sudden rush and splat? Maybe a crunch? Does your life flash before your eyes? Probably not, by the time your brain registers the disaster, you have already reached terminal velocity. In this case, terminal velocity is when you stop moving altogether.

Of course, I’m not going to fall. My feet, compressed into climbing boots so tight they would make a Lilliputian grimace, are firmly balanced on outcroppings of stone, and my fingers clutch generous handholds. From the harness girdling my waist, a stretch of rope winds across the rock then twists upward and connects me to the invisible John, who has me on belay at the top of the cliff. The rope passes through an anchor that is hammered into the mountain. It’s bombproof. I’ll need it if I fall, but I’m not going to fall.

Then again, the next section of the route is “delicate,” so perhaps I should not feel quite so secure.

Earlier, John described a different stretch of the climb as “interesting.” Naively, I had thought this was good: after all, I appreciate interesting things. Well, that minor crucible had my fingers trembling, forearms aching, calves cramping, and eyes stinging with sweat. Now, forty minutes later, John’s seemingly innocuous pronouncement fills me with dread. My mother was English, so I am familiar with British understatement, and it’s obvious that John is a practitioner of this rhetorical art. I imagine him emerging from a WWII bomb shelter, brushing the dust from his clothing and observing that the night had been “interesting.” I can’t imagine how bad “delicate” might be.

I lift my eyes from the void and focus on the cliff just inches from my nose. It’s good rock—solid, dry, lots of places for feet and hands, really quite gentle for a novice climber like myself. The south side of Yamnuska is a vertical face of rock, but Gollum’s Grooves—the route I am climbing, is much easier than it looks.

To be truthful, however, at the moment, I’m not climbing Gollum’s Grooves; I’m stalling Gollum’s Grooves.

I glance right and left, seeing the two arms of the Bow Valley reach from sunrise to sunset. I can scarcely imagine a panorama of more striking contrast. Westward, the Rockies thrust ruggedly up past the horizon. Even in midsummer, some peaks are crusted with snow. To the East, the land drops away to open prairie that distance smudges into a haze. I cannot see it, but I know that Calgary lies in that direction—Calgary where people are sitting in pubs, drinking pints of Traditional Ale, appreciating the “delicate” bouquet of the beer and having “interesting” conversations. I want to be there

But first, I have to get up Gollum’s Grooves.

It was not supposed to be like this. My reason for coming to Calgary was to visit my friends Peter and Shannon and imbibe in just such a pub. I had no intention of trying my hand (or I should say, hands . . . and feet) at rock climbing, but I think Peter had other plans. He told me, innocently enough, that we had been invited to join some friends on a scramble up the back side of Mount Yamnuska (locals refer to it as Yam), which has a moderate slope and a breathtaking view.

Yamnuska is iconic. It sits just north of the Trans-Canada Highway on the eastern edge of the Rockies and intrigues passersby with an unbroken, nearly five hundred foot face of bright stone. If a giant had taken axe to rock and cleft a mountain, then taken one half away, the result would be Yam—a severed mountain. How cool to hike up to that summit.

Yamnuska also boasts one of the longest scree runs in the Canadian Rockies. Scree is the loose rock that often lies heaped at the base of cliffs. When you hike up a mountain, it’s terrible, and you lose six inches of every foot you gain. Coming down, however, it’s glorious. With deep scree, it is possible to run down a mountainside in long, leaping strides where the rock gives way like soft snow. An hour-long ascent becomes a ten minute descent, and at the base of Yam there is an almost unparalleled run of perfect scree.

I could not resist such an invitation, and the next morning a small group of us drove out for the hike. When the sunlit face of Yam rose into view, Peter’s friend, John, suggested that we climb the front instead of hiking the back slope. I observed regretfully that I did not have my climbing shoes with me. (I didn’t even own a pair.) Nor did I possess sufficient courage or a death-wish. I thought I had slipped the noose, but after we pulled off the highway, John reached into the back of his van and drew out a weathered bag dusted white with climbing chalk. He unzipped it to reveal a half dozen climbing shoes that he kept as extras. Peter smiled innocently.

