To have lived in the highlands
has rendered the lowlands incomplete. My intellect rebels at such
thoughts, but in my heart I feel it to be true. I am inflated by
the mountain. Tendrils of perfection reach out from my past,
usurping the present.
Randy LaChapelle
When In
Doubt, Go Higher
I opened When In Doubt, Go
Higher, a collection of essays from the Frisco, Colo.-based monthly
magazine, The Mountain Gazette, rather reluctantly. I assumed the
essays would be by testosterone-laden, muscle-headed mountain
climbers, who write about things like what it’s like to gnaw
your own toes off while trapped underneath a snowbank with only a
headlamp and a mitten, after having attempted a solo ascent of some
mountain I’ve never heard of.
Alas, I was wrong. The
vast majority of stories reprinted in this anthology are written by
people who weave great tales with self-deprecating good humor and a
journalist’s eye for detail. And actually — though the
Gazette’s editor, M. John Fayhee, might disagree — this
is an anthology of love stories: love found on a ferry from
Seattle, a love of high places and cold mountains, a love of the
West and its freakshow litany of characters.
When In
Doubt, Go Higher includes musings by many of the usual suspects in
the Western canon, such as Ed Abbey, Galen Rowell, Doug Peacock,
Katie Lee and John Nichols. But a handful of lesser-known writers
are tossed in, and my favorite chapters include Lacey
Storey’s ode to her high-altitude romps in Summit County and
Jack Aley’s “Confessions of a Sauna Junkie.”
Even though Fayhee jokes in the introduction that his
plan for the book was to “bind up all 80-some-odd issues of
the Gazette, slap a huge pricetag upon the volume and proceed to
rake in vast quantities of praise and money,” he actually has
edited a thoughtful — and adventurous — anthology of
stories about the West.
When In Doubt, Go
Higher
edited by M. John Fayhee
355
pages, softcover. $20. Sports Press, 2002
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Have no doubts, go higher.
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