What Better Place to Die

Chapter 3- B

My thought process is very orderly, albeit with an enormous amount of data streaming through my mind. Surprisingly, since I have been, in real life, so enraptured with graphics, there are no visual images. My rapid-fire visitations are a mental monologue of clearly chosen words. I am not talking to any of these individuals. I am not seeking a reply. I am only evaluating them, sorting them out, and seeing how they fit into the labyrinth of my life. I wonder how they would fit into my future life—if I am to have one. I aggressively surf my life, as I surf the Internet or the superfluous channels on Digital TV, as I have always surfed life itself. As a life-long hyperactive, I had learned to enjoy a frenetic life and had benefited from it, but had never really managed to control it. Hyperactivity had created a dynamic and hectic world for me, and now I look to hyperactivity to keep me awake—and perhaps even to help save my life.

The most intriguing surfing is about myself. Who am I? What have I done with my life? What happiness have I brought to others and myself? What sadness, what pain have I inflicted? What do I value...really value? Soon I am caught up in asking questions, lots of questions in the spirit of strategic planning, for asking questions is the cornerstone of strategic planning. Am I now caught up in strategic planning, as I lie dying? Hadn’t strategic planning brought me into this crisis by way of my demand to implement my new hiking plan? Hadn’t strategic planning done enough harm already today?

Let it go, Bernie. Let it go.

What of my spirituality, my religion? I am amazed that I leave religion towards the end of this process. My religion had been both simple and easily defined. Although my mother had been raised in Norway as a Pentecostal, following the classic European power hierarchy, I was raised in the fundamental Baptist tradition, my father’s religion. After all, he was greatly influenced by his father, the original Bernhoff Dahl, a Baptist minister in his native Norway, a traditionally Lutheran country. So much for fitting in. While the seeds of my beliefs were planted in my youth in church and Sunday school, they were expanded and re-worked at Wheaton College (Illinois), a fundamentalist Christian college and the alma mater of Rev. Billy Graham. I did, however enter Wheaton with many religious and spiritual questions and concerns, some of which were addressed during the mandatory Bible course each semester. Over the four years I was able to answer many questions, but many new ones surfaced—rhetorical questions. I solved this quandary by accepting a few basic tenets for my personalized and simplified religion. They met my needs throughout my life and would supposedly prepare me for death and even a possible afterlife. The rest I placed in categories. There were the mysteries of the Church such as the Virgin Birth and the divine inspiration of the Bible. There were follies of the Church in dealing with heretics and visionaries such as Galileo and Darwin. I had a core faith and rejected all the rest as a waste of time and emotions. I was a scientist, focused on Aristotelian logic and science. Other opportunities and challenges in my life beyond religion captured my attention.

I do, however, now wonder if I am about to die on Mt. Washington, not far from Lake Winnipesauke, where I had been born again at a Christian summer camp. Then, maybe the Hindus got it right, and I will be recycled, reincarnated, born again and again. Since I do not want to run the risk of returning as a cockroach, I quickly suppress this thought. I’ll go with Jesus.

After the rapid journey through my entire life, my thoughts slow down and I start to focus, to ask specific questions about select people and events; mostly positive, some negative, a few very disturbing. Is this the result of mental weariness, my hypothermia, or some other dynamic as death approaches? The process of asking questions is becoming the most powerful planning session of my life. This is crazy. Strategic planning got me into this dilemma and that is all I am thinking about. Is it both the cause and the cure? It is like radiation: it can cause malignancies, yet it is used to cure some.
For decades I had done my planning on a regular basis. The most enjoyable and productive times were while walking or hiking with Elaine. We covered everything: business, professional, family, social, and personal issues as we hiked up and down Cadillac Mountain or on the Around the Mountain trail on Mt. Desert Island, not far from Bar Harbor, Maine.

Forget the strategic planning! Get on with praying. Ask for deliverance, you wandering nitwit!
Instead I start to create sort of a focused list of promises to myself, promises I will keep if I am rescued. Promises are sort of half-assed prayers. To me, real prayer is sort of... well, if you really think about it, celestial strategic planning. I doubt that God will change His/Her mind based on my pleas. What prayer does is force the person praying to organize his/her thoughts, needs, requests, concerns, and, of course, questions, and voila, you have strategic planning with a spiritual bent. Promises will be the wings for my hopes, my dreams.