The summer sun is baking my back, and my energy is beginning to flag. Above, the cliff cuts sheer through the air; below, the face falls clear away. Ahead of me is the horizontal section that John has deemed “delicate.” This is a traverse, and instead of climbing up, I must now move across. Where I need to go, the rock forms an oddly rounded shelf that protrudes like the brow-plate of a Neanderthal, and when I study it, I quickly realize that there is nowhere to put my feet. It’s just a short span of rock, perhaps two metres, but the shelf thrusts into open air, and there is nowhere to put my feet.

I stare hard at the ledge, hoping some unobservable feature will manifest itself, yet my scrutiny produces no magical transformation of stone. What I see is all that Yam is going to give me. My hesitation is holding up the rest of the group, and I can stall no longer. I have to accept that there is nothing for it but to forge ahead and get past his ridiculously tiny part of the mountain.

I concentrate on my breathing and attempt to gather my tattered thoughts. Inhale deeply, exhale slowly, smooth out the shakes. Focus. Go forward. Go forward.

Bracing myself, I surrender my right handhold and extend a trembling limb out onto the curved ledge. This surrender takes some convincing: I am loath to give up the security, yet except for the sweat streaming down my forearms, the ledge is dry and purchase is good. The surface is rough enough that I will not slip. I point my fingers down toward the base of the cliff, and my weight rests almost entirely on my palm.

Time to commit. I shift my weigh forward a little, then loosen my grip on the mountainside and lower my other hand to splay upon the ledge. Terror constricts my breath and tightens my movements. Both hands are now planted. I take as steady and deep a breath as I am able, then I shift my upper torso above my arms and let my legs swing free. My climbing shoes hang above nothing but empty space.

Good god.

 All in all, it’s a delicate situation.

Now that I am on the ledge, my only desire is to get across it. Up until this moment, when I have released one hand to reach higher up the mountain, my other hand and two feet have felt secure on the face—I have never had less than three points of contact on stone. Now, I have only two. My most powerful limbs hang uselessly, and I have no real handholds. My weight presses me onto the ledge, and it is gravity that holds me in place. Ironically, the force of nature I have been fighting all day is now my ally.

I quickly conclude the only way to proceed is to adopt a kind of stiff-armed shuffle across the traverse. I lean slightly to my left, and as my shoulders teeter off centre, I jerk my right hand an inch forward. It’s not much, but it is progress, and I really don’t have far to go. At least, I don’t have far to go horizontally. I refuse to let myself consider any other direction. I am fervently thankful for the rope and the piton hammered into rock at the top of the cliff above.

What develops next is a sequence of ungainly lurches. I sway, jerk, balance, sway, jerk, balance, breathe raggedly, and then begin anew. I move forward awkwardly, one hand at a time, progressing at a snail’s pace.

In such moments of concentration, time and space compress into the now and the here, and the world beyond my reach is without consequence. The magnificent panorama of Bow Valley, my now erstwhile friend Peter, the day that has been, and the day that is to come—all are banished from thought. My world has narrowed to the minute details of my existence on the ledge: the cool texture of the rock, the weight on my palms, the pain in my elbows, my breath, and the need to move forward. There is nothing else.

Sway, jerk, balance, sway, jerk, balance, catch a ragged breath.

Delicate my ass.

 And then, abruptly, I’ve reached the other side. I’m across.

My right foot finds purchase on a tiny ridge. Just before me there is an obvious handhold. Slowly, carefully, so carefully with my shifting centre of gravity, I reach for it . . . .

The moment ends. The world expands once again.

Within seconds, I am back on the face—four points of contact glue me to Yamnuska. Relief comes in deep, satisfying gulps of pure mountain air, and the adrenalin quickly flushes from my cells. The realization that I am past the traverse has me shaking my head and grinning. When I look up to study the next segment of the climb, the grin cracks into a smile. Immediately above, the cliff begins to slope, and what was once a wall of stone, is now curtained by blue sky. I cannot see John, but I know he is only a short distance away. It’s almost over.

