The mountains stand as majestic sentinels over the land, and the mountain goats are everyday yard pets. Many Glacier Valley is filled with a series of deep, rich glacial lakes, and on one stands a giant brown hotel. Many Glacier Hotel, built in 1914, sits at the base of Mount Allen, hugging the shores of Swiftcurrent Lake, and faces the giant beasts of snow-tipped mountains that fill the Many Glacier Valley. Young people flock to the hotel to work for the summer from all across the globe on the hunt for something new.
I was one such wanderer. I had gone to waitress at Glacier National Park with nothing in mind except the promise of playing outside and meeting new friends and finding adventure. So on the 19th of July when my friend, Adrienne, told me that two of our other friends, Tim and Ellen, had the next day off and wanted to climb Mount Allen, one of the most massive mountains in the park, I immediately answered that we were going.
It was an early morning and a long, tedious hike with many uphill miles, but when I finally stepped onto the rounded peak I was hit by the magnitude of the beauty around me. Tim and Ellen stood side-by-side, silently absorbing their victory, and I stood beside them and tried to inhale it all. The mountains surrounded us, brown and red and streaked with white, but we towered over them all, and they dipped and rose beneath us like humble servants.
“It’s so beautiful,” I said. “Don’t you just want to rub it all over you like sunscreen?” Everyone nodded consent.
We took the mandatory victory pictures, then dropped our packs onto the rocks and snuggled down, trying to find those smooth places that would let us rest. We napped in the sun and shared a Butterfinger and tried to see how far we could stretch our Swedish fish. We idled in the sun for probably an hour before we decided we’d better leave.
“Just put your hand on those rocks, there,” Tim said. We were descending. I maneuvered my right foot
down until my heel caught a slight edge on the rock beneath me, enough to put a little weight on. I then placed my
left hand and weight on the two boulders that Tim pointed out, rocks roughly the size of five gallon gas cans, stacked
neatly on top of each other, and swung my left leg out over the void to try to find a foothold. When the boulders
came free, I could do nothing but fall with them.
Falling off a mountain is a curious sensation. It happens so fast that there is no thought and no room for
observation. When the rocks slipped I yelled a loud “dadgummit,” and then I felt my right arm being wrenched as
Tim caught me by the wrist at the same moment that I felt the heavy weight of the rocks hitting my left thigh, and
then I clung to the mountain and stared at Tim and breathed and breathed and breathed.
Tim and I looked at each other. I looked up at the other two girls. All of our eyes were swollen; no one spoke.
Then everyone spoke at once, except for me. “Good God. Are you okay? Sweet Jesus. You almost just died.”
I just nodded.
I recognized that I had just been snatched from death, but I did not want to sit and ponder the
implications. I did not want to think about what would have happened had Tim not grabbed me, had I gone first,
had one of the other girls gone first. Tim was probably the only one strong enough to catch me and hold the weight
of me until I swung back to the rock face.
I could not feel any resentment towards the mountain or even the rocks that fell, for they were just doing
what nature does. I could only breathe. My legs felt like soggy oatmeal, but I took a step down and then another
step and another until there was no more vertical exposure but only loose rocks to stumble over. The rest of the hike
down was interminable.
I do remember how content I felt once I was back, showered, in new clothes, and sitting on the front porch
of the dorms, though. My fellow hotel employees surrounded me playing guitar, talking, and laughing in the
lingering summer sunshine. Tim and Adrienne came wandering up with a six pack, and they sat beside me and we
all soaked in the remainder of that glorious mountain daylight together.
Everyone’s smiles and laughs shone bright in their tan faces, and I felt like the sunlight had seeped into my
stomach until I was swollen with it. I’d conquered death that day. And I had the whole next day off to climb another
mountain. Of all the places on the map, I wouldn’t have traded any for Montana.
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