The first promise comes easily. I promise not to respond with hostility or excuses towards anyone who may criticize me for my ill-fated Mt. Washington hike. I will respond graciously to all comments, jokes, and questions. This is a weird number one promise. Perhaps it is related to the simple fact that I have had a never-ending supply of critics for as long as I can remember. Is this the result of being a rambunctious second son of immigrants or of being hyperactive and overly enthused? Perhaps it is the result of being younger than most when I started school. Fortunately for me, I did very well in school and physically grew up rapidly, ending up with a Viking-style muscular body. But the sensitivity to criticism remains to this day. My silence in the face of any new critics would be a great challenge for me, but actually a small price to pay for a successful rescue.

Chapter 3- C

Next I revisit my nuclear and extended families, current and past. Since my parents are dead, as are two siblings, it is too late for any creative conversation and interaction with them, at least in the conventional sense. The need to spend some time with my first wife, Audrey, surfaces early and seems obvious. In 1975 we finished a creative divorce, wherein our marriage was dissolved in a most cordial manner, without the usual conflict or arguments. Instead, the acrimony was spread over the following decades. I promise to meet with her, look at our past life together, and seek some better understanding of what went wrong and what went right. To borrow from the successful twelve-step programs, I need to make amends for misdeeds. The same is true of my son, Eric, who for reasons I never fully understood had drifted away from me. On a mountaineering trip in Mexico in 1995, my hiking partner from Germany, Hans, had shared details of the challenges he had with one of his sons. Hans introduced me to the concept of the estranged son. After my rescue, I will learn, first hand, how to deal with such estrangement.

Marriage to Elaine for over twenty years has gone well-beyond the basics of “home cooking and steady f---ing.” Together, we have laughed, cried, slept, loved, struggled, fought, reconciled, loved again. I have spent more time with her than anyone else in my entire life… have been closer to her than anyone. We have planned and lived our lives together. Our lives seem to be up-to-date. There are no obvious loose ends. However, of all the people in my life, she would be hurt the most if I were to die frozen in snow and ice on this mountain. She would be the ultimate victim in this disaster.

Elaine, I am so sorry!

I move on to a whole host of key people from my past, people with whom I have failed to maintain contact. I have not been a successful networker, even with the best of past friends. During my college and medical school years, I had been in a number of wedding parties; I had both a summer and winter tuxedo and was always willing and available to travel and participate. Now, I do not know the status of these marriages—whether or not the brides and grooms were together or even alive. Close fellow classmates had once played a role in my development and education, but I had attended only one high school reunion, none for my college, and only one for Medical School. The latter was memorable when Elaine and I met with my favorite mentor, Dr. Ben Kean, world-renown parasitologist, who said with a wry smile: “Bernie, you are the only pathologist who ever amounted to anything.” Dr. Kean had a well-developed sense of humor. If only he could see me now.

This promise involves a big list of people from my distant past, both temporally and geographically, whom I resolve to set out to find. I will find them on the Internet. I will attend reunions. While it may be a bit late, on the top of the list will be great teachers and mentors from my distant past. I will seek them out first.

It is quite curious that I feel no need to deal with people or issues from my twenty-five years in the practice of pathology. That is over. The puzzle was completed and set aside. I had created a grand experiment in synergy—sharing money and power equally among all the associate pathologists in the group, young or old. The experiment had been a success, in spite of one unappreciative associate who was a miserable thorn in our sides, and still is even after my retirement. My successor as leader of the group mused: “What do you give someone after you have given him everything?” I make no promises to revisit the biggest single component of my life: my adult professional career. It is finished.
Another promise focuses on my possessions, what comedian George Carlin referred to as "stuff." I have stuff, lots of stuff. This stuff is the product of my enthusiasm for life and my wide-ranging personal interests. Contributing to the immensity of my collection of stuff has been the availability of discretionary funds as well as office and shop space to store this stuff. After all, I am also in the commercial and industrial real estate business: space is my specialty. Upon rescue and return home, I promise to clean up my clutter. I will collect, reorganize, and evaluate everything. I will give away or throw away fifty percent—no, seventy-five percent—of it. What remains will be clearly marked as “Value” or “No Value” to others, for efficient disposal after my eventual death in the distant future. Additionally, I will start no new project without jettisoning at least one old project.