As I ascend the last easy stretch, the rock bends back down toward the horizon and a small chimney offers welcome refuge. When I finally see John, I’m stunned. The bombproof belay that had bulwarked my fragile confidence does not exist. John stands braced against the chimney wall with legs spread and knees bent; he grips the rope on each side and slowly feeds it across his lower back. The rope that I thought was clipped to a piton is pressed between his back and the mountain. That’s it. I outweigh John by eighty pounds. I would have pulled him off Yam like a grizzly swatting a marmot from a boulder.

Within seconds, however, it no longer matters. I scramble out of Gollum’s Groves, and I’m off the face. The complex emotions that assaulted me on the climb quickly dissipate in the open air and stunning view. I stretch my cramped muscles and shake out the vestiges of anxiety.

In measured intervals, the remaining members of our group scramble up to join us. I see no remnants of soul-shattering terror in their eyes. Experienced climbers all, they have appreciated the exercise and thoroughly enjoyed what for them was an easy route. Gollum’s Groves tops out only partway up the shoulder of Yamnuska, and the summit is still nearly a hundred feet above. We won’t be going up there today; it’s enough just to lean over the edge of the cliff and gaze straight down to the earth below.

Our trail off the mountain does not take us past the fabled scree run, and the day has grown too long to allow such a detour. Yet I am not done with Yam: I intend to return and after another ascent, I’ll take those wild strides down that scree. I also know that I will never again drive past the severed mountain without studying its face and seeking out Gollum’s Groves—my first and most memorable introduction to the dichotomy of rock and sky.

Kenneth D. Reimer

 

“Yamnuska: Climbing the Severed Mountain” – April 29, 2015

John’s disembodied voice drifts down from the cliff above, and he cautions me that this next section of the climb is “delicate.” With his English accent, it sounds like he’s commenting on scones during teatime, but his use of the term engenders a sense of dread. I know that it shouldn’t—delicate is normally reserved for such things as the aroma of a fine wine or the caress of a lover. As I cling to the vertical face on the southern side of Yamnuska Mountain, however, “delicate” stirs apprehension.

I lean back from the rock and glance down between my toes. Below, a few hundred feet of empty air end abruptly at the base of the cliff. How long does it take to fall such a distance? Do you have time to think, or is it just a sudden rush and splat? Maybe a crunch? Does your life flash before your eyes? Probably not, by the time your brain registers the disaster, you have already reached terminal velocity. In this case, terminal velocity is when you stop moving altogether.

Of course, I’m not going to fall. My feet, compressed into climbing boots so tight they would make a Lilliputian grimace, are firmly balanced on outcroppings of stone, and my fingers clutch generous handholds. From the harness girdling my waist, a stretch of rope winds across the rock then twists upward and connects me to the invisible John, who has me on belay at the top of the cliff. The rope passes through an anchor that is hammered into the mountain. It’s bombproof. I’ll need it if I fall, but I’m not going to fall.

Then again, the next section of the route is “delicate,” so perhaps I should not feel quite so secure.

Earlier, John described a different stretch of the climb as “interesting.” Naively, I had thought this was good: after all, I appreciate interesting things. Well, that minor crucible had my fingers trembling, forearms aching, calves cramping, and eyes stinging with sweat. Now, forty minutes later, John’s seemingly innocuous pronouncement fills me with dread. My mother was English, so I am familiar with British understatement, and it’s obvious that John is a practitioner of this rhetorical art. I imagine him emerging from a WWII bomb shelter, brushing the dust from his clothing and observing that the night had been “interesting.” I can’t imagine how bad “delicate” might be.

I lift my eyes from the void and focus on the cliff just inches from my nose. It’s good rock—solid, dry, lots of places for feet and hands, really quite gentle for a novice climber like myself. The south side of Yamnuska is a vertical face of rock, but Gollum’s Grooves—the route I am climbing, is much easier than it looks.

