by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Here buses rattle like buckets
of bolts; brake drums made stronger
by prayers to Santiago. The paint of these buses
regalo blue, cielo red, tierra y sanguine.
Up front Old Virgin Mother rides lookout,
and it is the law: all bus tires must be square,
all drivers must be certifiably blind,
all riders must have springs in their necks
and their ass cheeks.
The men wear their hats extra jammed on.
The women tie the live chickens together loosely
on purpose, just to make trouble. And the old
toothless one sags next to me. She has always
just eaten a tub of garlic, she has always just rubbed
her armpits and genitals with vinegar and goat cheese.
She is always leaning toward me, never away.
And I am always her seat mate, or that of her older sister
or her aged father. Always I am sitting thigh to thigh
with La Muerte. Now this La Muerte, this old one, laughs
maniacally at absolutely nothing, and over and over,
and always right in my face. Her breath fogs my vision, wilts
my hat brim, makes my nose cry. I work hard to stay by her,
to love her, love her cackle, love her odor, to love the pain
that I feel. If I can love her, if I can stand this pain,
of being near what others flee,
I will be able to write tonight,
and maybe for as long as a month.

Ah La Muerte, patron of las chupatintas, the pen-pushers,
you who only travel by bursting bus or teeming train or
broken car or bombed-out lorry, you who run
all over my page, screeching, "Catch me if you can,"
you who hide between the lines as though they are hedges,
peering over like some old baby in a macabre peek-a-boo.
Ah La Muerte, my love, my lover, pray for us, your writer children.
Give us all those acrid, sour, dour, and sickeningly sweet
smirks and smells, exactly the ones we need to write right.
Please, I beg you in all my authorial insanity, sit beside us
now and forever, fertilize our writing for ever and always
with the holy compost of your smiles.

I was on a solo retreat up in the Sierra Nevada, nominally to write. But, as I sat with my laptop and a cooling cup of tea, through the window came the call of the mountains.
 
I’m nothing, if not one to answer the call of someone in need… yes, I'm that self-less. So, I grabbed my titanium tiara and bolted for the door.
 
Woe to the faint of spirit. This summer the Sierra are buried in snow. The road into the heart of the mountains is closed, gated with a huge metal ROAD CLOSED sign. Our hero was not to be deterred, however, and I stepped around the road's locked gate, hopped on my bike and started to ride.

As the road careened through ancient red fir forests neck deep in snow, me galloping between snow-carved walls, I was attuned to the call of those distant and hapless mountains.

I'm coming, I sent my message out into the open sky. And then nearly slammed into the back of a plow.

Zounds!

The road crew was making steady progress, but... they were slow. Painfully, lethargically sloth-like. The pass was still miles and miles away.  Ever gracious, I curtsied and thanked them for their efforts, but in truth they weren't even close to where I needed to be.

I had to find another way.

The next day I was back. This time with my bike and my skis.

Again, I galloped through the gauntlet of carved snow. I passed snapped-off trees, victims of the winter storms. I zoomed around frozen lakes, blanketed in snow but for a pool of glacier-green water perched in their middle. At the highest point, I dismounted. I hobbled my steed and left her with a nosebag full of snowballs.  I switched into my backcountry princess-to-the-rescue gear: plastic boots, climbing skins, ski poles and -- of course -- my skis, then looked south along a ridge, scanning for massifs in mortal need. The ridge rose higher and higher until at the apex of its ascent, far in the distance, beckoned a desperate prince of a mountain. Beautiful, gracious, winsome and vulnerable Bull Run Peak.

Oho! I chortled in glee. Oops, I mean "I gnashed my teeth in frustration at the distance that separated me from that sweet and defenseless mountain".

What was a princess to do but her hero's journey?

So I started off.

There were all the usual hurdles... ogres, dragons, and... dammit I only brought one GU energy gel!

Every hero's journey has a nearly insurmountable final obstacle -- the giant white whale, the slopes of Mt. Doom, Darcy's bigoted aunt, evil king Galbatorix. Mine was no different. To reach the summit of Bull Run Peak, I had to climb the mountain's steep upper snowfield overhung with a huge cornice like a giant tooth.

Tiara slightly askew, I stowed my skis on my pack and kicked steps in the snow up the final 300 vertical feet, too steep to ski, too steep even for skins. I glanced nervously up at that menacing cornice, waiting for it to come crashing down on top of me...

Only, wait a minute. That cornice is way over there, not on top of me. And hey, this slope is looking pretty darn inviting to ski down. In fact (and here I tallied the elevation in my head), I see a 1,500-foot open shot down to the bottom of the valley on sun-soaked corn snow.

Sweet! This rescuing business ain't too shabby.

I finally gained the summit ridge, then topped out. A few rocks marked the very top and I put my hand on them.

Hey, Bull Run. I'm here to rescue you.

Took you long enough. But thanks. I was feeling peaked.

I smiled. Under the weather?

Mmmmmm.                                                                             (Click here for a flyover video of the journey)