My thoughts eventually settle on my private business ventures in Maine. While I have enjoyed a level playing field for most of my individual ventures, this was not true for my biggest private business venture, commercial and industrial business park development. My private parks compete with state and locally funded parks that are unsuccessful in spite of massive loans and grants. The level playing field concept was turned completely upside down at one major park project, where I was hit with very high taxes while the City was selling land below fair market value to our potential clients and paid no real estate taxes on the land. The local economic climate was predatory and bizarre, and the State of Maine had maintained a dismal and destructive environment for business. Part of my naïve but well-intentioned dream of sharing my money, time, energy, and emotions for the economic well-being of my community had turned into a nightmare. The promise to get rid of the burdensome, non-revenue-producing real estate surfaces as promise number two, just behind my promise not to respond to criticism of my misadventure.

Chapter 3- D

As the wind howls, I am making promises: to be insensitive to criticism, to get rid of real estate and stuff, to enjoy the things I have prior to seeking more, to make amends to my son and a select few others, and to network with key folk from my past. My end goal will be to live a simpler, more examined life. Socrates would be really proud: I will live a truly examined and implemented life; but, above all, a simplified life.

These promises are not in the form of classic prayers; they are not requests for anything. My promises are rather offerings in return for rescue. Why am I not praying for rescue, for survival? Why am I just planning, organizing for life after a possible rescue? Do I not fear death? In fact, I do not. As a physician I know about death. Perhaps my simple religion has prepared me well for that ultimate transition... death.

However, what do I know for sure is the process of dying? In twenty-five years as a physician, I have gained a great deal of knowledge about the physical processes of dying. During medical school and internship, I had thousands of hours of lectures, seminars, and clinical rounds dealing with every possible aspect of disease, and hands-on training with hundreds of seriously ill patients. During four years of training to be a pathologist followed by twenty-five years of practice, I gained additional insights into the ravages of disease and its processes and progression to the ultimate outcome for all: death. I know a great deal about the physical aspects of dying, but not nearly as much of the psychological and psychiatric issues and struggles associated with dying.

Here on Mt. Washington, I recall the phases of dying described by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her epic book On Death and Dying. She had outlined the five phases through which most terminal patients usually pass: denial and isolation; anger; bargaining; depression; and acceptance. Although my ordeal is self-induced with my potential “terminal event” being compressed into less than a day, I have been going through—am now still going through—the process of being exposed to and possibly experiencing these classic phases.

Have I felt isolated? Yes, emotionally and spiritually, as well as physically. I am truly alone. Have I tried to deny my circumstances? For over an hour, at the beginning of the hunkering down phase, I had been in what might best be called a daze. The setting had been more like a dream at first; later, after losing the bivvy, a nightmare. For hours, I believed things would all turn out okay; ultimately, reality has set in and I have become almost certain that I am going to die.

Have I been angry? I had experienced a bit of anger, more like frustration, directed to myself—certainly not at God. This was not a major factor. Perhaps there has not been enough time to enter and reside in this phase.

Have I bargained? Absolutely! I have made all those promises of things I would do, or not do, were I to survive the ordeal. These promises are the most important part of this experience. They keep me awake and give me the incentive to survive—and the reasons to hope.

Have I been depressed? No, perhaps due to the fact that my crisis has been relatively short and intense.

Have I accepted the possibility of my death? Yes. But more importantly, do I now accept the reality of my impending death? Again, yes.

In addition to these responses, I am experiencing an overwhelming feeling of embarrassment: for I am about to die, almost in my own back yard, at less than six thousand feet elevation. I had previously climbed to 21,600 feet, without auxiliary oxygen. Since I am quite sensitive to criticism, I treat this feeling with humor as I imagine the media reports of my death as a result of the foolishness of a 60-year old man, sporting a total knee prosthesis and trying not to age graciously. Area newspapers, TV stations, and the Appalachian Mountain Club magazine will detail my hike and death using euphemisms for nitwit or old fool:
                        “Mature orthopedically-challenged hiker takes risks beyond his ability and dies.          
                          Hundreds shake their heads in wonderment as the hearse slowly pulls away...”