To be truthful, however, at the moment, I’m not climbing Gollum’s Grooves; I’m stalling Gollum’s Grooves.

I glance right and left, seeing the two arms of the Bow Valley reach from sunrise to sunset. I can scarcely imagine a panorama of more striking contrast. Westward, the Rockies thrust ruggedly up past the horizon. Even in midsummer, some peaks are crusted with snow. To the East, the land drops away to open prairie that distance smudges into a haze. I cannot see it, but I know that Calgary lies in that direction—Calgary where people are sitting in pubs, drinking pints of Traditional Ale, appreciating the “delicate” bouquet of the beer and having “interesting” conversations. I want to be there

But first, I have to get up Gollum’s Grooves.

It was not supposed to be like this. My reason for coming to Calgary was to visit my friends Peter and Shannon and imbibe in just such a pub. I had no intention of trying my hand (or I should say, hands . . . and feet) at rock climbing, but I think Peter had other plans. He told me, innocently enough, that we had been invited to join some friends on a scramble up the back side of Mount Yamnuska (locals refer to it as Yam), which has a moderate slope and a breathtaking view.

Yamnuska is iconic. It sits just north of the Trans-Canada Highway on the eastern edge of the Rockies and intrigues passersby with an unbroken, nearly five hundred foot face of bright stone. If a giant had taken axe to rock and cleft a mountain, then taken one half away, the result would be Yam—a severed mountain. How cool to hike up to that summit.

Yamnuska also boasts one of the longest scree runs in the Canadian Rockies. Scree is the loose rock that often lies heaped at the base of cliffs. When you hike up a mountain, it’s terrible, and you lose six inches of every foot you gain. Coming down, however, it’s glorious. With deep scree, it is possible to run down a mountainside in long, leaping strides where the rock gives way like soft snow. An hour-long ascent becomes a ten minute descent, and at the base of Yam there is an almost unparalleled run of perfect scree.

I could not resist such an invitation, and the next morning a small group of us drove out for the hike. When the sunlit face of Yam rose into view, Peter’s friend, John, suggested that we climb the front instead of hiking the back slope. I observed regretfully that I did not have my climbing shoes with me. (I didn’t even own a pair.) Nor did I possess sufficient courage or a death-wish. I thought I had slipped the noose, but after we pulled off the highway, John reached into the back of his van and drew out a weathered bag dusted white with climbing chalk. He unzipped it to reveal a half dozen climbing shoes that he kept as extras. Peter smiled innocently.

The summer sun is baking my back, and my energy is beginning to flag. Above, the cliff cuts sheer through the air; below, the face falls clear away. Ahead of me is the horizontal section that John has deemed “delicate.” This is a traverse, and instead of climbing up, I must now move across. Where I need to go, the rock forms an oddly rounded shelf that protrudes like the brow-plate of a Neanderthal, and when I study it, I quickly realize that there is nowhere to put my feet. It’s just a short span of rock, perhaps two metres, but the shelf thrusts into open air, and there is nowhere to put my feet.

I stare hard at the ledge, hoping some unobservable feature will manifest itself, yet my scrutiny produces no magical transformation of stone. What I see is all that Yam is going to give me. My hesitation is holding up the rest of the group, and I can stall no longer. I have to accept that there is nothing for it but to forge ahead and get past his ridiculously tiny part of the mountain.

I concentrate on my breathing and attempt to gather my tattered thoughts. Inhale deeply, exhale slowly, smooth out the shakes. Focus. Go forward. Go forward.

Bracing myself, I surrender my right handhold and extend a trembling limb out onto the curved ledge. This surrender takes some convincing: I am loath to give up the security, yet except for the sweat streaming down my forearms, the ledge is dry and purchase is good. The surface is rough enough that I will not slip. I point my fingers down toward the base of the cliff, and my weight rests almost entirely on my palm.

Time to commit. I shift my weigh forward a little, then loosen my grip on the mountainside and lower my other hand to splay upon the ledge. Terror constricts my breath and tightens my movements. Both hands are now planted. I take as steady and deep a breath as I am able, then I shift my upper torso above my arms and let my legs swing free. My climbing shoes hang above nothing but empty space.

