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A daughter confronts the mountain that killed her father to reclaim herself |
| At the top of the Matterhorn, the wind carried a faint metallic scent, ozone, ice crystals, and the sharp burn of sunlight on snow. The view, despite the cold bite of altitude, was breathtaking. Around her rose a crown of austere, snow-clad peaks. Far below, the green of the Aosta Valley slipped into Italy, and Zermatt appeared as nothing more than a cluster of grey rooftops at the end of a long white valley, lost 2,500 meters beneath her boots. Rose had no room to wander. The summit ridge was narrow, exposed, and glassy with ice; every direction fell away as though the world opened into infinity. It was just as well she had never been afraid of heights. She unfastened the pendant from around her neck, the tiny icon of St. Bernard of Montjoux crushing the dragon beneath his feet, and held it for a moment in her gloved palm. Then she reached into her pack and drew out a small blue plastic container. Inside lay a single rose. Carefully, she pressed the pendant into the snow, arranging its chain in a neat circle. She planted the flower upright in the middle of the circle, its scarlet petals glowing against the white. The Holy Protector of mountaineers, and the rose her father had given her every birthday since she could remember, now standing together on the peak they had once hoped to reach side by side. “Well, Daddy,” she whispered into the azure sky, “I guess this is goodbye… until I meet you upstairs.” She breathed in once, steady and slow, then turned to begin her descent. *** That evening, the Brown Cow pub in Zermatt held its informal story hour, an old tradition reserved for those who had stood on the summit of the Matterhorn. World-famous alpinists were scattered among the scarred wooden tables, men and women who had climbed the highest peaks on every continent. But only three had volunteered to speak, each allowed a short pitch. The first man strode forward full of bravado, listing his conquests; Elbrus, Mont Blanc... and boasting that he had come to the Matterhorn simply to conquer “Europe’s deadliest challenge.” The crowd of seasoned mountaineers groaned at his pretension and waved him off. The second candidate was a wealthy amateur who had only reached the top because three of the men present had practically hauled him there. Having already endured his complaints all the way up and down, and having already been paid, they dismissed him with unimpressed head shakes. He left the pub scowling. That left Rose. In a room made up mostly of young, single, heterosexual men, her presence alone drew attention. But when she spoke, the pub fell silent. Her eyes glistened, and her voice carried something quiet and raw. “The last time I was on that mountain,” she began, pointing through the window toward the jagged silhouette of the Matterhorn, “I didn’t make it to the top. My dad died up there, saving my life. Yesterday I climbed back and planted the St. Bernard pendant he gave me, and a red rose like the ones he gave me every birthday. I’d like to tell you our story.” The decision was unanimous. Someone slid the microphone toward her, and she took it with trembling hands. “Daddy and I are both experienced climbers, we have climbed mountains all over the world together. We went for one of the more challenging ways up the Matterhorn. We started climbing in brilliant sunshine,” she said, “and we were near the top of the North West face on the Zmutt Nose overhang when the blizzard struck almost out of nowhere. I remember how the wind screamed across the cliff and how everything went white. My crampon snapped first; then the second and I fell ten feet, pushing my dad into the air hanging from the rope. He was swinging on the last clampon, away from the rockface because of the overhang, this was now twisting loose with our combined weights on it. The weight of my father beneath me pushed me too close to the rockface and I could not maneuver So no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a solid grip on the rock to bang in another clampon. “We were roped together, but we both knew the truth: if that last crampon broke, we’d both die. The mountain was already choosing which of us it meant to keep. “He looked at me, really looked at me, the way he used to before everything went wrong between us. Before he and my mum divorced and my world fell apart. Before the anger and the silence. There was fear in his eyes, but also something calm. He loved me… I know he did. Even when I ignored him, even when I treated him like he was the villain of my life. This climb was supposed to help us find each other again. There was only one thing he loved more than that mountain, and that was me. I know that now.” She swallowed hard. “‘Rose,’ he said, ‘you still have a whole climb ahead of you. You finish it. You hear me?’” "Snow whipped past like shards of glass. I told him we could both make it. We just had to try. And he smiled, this sad, proud smile, and said, ‘You go on, never give up. That’s what you’re meant to do.’ “And then… in the howling storm… I felt it. The tremor on the line. The tiny jerk that meant Daddy had cut the rope. I screamed. “The weight vanished. I slammed in another crampon, and when I looked down, I could just make out his shape falling away into the white, swallowed by the storm and the mountain.” Rose paused, her breath shaking. “I hung there crying, my tears freezing on my cheeks, my breath strangling in my throat. All I could hear was the screaming wind and his voice, fading but still telling me to go on. After a while, instinct took over, the training he’d drilled into me with patience and love. I drove my axe into the ice and started down. “The blizzard turned the world into a swirling tunnel of white. Every step was an act of will. Many time I almost slipped. I forced myself to breathe, to move, to test every foothold with the care of someone walking on glass. “When I finally reached the Solvay Hut hours later, I was half-frozen, shaking, numb in a way deeper than cold. I waited out the storm there. Rescuers searched for days for my dad, but the mountain kept him hidden until the storm cycle broke. They found him far below, in a soft cradle of snow. I buried him in the cemetery here in this town.” She looked down at her hands. “Then I went home. And the nightmares began, every night the blizzard, the rope, the fall. Every night losing him again. My life twisted inward. I stopped climbing. I stopped living. Too many unfinished words, unfinished amends, unfinished love. “A year ago, one sleepless night, I heard his voice again, just like on the mountain. Calm. Gentle. Telling me I still had a whole climb ahead of me. And something inside me shifted. “I began small. Easy trails. Then modest peaks. I remembered the laughter we shared, the smell of rope and chalk, sunrise on ridgelines, fresh snow crunching under our boots. Piece by piece, climb by climb, I rebuilt myself. “Eventually I knew what I had to do. The biggest climb of all. The one that haunted my nightmares and my dreams, the Matterhorn. “I trained. I studied every route. I learned from every mistake. And when I finally stepped back onto that mountain, I carried Daddy with me, every lesson, every memory, every fragment of love. “This time I had more respect for the mountain and I took the easier Hörnli Ridge Route up. I was with a party of experienced climbers and we were careful at every stage of the climb. I see some of you here tonight, you were all very professional. I figured that this time I wasn’t climbing just for myself anymore. I was climbing for him, for closure, for the girl inside me who lost him twice. “And I made it to the summit. To the place where I laid the rose and the pendant and prayed my goodbye into the sky, from where, I believe, dad was looking down on me. ” When Rose finished, the Brown Cow fell into a reverent silence. A few mountaineers looked away, blinking hard through tears. Others held their drinks with white knuckles. Then a man rose from the back, broad-shouldered, silver-haired, unmistakable even without introduction. Armand Keller, one of the greatest alpinists alive, a legend whose name was etched into the summit logs of the world’s highest mountains. Without a word, Keller stepped to her table. He unfastened his own St. Bernard of Montjoux, a weathered and well-loved charm, and gently draped it around her neck. “For protection,” he said quietly. “And in honor of your father. He’d be proud you finished the climb.” Rose brushed her thumb across the weathered charm, feeling the grooves where another climber’s fingers had worn the metal smooth. Keller gave her a small nod, nothing dramatic, just an acknowledgement between two people who knew what mountains could take and what they could give back. The pub noise swelled again, cautious and respectful, and Rose felt a shift inside her, light, unfamiliar. Not the dropping weight of grief, but its release. She wasn’t whole. She might never be. But for the first time in a long time, the unfinished parts no longer frightened her. She tucked the pendant close to her heart as she left the pub, tired now and wanting sleep. The future was wide open once again and every star in the night sky carried a promise of hope. Notes ▼ |
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