I envision the ceremony at the Pinkham Notch Visitors Center’s Wall of Death to place the small plaque giving my name and the basic data of my misadventure, my death on Mt. Washington.

My Norwegian heritage has had its own rewards and challenges. Norwegians are often thought of as humorless—suffering from a national melancholia—perhaps the product of their geographic isolation and long dark winters. I recall the opening phrase of a keynote presentation dealing with the joys of the practice of Medicine by a celebrated Norwegian-American:
       "Being of Norwegian heritage, I have a difficult time in finding joy in anything; however…”

Cognizant of this possible genetic frailty, I have developed a keen interest in all types of humor. Is my sense of humor now lost on the mountain as I stare at Death? Not on your life!

I reflect on my recent medical history with my slowly but inexorably rising PSA (prostate specific antigen). Since there is a higher incidence of prostate cancer in Scandinavians in general, and in my family in particular, it is, for me, only a matter of time. I laugh out loud as I celebrate my joy in conquering prostate cancer by dying on a mountain.

In addition, I have drunk a large amount of water today. I am fully suited up, like an astronaut. It is also very cold and windy out here. During the early phase of hunkering down, assuming I would be rescued, I couldn’t hold it any longer. I had to make an executive decision. I wasn’t going to stick anything out in that weather that I would have a use for later.   

It dawns on me that it was illegal to camp above the tree line. I am breaking the law. Smokey, come and arrest me. Take me home. Put me in the slammer.

As I lie resigning myself to death, the scholar in me realizes that I am about to learn first-hand the greatest mystery of life—the nature of death. This will surely test my simple beliefs. Beyond that, hopefully I will be privy to all the answers to the philosophical, metaphysical, religious, and scientific questions of the ages. I will see people I have missed for years—at least I assume they will be there, that I will be there—in Heaven. That will be the ultimate reunion. Celestial networking.

Stay awake, Bernie.

Chapter 3 - E

                                                                          *     *     *

9:46 PM
The original team of four—Rob Adair, Pete Lewis, Ian Turnbull, and Ben Miller—meets up with Pelchat’s on the Auto Road near the Alpine Garden Trail. The weather is so bad and the search so fruitless they have to decide whether anything further can be done. It is getting too dangerous for them to be out there.

Aside from the obvious dangers of the elements and exposure, Pelchat says, “What happens in these conditions is that the deep, sticky snow not only camouflages the cairns—it also covers the rocks and hides the voids … this makes leg-breaking traps everywhere, and for the most treacherous walking conditions.”

The weather is insane at this point. One rescuer notes that during one of their huddles, they are in a circle, head to head, shouting in order to be heard. Rescuers comment that unless Bernie is on a trail and they step on him, they will never find him.
Pelchat suggests they take Alpine Garden Trail up to the Nelson Crag junction. The rescuers are somewhat tired, having been out in tough conditions for hours, although not discouraged. Pelchat says, “Look, guys, I know it's bad, but there's someone dying out here.”

They form a human chain and begin moving from cairn to cairn. Near the top of Nelson Crag, the visibility is so bad that even they are unable to locate the next cairn. Since the Auto Road is a short distance away, they head for it.

At the road, they check the Alpine/Nelson junction again—with no luck. Pelchat suggests they go down to the top of Huntington Ravine to a very large cairn at the Alpine intersection. They do so, but again, there is no Bernie.

Pelchat says, “I was on the outside of the line search, and damned if I didn’t find a boot print in the wind-blown crust that was preserved well enough to show a heel mark with the toe pointing uphill. I said, ‘Let’s try and follow him up Nelson Crag; he couldn’t have gone much further in this weather. If we don’t find him in five minutes, we’ll turn back this time for sure.”

Some of the rescuers are exhausted. Still, they feel they have to be close. The next few minutes sees them fighting just to move, much less find the next cairn.