Good god.

 All in all, it’s a delicate situation.

Now that I am on the ledge, my only desire is to get across it. Up until this moment, when I have released one hand to reach higher up the mountain, my other hand and two feet have felt secure on the face—I have never had less than three points of contact on stone. Now, I have only two. My most powerful limbs hang uselessly, and I have no real handholds. My weight presses me onto the ledge, and it is gravity that holds me in place. Ironically, the force of nature I have been fighting all day is now my ally.

I quickly conclude the only way to proceed is to adopt a kind of stiff-armed shuffle across the traverse. I lean slightly to my left, and as my shoulders teeter off centre, I jerk my right hand an inch forward. It’s not much, but it is progress, and I really don’t have far to go. At least, I don’t have far to go horizontally. I refuse to let myself consider any other direction. I am fervently thankful for the rope and the piton hammered into rock at the top of the cliff above.

What develops next is a sequence of ungainly lurches. I sway, jerk, balance, sway, jerk, balance, breathe raggedly, and then begin anew. I move forward awkwardly, one hand at a time, progressing at a snail’s pace.

In such moments of concentration, time and space compress into the now and the here, and the world beyond my reach is without consequence. The magnificent panorama of Bow Valley, my now erstwhile friend Peter, the day that has been, and the day that is to come—all are banished from thought. My world has narrowed to the minute details of my existence on the ledge: the cool texture of the rock, the weight on my palms, the pain in my elbows, my breath, and the need to move forward. There is nothing else.

Sway, jerk, balance, sway, jerk, balance, catch a ragged breath.

Delicate my ass.

 And then, abruptly, I’ve reached the other side. I’m across.

My right foot finds purchase on a tiny ridge. Just before me there is an obvious handhold. Slowly, carefully, so carefully with my shifting centre of gravity, I reach for it . . . .

The moment ends. The world expands once again.

Within seconds, I am back on the face—four points of contact glue me to Yamnuska. Relief comes in deep, satisfying gulps of pure mountain air, and the adrenalin quickly flushes from my cells. The realization that I am past the traverse has me shaking my head and grinning. When I look up to study the next segment of the climb, the grin cracks into a smile. Immediately above, the cliff begins to slope, and what was once a wall of stone, is now curtained by blue sky. I cannot see John, but I know he is only a short distance away. It’s almost over.

As I ascend the last easy stretch, the rock bends back down toward the horizon and a small chimney offers welcome refuge. When I finally see John, I’m stunned. The bombproof belay that had bulwarked my fragile confidence does not exist. John stands braced against the chimney wall with legs spread and knees bent; he grips the rope on each side and slowly feeds it across his lower back. The rope that I thought was clipped to a piton is pressed between his back and the mountain. That’s it. I outweigh John by eighty pounds. I would have pulled him off Yam like a grizzly swatting a marmot from a boulder.

Within seconds, however, it no longer matters. I scramble out of Gollum’s Groves, and I’m off the face. The complex emotions that assaulted me on the climb quickly dissipate in the open air and stunning view. I stretch my cramped muscles and shake out the vestiges of anxiety.

In measured intervals, the remaining members of our group scramble up to join us. I see no remnants of soul-shattering terror in their eyes. Experienced climbers all, they have appreciated the exercise and thoroughly enjoyed what for them was an easy route. Gollum’s Groves tops out only partway up the shoulder of Yamnuska, and the summit is still nearly a hundred feet above. We won’t be going up there today; it’s enough just to lean over the edge of the cliff and gaze straight down to the earth below.

Our trail off the mountain does not take us past the fabled scree run, and the day has grown too long to allow such a detour. Yet I am not done with Yam: I intend to return and after another ascent, I’ll take those wild strides down that scree. I also know that I will never again drive past the severed mountain without studying its face and seeking out Gollum’s Groves—my first and most memorable introduction to the dichotomy of rock and sky.

