To watch the gale gathering on Denali
is to know why the Athabascans called Denali
a salmon stiffening in a film of death--
The snow the wind bore was squall-beat and ice-age old,
and when it drives against an open cheek, you know
you're high where it punches you like a boxer
and you can't breathe back in half oxygen--
you turn your back to breathe,
raise your hands to fight and parry. . . .
At least, that's what I remember,
tent-bound and eardrum to a wind
filling camp with spindrifts of snow,
straining against our nylon walls,
and us, unresting, undrifting snow.
We were not going to beat anything, certainly
not the mountain that killed and maimed so many,
like those Brits who climbed in the wind--
the rangers had to rescue them
with a llama, the helicopter
used for just such operations,
searching days in high winds and air--
and for the climbers, days without sound of rescue,
besides the noises of choppers,
maybe just the wind.
Two were saved
(the highest helicopter rescue ever, someone said).
The third walked away from death,
away from his hurt two.
He was going back home.
Evidently, they found him a few thousand feet down--
quite a ways to fall.
They brought in the llama.
On McKinley, they call them Denali Llamas
because they rescue your soul.
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