                                                                             *     *     *

Celestial networking? In a suppressed corner of my mind, my older brother Johnny is hidden. Even though he was perhaps the most important person in the first half of my life, John Jr., the primo genitor, the first-born male heir of this European-American family, slowly surfaces. Although only a year and a half older, he was my prime teacher and model, my mentor and tormentor, the hiker who took me away from my work and studies up to the mountains. Unfortunately, while I was in my internship at the University of Vermont, he went up to the Ramapo Mountains in New Jersey and took his own life. That was the greatest loss of my entire life, a loss that lingers deep inside me almost thirty years later. Will Johnny be in Heaven?

Cold now penetrates so deep into my body that I feel no pain. I realize that my pain sensation is now lost and it is only during the warming process that the deadened nerves awaken and function and pain may return. I recall past lectures on patients dying from hypothermia, wherein some of the victims apparently experience an abnormal feeling of warmth near the end. As a result they remove their clothes and hastened their death. I have autopsied such victims, scantily clad bodies frozen in bizarre and contorted positions. Am I to be one of these icy sculptures? I know that I could voluntarily remove some clothing to hasten my death if I so desire.

I choose not. I choose to simply wait, to maintain hope, but to be ready to die. In this setting of darkness, high winds, and increasing snow, I simply wait for a peaceful and gentle death. Not a bad way to die.

With nothing else to think about, with all of the promises made, I start to search for the signs of a “near death” experience, such as when the dying person's perspective moves out of the body—usually upward—so that he is looking down at his own body. This does not happen.

Stay awake, Bernie.

In spite of my vigilance to stay awake, I have apparently dozed off for an unknown period. I am waking slowly, wondering if I have, at last, died. I turn my head just enough to expose the small opening in the front of the anorak’s hood, and the roar of the wind resumes its ferocity. My head, also completely covered by the sock hat, had rolled over onto my good ear during my lapse of awareness. I am not yet dead.

Is it now time to give up, to gain freedom from the limitations of this physical body, to move on? Let’s face it: nobody is coming, not in this weather. Try as I may to avoid it, the wish to die resurfaces. I try something I think will hasten the process. In the past, when suffering from a bout of insomnia, I had hyperventilated to lull myself to sleep. On Mt. Washington, it does not work. I try it only once. I decide that from now on I will do nothing to hasten my death. I will simply stay awake and wait. Without my help, Death will come soon enough. There will be no struggle. Dying here is a place of fluidity. Death will come peacefully.

I am now in that interface between life and death, and I am truly “living in the moment.” Buddha, who would be proud of me for doing so, once wrote, “Every day a birdie on my shoulder asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready?’” I am ready.

The only thing left will be the appearance of the famous “white light” of the near death experience, the bright light that precedes Death itself. I am waiting patiently for that light.

Cahpter 3- F

The darkness is, however, pierced by a small light in my diminished field of vision, well beyond my immobilized legs and feet. I hear shouts.

                 “Here he is!”

                  “He’s still alive!”

Into a mirage-like scene comes a team of exhausted men. Convinced that this is some sort of aberration of the near-death adventure, and caught up disbelief, I mumble over and over again:
“You guys are beautiful, I can’t believe you’re here... you guys are beautiful, I can’t believe you’re here.”

The rescuers quickly place me on an insulated pad, set up a small tent around me, cover me with a sleeping bag, and take turns massaging my spastic legs. They identify themselves as members of Androscoggin Valley Search and Rescue and the Mountain Rescue Service, led by Mike Pelchat. Included in this group are Rob Adair, Pete Lewis, Neil Brodien, Craig Taylor, Ian Turnbull, and Ben Miller.
Ben Miller, an OR nurse at a nearby hospital, also addresses my hypothermia by slowly feeding me sweet, warm fluids and other snacks (mostly—wouldn’t you know—carbohydrates). They provide encouragement, information about the rescue, plans for my evacuation, and carefully monitor me for cardiac arrhythmias.