Kenneth D. Reimer

 

“The Killers” a visual poem

This short video combines a poem and some photographs relating to a shark dive that I experienced in the Caribbean, just off the coast of Saint Martin.

“The Killers” a visual poem – February 12, 2015

This short video combines a poem and some photographs relating to a shark dive that I experienced in the Caribbean, just off the coast of Saint Martin.

“The Stones of Ilium”

I stood before the gates of Troy and called out to those heroes of old: “Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Hector….” To be on that storied ground, to tread the same earth once pressed by their sandals, thrilled me, and as I spoke their names, I could feel the rush of adrenalin. Before me, the once great city lay in ruin, brought down by time and fate, but my imagination told hold of those scattered stone, lifted them into a whirlwind, and before my eyes, the city rose anew. Spiraling back through time, age by age, block by block, higher and higher, the ancient walls reclaimed their former glory, once again standing lofty and impenetrable. Was that the faint clash of arms echoing on the plain? Did ghostly figures waver at the fringes of my vision?

The Eastern Gate of Ilium

Most of what we know regarding the Trojan war is detailed Homer’s epic poem: The Iliad, thought to have been composed in the eighth century B.C. Different versions of the epic have sat on successive bookshelves of mine since I could first afford my own copy. That ragged, dog-eared, second-hand volume was replaced by more expensive editions until a hardcover copy that I had given my father came back to me after he died.

It is difficult to articulate what it meant to be at that place. Troy, or Ilium—its ancient name—has been an influence in my life since the beginning of memory. Its story is one of the most celebrated in Western culture. An epic battle in an age where men and women strove with gods, how could such a tale ever fail to inspire us? Over three thousand years after the Ilium fell, contemporary artists still feel compelled to bring it to life. It had taken me several hours of driving to reach the ancient city, but my true journey to Ilium began years before.

The route that led me to those ruined gates was a circuitous one. On my first trip to Greece, I ventured to the island of Ios, where Homer’s remains are purported to be interred. Did he actually spend his last days on that barren rock with its great beaches and inexpensive beer? No one knows, but it is fitting that his resting place is as blurred with reality and myth as is his greatest poem.

As recounted in the mythology, the impetus for the ten-year war was the kidnapping of Helen by Paris, one of the princes of Ilium. Paris was smitten by Helen’s unparalleled beauty, but he would have been wise to anticipate her husband’s unparalleled wrath. Helen was married to Menelaus, the ruler of Sparta and the brother to Agamemnon, the Greek king of kings. In answer to this horrific insult to his brother’s pride, Agamemnon amassed a mighty armada that set sail to Ilium and laid siege on the city. As a result, Paris was indeed “smitten,” as were all those doomed souls who lived within the walls of Ilium.

The end of the war is never described in The Iliad; we learn of the city’s fate in later tales. The story of its fall, however, is so ubiquitous in Western culture that nearly everyone is familiar with some variation of its mythological conclusion. The wily Odysseus, king of Ithaca, devises a stratagem in which the Greek army feigns defeat and, as a tribute to the Trojans, leaves behind a gigantic wooden statue of a horse. (Ironically, the so-called Trojan horse was actually a Greek creation.) The Trojans take the statue into the city. After nightfall, the warriors hiding within the horse’s belly creep forth to unleash murder, rape, and fire upon glorious Ilium. Utter devastation ensues—the broken wall, the burning roof and tower. Of all the Trojan warriors, only one seems to survive: Aeneas, and that is another story. (A very, very long story, as a matter of fact.)

History offers another version of the war. It should be noted that in this case, history relies as much on speculation as Homer did on imagination. Without question, however, the city of Troy did exist, and excavations of the site have revealed a successive number of Troys, each built upon the ruins of the one preceding it. The earliest manifestation of the city may date back four thousand years. As for the Ilium of Homer’s poem, it appears to have been destroyed by fire some time around 1250 B.C. If a war did occur, Helen was probably not the cause. More realistically, the struggle focused on establishing primacy over trade on the Aegean Sea. Rather than beauty, love, and honour; most likely it was greed that launched those thousand ships. There is no evidence that the horse devised by Odysseus ever existed. There is, however, a historical account of an earthquake that occurred in the area at approximately the same time as the war. A slightly more believable version of the war’s end, therefore, is that the walls of Troy were breached by Mother Nature, and the invading Greeks simply capitalized on this event.

