August 12, 1986
Day Two, Afternoon

I am having serious trouble now. I can feel the tension building in my head, and I am desperately trying to quell the fear I feel getting away from my control. Fear of what? Being alone? This empty wilderness? The nasty clouds beginning to rumble to the west? No, no, all of these things are child’s play, easily confronted, easily overcome. The fear I feel is not fear of any of these things. It is fear of a demon I have long locked securely away in the recesses of my mind, knowing its terrible strength and utter ruthlessness should it break free. The fiend has destroyed my life before, and it will do so again if it gets the chance. I hold still, hearing footsteps in the dim hallways of my mind, hoping, yet knowing it may already be too late for hope. It is probing for weaknesses, I sense vaguely. I have long dreaded the day this might happen, and now, here, there is no refuge.

Seven years ago at Annapolis during my first and last year as a midshipman, I was sucked into a maelstrom far beyond what I was ready for, spun off into an alien world of twisted discipline, hostility, aggressiveness, tension, a world that threatened to chew me up and spit me out in pieces. All my life, I had done what was expected of me, done these things well, and Annapolis was the utterly logical extension of that pattern of behavior. And it was destroying me. One morning in the middle of the first semester, I woke from my locked-down, automaton trance for the first time with a question banging freely and insistently inside my head – “What in the hell am I doing here?” It was a question that had been ruthlessly suppressed since the first day, and the delay in asking cost me almost all of my survival instincts. The few that remained, suddenly freed, screamed for relief and release. In the two week period of stress and uncertainty between the rising of the question and the final release from the Academy, the beast sprang fully-formed into my psyche and forced me to look into its face. Its character was unbearable tension – the tension between eighteen years of thoughtless and programmed behavior, the unspoken desires and expectations of those close to me, and the weighty tradition of a military academy on one side; on the other, a handful of emaciated instincts and a fear kept buttoned down for four months that suddenly metastasized and began to consume me like a cancer. I was a thread stretched to the breaking point between a self-imposed discipline and spasms of uncontrollable terror and revulsion. The demon seemed to relish and delight in the destruction I was inflicting on myself. Mercifully, the fates finally allowed my escape from the circumstances, though not without costs. With a psyche misshapen by tensile stress and weakened to the point of easy fracture, I was disgorged from the maw of the military.

After the discharge, I struggled with the complexity of my conflicting emotions. There had been a great deal of sober validity to the instincts I had finally listened to. But it was impossible to assent to the good sense and healthiness of the instincts without admitting all that came bound up with them. No matter how I tried to rationalize the experience, I could not shake off the visage I had seen, nor deny how it had warped and terrorized me. I could not help but feel that I had not been strong enough to bear the tension, and worse, that I had given in to the fear. Within the next year, I sank into a severe depression that tied me to a bed for days on end. It was all I could do to get my life together and lock the beast away. It was far too powerful; I didn’t have the strength to deal with it. Over the following six years, I actively avoided stress and tension. I couldn’t tell what might set it loose again.

And now, here, unwittingly, I have created the same situation, with the same mindset, that gave birth to this fiend. The same intensity of the urge to leave. The same stubbornness telling me to stick it out. The demon is loose , and I hear it snickering as I struggle to keep my head from exploding. This tension is tearing me apart. Calm down, come on, calm down. Contain it. Close your eyes, breathe, breathe, deeper.

---

The clouds have been building all afternoon, and now the light rain petrifies into hail. I remain holed up
under my rock shelter, cold and miserable. No place to escape. No refuge. No help from any quarter.
Had it ever been any different? Dry so far. The hail intensifies. Thunder rolls to the north of me now.
Lightning cracks nearby, too close for comfort. I try to avoid thinking that I’m on an exposed 11,000 foot
ridgeline in a lightning storm, but the effort is useless. Not good. Not good at all. I hunch down further
into my bag, shifting positions and I feel an icy rivulet roll down my back. Damn! I shift again to avoid
it, and suddenly, water is everywhere, soaking me.

Inside, outside, everything explodes. I roll out from under my shelter, kick off my bag, stand, and scream
at the black skies. The thunder roars back, deafening me. Hail pelts my face. The cold wind lashes me,
leaving me numb and shivering. Everything, God, everything is conspiring against me. There is no
choice but to get off this ridgeline. And abruptly, without warning, my will snaps, like dry kindling over
a knee. My resolve to see the quest through crumbles away, rapidly, irrevocably. I had it intact seconds
ago; now, shattered like safety glass, it lies in millions of pieces around me. Goddammit! Ten seconds off
guard! That’s all it takes?!

It’s over; I’ve lost. I know this to a certainty within seconds. No more chance of reconstruction than of
instantly healing a compound fracture. There’s a rising bitter taste in my mouth, but curiously, my head
clears for the first time in many hours. At last, it’s easy to make decisions, easy to take action. Cold, wet,
tired, miserable, and in some danger here. Sunset is less than two hours away; transportation is a long
way off; I am a prime candidate for hypothermia with all of my gear soaked and no dry wood to be
found. Why not forget this mess? Let’s get the hell out of here. One stop below to pick up the food cache,
then down to Bishop. Hot shower and rest at the research station. Refuge. And my mind is fully made
up before I leave the ridgeline.

Still, a small, persistent voice calls to be recognized. It is the lone holdout against the avalanche of
expedient reasons to quit. It insists that dire consequences await should I give in so readily. It tries
valiantly to salvage this quest. But it is weak and without force, and my will is gone. “Can you carry me
through this?” I fire back at it, knowing well that it cannot. Contemptuously, I choose to ignore it. I hike
to the basin floor in a building black rage, feeling cheated, and through the anger, I become aware of a
hollowness and a sweeping sense of defeat, of failure, a second and last chance gone for now, gone
forever.

Down in the basin, I retrieve my food and repack my gear. Sullenly, I stride out to the road and begin the
long walk to safety. The chance for redemption may be gone, but at least I don’t have to deal with that
hypnotic psychic pain anymore. The hail ceases. The showers trail off, then come again. The outcrops
and domes of the basin glow in an eerie, ocherous light. The setting of a nightmare, no doubt. Sunset is
very near now. My breath comes in rasps as I begin the thousand foot climb out of the Basin. My stride
weakens to a slog, slowing alarmingly as the grade increases. God, when did this pack get so heavy? My
heart throbs wildly in my ears. I am sweating heavily, and my body is not responding to the demands
being made of it. Two days of fasting have seriously affected my endurance. Will I even get out of here?
Or is this the demon’s final ace?

Dimly, I remember an old abandoned mining cabin I had passed at the upper end of the Basin on my way
down. A distant part of me toys with the thought of stopping there and drying out. On the survival level,
this frenzied beast of burden has his whole attention focused on the strenuous task at hand. A mind-body
split to the extreme.

The cabin appears up the road, and from somewhere far beyond me, the decision is made. Within minutes, the old stove in the cabin is putting out powerful waves of heat, and steam is rising from my gear. I’ll stay until morning and then make a decision. The cabin is dark except for the orange glow of the stove. Outside, Darkness. Welcome nothingness after the events of the past few hours. I feel strangely outside of myself. The mental stress and physical exhaustion have obliterated any trace of the old ego. Nothing exists but warm, dancing shadows on the wall and this emptied, silent being who watches long into the night. Exhaustion finally pulls me down into a shallow, restless sleep. Peering
warily through fragmented dreams, I see no sign of my adversary. The echoes of its laugh die in the corridors of the dream-world.

Morning. The storm is gone; though not by my strength, I am still here.

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