For almost two hours we stay in the tent, awaiting the arrival of a toboggan and the snow track. Mike and Ben provide details of their struggle. I learn of Mike’s discovery of my one boot print and his plea of “five more minutes” of search. I lay at the seventeenth cairn from the junction at Huntington Ravine. I had stayed by the cairn, and I was found. Yoda was right. You I thank, Yoda. But more so, I thank Mike Pelchat, his crew at the rescue site, and the scores of support people behind them. They are in the process of saving my life, and maybe my toes and fingers as well.

We continue to wait in the cold and wind for the arrival of the Thiokol crew with a litter toboggan. During our time in the tent, Mike also informs me that had I reached the Auto Road—the snowdrift-covered, meandering, undulating road with no markers or cairns—I would have easily lost my way and my body might not have been found until late spring.

About forty-five minutes pass when Peter and Craig, who have been holding down the tent on the outside, become extremely cold, so Neil and Rob take their place as the hurricane-force winds continue (gusts to 98 miles per hour are being recorded at that time at the nearby Observatory). Peter and Craig then descend to meet up with the Thiokol on the Auto Road, which carries Marc Chauvin, Brad White, Ian Cruickshank, Dan Dougherty, and others. They give the Thiokol crew vital, detailed directions to our exact location.

Soon the new team with the Thiokol arrives with a toboggan and it is hauled up to our location. The rescue crew loads me onto it and together we move rapidly down to the Thiokol parked on the Auto Road. It has been about two hours since my rescuers found me. In spite of these hours of warming and therapy, I am still unable to climb aboard the rescue vehicle without assistance. I cannot even stand, let alone move my legs. Joined by most of the rescue team, the fully-loaded Thiokol descends to where the trucks are parked. Mike Pelchat and Rob Adair, however, had started immediately down on foot and had gotten there first. At the trucks they are waiting for us, along with Peter Lewis and Craig Taylor. We proceed down the mountain together, the Thiokol driver, the rescuers, and the frozen and grateful hiker.

The drive down is slow and careful, since the snow conditions at the lower levels haven’t improved. I learn that on the ascent on the Auto Road one of the trucks slid off the road. It turns out that just the past week, the Auto Road had been abandoned to the winter. For the next four months the Mt. Washington Observatory and TV towers will be serviced by once-a-week trips by the Thiokol, starting next Wednesday. Although ready for winter service, it is in storage some thirty miles away.

At about one o’clock in the morning we reach the base of the mountain, where I am moved to a warm, waiting ambulance. All my clothes are removed and I am wrapped in deliciously warm, dry cotton blankets. I slowly lapse into a state of well-being, for I know that I have been rescued and that I am in the hands of qualified medical care. I go into a deep sleep, perhaps the deepest in my entire life. I can hear nothing, I can feel nothing; I have been rescued. I am going home.

                                                                  *     *     *

Chapter 3- G

I open my eyes slowly. I am lying down, looking up, covered with a white sheet. Above me there is a white ceiling. Everything is a blur. There is a diffuse low level of white lighting but I can not see the source. Where are my glasses?

I think I am warm. At least, I am not cold, I am not shivering. I can feel and move my arms, my legs—but not my toes or fingers. What’s going on here? Where am I? Where are my glasses?

Slowly the light increases, from one direction, like the first rays of a morning sun. I glance toward the source. It seems to be coming from an opening in which I see a form, a person—not moving, just standing, speaking no words, making no sound, just standing.

Who are you? Where am I? They are questions that I wish to ask, to be answered, but I cannot utter a sound. I am curious about my world, but I am not anxious. I am just suspended in a world of white. I am curious as if I were reading a book—not a mystery book, not an adventure book, perhaps just a geography book. Where am I? Who are you?

The figure, the person, moves slowly, closer and closer. The luscious scent of Fendi, rich with cedar overtones, envelops me, enters my body, my mind, my heart, and moves deep into my memory. It is Elaine, wonderful, stable, compassionate Elaine. Her silver and black hair is out-of-place, not perfectly combed, brushed as it always is. She leans forward, her face just inches from mine. I see that her eyes are red. She has been crying. She just stands there silently.

A single tear drop collects and moves slowly down her cheek, the only thing that is moving in my world. That tear, that single tear, is it one of happiness, relief, hope, or perhaps anger. Tears come in only one flavor, salty, but they come from many sources, the brain, the heart, the gut, the entire body. They can carry many different messages.

