Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain by Jonathan Bloom (bookreader TXT) 📗

displaced by blistering Wrath. The screeching of the wind and the crack of the eruptions had reached a crescendo. All else was drowned out. The sky was dark now with the exception of lava glow through cloud. The world was noise. All matter of ejecta was flying past them: Cylindrical bombs, cow pie bombs, rotational bombs and core bombs all came close enough to be heard hissing as they passed, and some actually hit them and scorched their clothing. The surface beneath their boots and mitts was comprised exclusively of lapilli, fist-sized lava rocks rendered slick by melted snow. Crampons were useless and handholds were non-existent. To understand the experience better, imagine the days of your childhood at the beach when you attempted to climb a dune that was just a tad too steep for you. Perhaps your friends have done so ahead of you, but you are the runt of the pack and need more time. As you dig your hands and feet into the hot crystals and scurry your limbs faster and faster, you realize it is of no use; the collapse of the sand is faster than your efforts to counter it. You are moving backwards and then you are sliding downward. The frustration you feel. The hopelessness. Now weighted down by Junk, the stones fell away too quickly from Hoyt’s grasp.

Junk made a sad effort to help with legs kicking out behind him, finding purchase in nothing. But what he could not provide physically Junk provided mentally.

“Hoyt!” he wailed over everything.

“What?” Hoyt replied.

“Drop. Junk.”

There was a swollen pause before Hoyt asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

With some hesitation, Hoyt removed his knife and began to sever the rope tying him to Junk. Junk grabbed his hand and stopped him from cutting.

“Whoa whoa whoa. No.” Junk rasped. “The junk.” This was accompanied by manic pointing at things adorning Hoyt’s person. By “junk,” Junk had apparently meant to indicate the miscellany that Chhiri Tendi had lashed to them in order to weigh them down to combat weak gravity, including pots, pans, and sleeping bags.

“Oh! Right!” replied Hoyt.

He cut off the detritus weighing them down. And at some time on September 14th during the early evening hours, William Hoyt and Aaron Junk’s bodies gently rose into the air and up to the summit. Two unpleasant, tattered, ridiculous angels ascending to their private heaven…

What is there to say about the summit? The surviving party never wrote of it. We can assume there was no honey, no gold, and certainly no milk despite Mano the man-child’s deepest wishes. All the more discouraging, the sun had already set. The sky was as black as a widow’s veil so Hoyt and Junk were deprived even the God’s-eye view that usually welcomes the climber. In short, we can be certain nothing, not a damned single, solitary, reclusive, unsocial boon awaited them at the top.

But perhaps the boon then was psychological, stemming from inside their hearts? That is possible, but without the climbers’ testaments in ink, we cannot know. There is no Truth to the matter if the evidence does not exist. The mountain’s experience and remembrance of the ascent is any bit as valid as those of the climbers. As a matter of fact, in an interview I conducted with Mano the man-child several years later, the human oddity recounted to me what Fumu’s experience likely was. He felt it was actually more important than the perspectives of the two men whose lives were fleeting like all men’s. After all, Mano said, Fumu was the one who would outlive us all and become the de facto keeper of the tale:

“Fumu says: I am weary. I am working now and I will never stop working. I must keep growing. Spitting red fire in the air to cool and grow. I cannot ever rest – ever – because the unfeeling Wind never stops and it will have its way with me. It will wear me down to no more than a knoll in time and so I must work and never rest. I must keep growing. The wind cannot conquer me even though it will in time. And then there is the Earth below me, indecisive and erratic. It may boost me up to even greater heights or without warning it may crack and swallow me whole. Is it my friend against the Wind or is it the friend of my enemy? There is no truth to it…not even the equivocal Earth knows. It will continue to vacillate to the beat of some cosmic rhythm hidden from my sight. I cannot trust Her, and so I must work.

“But what’s this? What’s this irritation upon my brow? What are these insignificant scurriers who come to bother? I see. It is Man, come every season to suck at my horrible teat with full knowledge I have nothing to offer. Do they not know I can shake them off as a horse does a fly? Do they not see me shake off the others around them and with them? You are my children, all of you; children of the big world, made of the same stuff as the big world. But you are an irritation. Can you not see how busy I am as you sit atop my head? I love you, irritation, but I have much to do. Go from me or I will shake you off. Find what you need elsewhere. Go and do not return. I am busy. You are mine, and I love you, but I am tired and I am busy. Go.”

Perhaps hearing the mountain, Hoyt and Junk decide to try and live. In the excitement of racing to the top, the two had forgotten their flags. It did not matter to them now. They took a cross from Hoyt’s pocket, a hip flask from Junk’s, and a book of unspeakable sketches Chhiri Tendi had tied to them, and jammed all three into a narrow,