The first archeological evidence that Ilium actually existed came from an unlikely source—a wealthy German businessman named Heinrich Schliemann. Schliemann was a linguistic genius who taught himself Greek and then studied The Iliad free from the contortions of translation. Treating the descriptions within the poem as literal fact, he financed an expedition and set out to find the fabled ruins. Schliemann’s analysis of Homer’s epic led him unerringly to the site of the buried city. His techniques of excavation make contemporary professionals wince; however, it was Schliemann who brought Ilium back into the light.

Following my trip to Ios, I travelled to the site of Mycenae, the ancient fortress of Agamemnon. These ruins sit atop a hill and are so massive, it seems that over millennia, the sheer weight of the stones has pressed the earth downward. Schliemann had been here as well, and once again guided by Homer, the German had uncovered a literal treasure trove of artifacts. The most famous of the pieces he discovered is an exquisite golden funeral mask that Schliemann identified as belonging to Agamemnon. Modern archeologists have since determined that his dating of the artifacts was incorrect; regardless, his discovery of the treasure was noteworthy. I was able to see these golden relics on display in the Athens museum, and although the mask did not belong to the king of kings, it was nonetheless captivating.

After Mycenae, my next destination was Ilium itself.

I spoke the litany of names a second time, and they began to resonate like a dirge: “Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Hector….” Such tragedy. It was thrilling to stand on the same ground where Prince Hector—the most heroic character in the war—strode out to answer the challenge of Achilles. Hector knew he could not match the martial prowess of his opponent, but for the sake of his city, his people, he could not refuse to try. Even Odysseus, who alone would not die a violent death, would have to face ten years of hardship before returning home. (And that is another very, very long story.)

Of the south gate—the main entrance to the city—almost nothing remained. It challenged my imagination; however, there was a mounted display with an artist’s rendering of how the gate would have once looked. This helped bring the time-battered rocks to life, and I could envision the wall rising to reassert the lost dominance of Ilium.

I wandered about the ruins, careful to differentiate between the Ilium of Homer’s epic and the other levels of excavations. The eastern wall and gate still stood high, and I let my fingers trace along the stones as I walked past. What tales those walls could tell….

An hour after leaving the main gate, I came upon the Schliemann Trench. This has itself has become a type of artifact. Only days before his permit from the Turkish government was about to expire, Schliemann had still found nothing. In desperation, he ordered that a trench to be dug into the landscape. A hill named Hisarlik was cleft, and Schliemann’s gamble paid off: several layers of Troy were uncovered. Thousands of years laid bare. He had finally grasped the Golden Fleece. This ridiculous stab at archeology has been left relatively untouched; although, the various incarnations of Troy have been labelled with small signs.

It was the confluence of diverse influences that pushed me toward Ilium: mythical, historical, literary, and finally seeing those ruins was the culmination of years of travel. It became ironic then, that only two hours passed before my interest began to wane. The sun burned hot in that dry landscape. Imagination and wonder withered in the summer heat. The thirst for experience was supplanted with an actual thirst. As my imagination flagged, the walls came back down, and the stones fell into scattered heaps. The names of the heroes were carried away by the furnace breeze. The legends grew silent once again.

Somewhat begrudgingly, I turned my back on Ilium and walked from the millennial city. When I reached the road that would return me to the modern world, I glanced back a final time toward the site. Rising high above the entrance, a thirty-foot replica of the Trojan horse towered above the trees. I shook my head at the unintentionally comic impression it created. It was so large that it would not have fit through the gates of historical Ilium. I shrugged, it hardly seemed to matter. Within that place of blended truth, myth, and fantasy, anything was possible.

Kenneth D. Reimer

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