My eyes meet hers and my tears start to flow. We are joined, merged, intermingled by tears. We are as one in sea of tears.

She touches me, gently she touches my face. She is warm. She cradles my face with both hands, warm hands, tender hands, loving hands. She starts to hum, then sing, our favorite song: “You’re in my heart, you’re in my soul… you’ll be my breath should I grow old… you are my lover, you’re my best friend...” The song stops and her lips move as she gently whispers: “I love you, Bernie. I’m glad you were rescued. Let’s go home.”

She kisses my lips. My eyes overflow with tears, tears of joy, of forgiveness, of thankfulness. I shed tears that will help wash away the harsh memories of this misadventure, tears that are clearing the blackboard of my life, tears that will allow me, us to start over, that will strip away my mask, my persona, will make me vulnerable, accessible.

Tears will make me whole, a whole man, genuinely me.

                                                   *     *     *

I am in the Emergency Room for observation and treatment. Amazingly, there is evidence of only minimal effects of frostbite and hypothermia. During the warming process, I feel minimal deep body pain. The pain limited to my fingers and toes, which are also tender to the touch.

I am about to be discharged when internist Dr. Deborah Perry consults on my case and admits me as an inpatient. She astutely diagnoses severe rhabdomyolysis; that is, the breakdown of muscle tissue due to all the muscle exertion to create heat in my body. The key diagnostic test is CPK, also often used to diagnose myocardial infarctions (heart attacks). While a CPK above one hundred is indicative of muscle damage, my level is off-the-graph, it is thirteen thousand. Large volumes of fluids, both intravenously and orally, are required to flush out these myoglobin breakdown products that could cause acute renal failure.

Fortunately, this is successful, and after a day and a half, I am discharged from the hospital. While I thank Mike and his crew for saving my life and digits, I thank Dr. Perry and her staff for saving my kidneys.

During my hospital stay, Sgt. Douglas Gralenski of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department interviews me and takes an inventory of my gear including my clothing which had even been laundered by the hospital staff. My cell phone is missing. It is no doubt still on the mountain. He asks clear and precise questions as he gains the needed data for his report. He is a veteran. He knows his business.

Then I ask him a key question: “Smokey, are you going to put me in the slammer?”

“No,” he says with a wry smile and an enormous degree of understanding and perhaps even a touch of compassion.

On Monday morning, after my diuresis therapy is completed, Elaine drives me back to the Joe Dodge Lodge to I pick up my belongings and my car. At the Lodge I meet a mountain rescue instructor who recognizes me from the local media coverage and  invites me to speak to his class. For a half hour I re-live my mountainside experience with the class. They ask pertinent questions with both force and grace... most starting with “why.” They are the first to focus on the three key questions, questions that will haunt me, follow me for a long time:

                     Why did you rely on your cell phone to call for rescue?
                     Why did you hike solo?
                     Why did you push on when the weather turned bad?

I answer them as best I can. I make no excuses. I just give them the facts as I recall them.

When the session in class is over, another veteran mountaineer and rescue instructor takes time to visit with Elaine and me and to share stories of his own solo adventures, even his misadventures. The ordeal on the mountain is now over. It is now the time for reflection, healing, and appreciation for the rescue. His support and understanding at that crucial time is most welcome. He will, however, change his story later.

After a visit to a local store for soft, over-sized, furry slippers for my tender feet, we check into a Sheraton in North Conway for a night to continue maximal input of fluids and to monitor urine output. My kidneys are working well.

It is time to go home—to live the rest of my life and to answer further the questions of the Buddha:         
                      “Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?”

                                                                    *     *     *

Chapter 3- H

While I was on the mountain waiting for rescue, the New Hampshire Fish and Game folk had called my wife, Elaine, back in Maine, asking some questions about my gear and my mountaineering experience. On one call, they told her they were going to call off the search because of the severe weather. Her strength, her wisdom, her understanding of life and death, and her insights into my nature were clearly expressed when she said to them:
                                             “Bernie loves the mountains.
                                          What better place for him to die.”