Cool As Ice

While searching through old images on my laptop I came across this one, from Mount Evans in Colorado. Taken by the infamous Murilee Martin, it’s me in a McLaren 650S some two miles above sea level. When I saw this wall of ice on our uneasy trip up the mountain, I had to stop and get the shot. Poor Murilee was in shirt sleeves despite the sub-freezing weather up there, literally standing at the edge of a thousand-foot cliff with his heels in the air and trying to frame the photo just right while I yelled at him to “GET THE WHOLE WALL OF ICE, OKAY?”

Driving up the ice-slick paved road to the summit, the McLaren’s wide summer tires skittering and sliding to the shoulder, knowing that a major wag of the tail would probably result in leaving the mountain at the speed of freefall in someone else’s $350,000 automobile, I should have been focusing entirely at the task at hand. My passenger certainly would have appreciated me doing so. But for some reason I was thinking of an old Steve Earle song.

I’ll repeat the lyrics here:

The eagle looked down on the river below
And he wrapped his wings round him and he fell like a stone
And the big salmon fought but the talons held true
Shuddered as the world turned from silver to blue

I stood there in awe though I’d seen it before
I was born in these mountains and I’ll die here for sure
I’ve traveled around I’ve seen city lights
But nothin’ that shined like the big sky at night

Some mornings will find me up above the timberline
Lonesome don’t seem like much once you’re this high
When it’s all said and done I usually find
Me and the eagle are of the same mind

Now when I was young I took me a wife
But she never took to the high country life
So now I’m alone
I don’t really mind
But her name echoes down from the canyon sometimes

Some mornings will find me up above the timberline
Lonesome don’t seem like much once you’re this high
When it’s all said and done I usually find
Me and the eagle are of the same mind

In my dreams there’s a horse, he stands eighteen hands high
He’s as white as the snow and there’s fire in his eyes
And he’ll bear only me though others have tried
And together we’ll travel up across the divide

Some mornings will find me up above the timberline
Lonesome don’t seem like much once you’re this high
When it’s all said and done I usually find
Me and the eagle are of the same mind

Me and the eagle are of the same mind

So as I drove up that hill, using just my fingertips to steer the car the same way Michael Schumacher did the Ferraris of the V10 era, I thought about some of the people I’d loved and said goodbye to, and the people whom I loved and to whom I’d be saying goodbye in the future. I thought about balancing my affection for others with my desire to accomplish something, anything at all, before running out of time on this planet.

Lonesome don’t seem like much once you’re this high

And though I had a friend with me, and though I was quite comfortably ensconced within a carbon-fiber supercar, I felt a sort of kinship with the narrator of Steve Earle’s song. You’re never as productive, as effective, as brilliant as you are when you’re alone. But not all of us can rely on a mountain to do our dirty work. Sometimes, in order to free people to be their best selves, and to be your own best self, you have to bring the mountain to yourself. When it’s all said and done, that is what you’ll usually find.