There But for the Grace of God

I was leafing the Saturday NYT (doesn’t everyone?) when a story caught my eye: Colorado Skeleton Is Thought to Be Hiker Who Vanished on Ski Trip 38 Years Ago. Take away the snow; add another nine years; and that could be me, had things gone in a different direction, so to speak, one day in August of 1974. The story in the paper concerned a 27-year old West German national who started off on a two- or three-day ski trip into Rocky Mountain National Park. Give me this much—I knew to avoid avalanches. Glaciers are another story. It was a few weeks before the start of law school. I wanted to go out West but couldn’t get anybody to come along, so I went alone. I more or less bribed my father, use of the Ford Galaxie provided it came back with a backseat full of Coors Beer, back before it was distributed east of the Missippi. It was long ago. The Saturday in question I started off on a trail in Rocky Mountain National Park without telling anyone for the simple fact there was no one to tell. Thoreau didn’t need other people, and neither did I. My mistake, not unlike the decision to attend law school. I made my way above the tree line, all the while admiring Nature, as if Nature cared what a human did or thought. I marveled at the shadows cast by clouds, how they raced across some distant valley. I heard but never saw the jets flying above. Did somebody looking out a window on their way to JFK see the speck of a young man on the trail below? I doubt it. I rested and had lunch somewhere in the vicinity of 13,000 feet above sea level; it was probably closer to four o’clock before I finally got started back down. For no good—and definitely not smart—reason, I stepped on a glacier and rode it like a down escalator; that was fun. About two-thirds of the way through, I had a real lightbulb moment--that I was going at a good clip and would have a hard time stopping once the ice and snow stopped, oh, about a hundred feet ahead. What a desperate Fred Flintstone I made, digging my feet down, and hard. Somehow, I managed to stop before the glacier gave way to rock and gravel. It was probably at that moment I realized this was no walk in the park, even if it was. No matter how fast a pace I set, I saw I was losing daylight. Trust me, the shadows cast by a setting sun are darker than anything a passing cloud can throw down. All too soon it was dark, then night, and I had no flashlight. But like Robert Frost, I still had miles to go. I have no idea how I made it back to my car; I could just as easily have broken my neck on the trail in the darkness. The story in the paper noted 49 people died at Rocky Mountain National Park between 2010 and 2020; since the park’s opening 106 years ago, four people have gone missing and yet to be found. There but for the grace of God, I could’ve been number five. I may not have appreciated the flatness of the Great Plains back then. I do now, along with the relative flatness of the terrain my Schwinn takes me along.