Up the Down Volcano (Kindle Single) Read Online Free PDF Page B

are remotely experienced and already 90% sure of how you’ll respond to specific conditions. The rest is a reasonable margin for the unknown. It turns out this man’s wife had a slight bronchial infection within that margin. One thing led to another, which led to her almost choking to death on a piece of her own lung. She turned blue and had to be carried into a tent where one of the guides felt her pulse and pronounced her dead.
    “I said ‘What do you mean, my wife is dead?’ and the guide said ‘She’s not breathing.’”
    “What did you do ?” I was enraptured.
    This man and I had bonded over a crying baby and a hostile flight attendant. I leaned on our shared armrest and put my chin in my palm.
    “I said ‘okay.’”
    “That’s it?! ”
    He explained to me that the unholy trinity of exhaustion, cold and reduced oxygen can lead to extreme calm. It’s not that you can’t think straight, it’s that you can only think straight. There is no emotion, just a slow and methodical logic mirroring the crunch of your steps. One foot in front of the other. The man’s wife was not breathing which meant she was dead and he wanted to know what came next. Still, I knew some part of him must have been devastated at the idea of losing the love of his life. The part that still remembered beaches and roads and all living things.
    “I might have also said ‘that’s not very good.’”
    As for Cotopaxi, it is only like Everest in that it’s got snow on it and it’s higher than where you are right this second. Unless you’re reading this on an airplane. Climbing Cotopaxi is something that gets done daily. Only 1,500 people have ever climbed Everest. With the possible exception of watching an Inside the Actor’s Studio marathon, conquering Everest is the hardest thing to do on the planet.
    And yet as I push forward in the dark, I imagine a colossal 747 airplane swinging by to pick me up where I stand. It takes me somewhere with hot liquids and cocoa and bobcat pelt sweaters.
    At the next bend, one of the headlights ahead of me pauses and shines backwards in my direction. It waits for the distance between us to close. Edgardo’s ponytail is covered in snow.
    “Okay?” he says, meaning “if the answer’s not ‘yes,’ I wash my hands of you.”
    I say nothing for a second, struggling to breathe. I don’t like to go for a light jog and chat at the same time. I have no choice but to lean on my knees and wheeze. Edgardo, as if suddenly remembering that time a few hours ago when he dragged my unacclimated underdressed ass up a volcano, repeats the question with a twinge of kindness this time.
    “I think my legs are bigger than my lungs,” I say.
    “I don’t understand this,” he says, meaning the words I have just spoken.
    “Neither do I,” I say, meaning absolutely everything else.
    I last approximately 10 more minutes in the dark before I huddle over and make the volcano an offering of partially digested beans. I am not the first to puke on this mountain and I won’t be the last.
    One’s instinct, when depending on something faulty, is to immediately stop depending on that thing. It only takes a moment of balancing a full-sized refrigerator on stilts to realize it’s time to put the fridge elsewhere. But to have there be no “elsewhere,” to have your body betray you, is a frightening sensation. You want an extra heart to help this one pump blood. But there is no extra heart. It’s like going through a breakup and wanting to talk about your distress with the person you just dumped.
    I wipe my face with snow and tilt my head back.
    Between gusts of white is a drusy black sky.
    The summit will have to be stunning for everyone but me.
    I am done here.
    Edgardo and I aren’t the best of communicators under normal circumstances. So when, back at the refuge, I request that he rifle through the Baltimore doctor’s things to hunt for a thermometer, he is appalled. Edgardo sincerely thinks I’d like to steal