Showtime

I tried to pack for days.  I kept trying to figure it out.  What would I need?  My mind, though, was muddled, dug down deep in horse shit and mire.  I had all the cold weather gear I owned strewn about the bedroom floor.  Some of it was twenty years old and useless.  It belonged in a museum.  I had triple thick wool socks.  How did they ever go into my boots, I wondered?  Five pairs.  Six.  Some of the first long underwear ever made by Patagonia.  Old ski gloves from the first days of Gore-Tex.  Thick polypro pants for sitting around a camp fire on cold mountain nights.  I needed to make a trip to my buddy's outdoor store where I had once been something of a figure, a climber. . . an adventurer in the land of temerity.  Now. . . .

Dick and I went a long way back.  When he was in his mid-twenties, we began climbing together.  I took him and another friend to ascend Popocatapetl in Mexico when it was new to us all.  I was experienced.  I'd been there before.

But Dick and I rarely saw one another now.  Months would pass.  The years.  But on Christmas Eve in an elegant bar on the Boulevard, loopy on liquor and the day, we decided to go to Park City and ski.  He was going to the Outdoor Retailers Show in Salt Lake which was always fun.  We would eat big dinners at Spencer's Steak House for Fifty dollar Kobe steaks and Romaine Caesar salads you ate with your fingertips and bottle after bottle of rich red wine.  After that it would just be the two of us in Park City with Hollywood, skiing all day and celebrating with the stars at night.

"I don't think my ski pants fit any more," I said.  "And all I have to ski in is my old mountain climbing jacket."

"Is that the Marmot, the bright orange one?" he asked.

"I think so."

"That's fine.  Here's a cheap pair of pants.  Do you have any long underwear?"

"Sort of."

"What do you mean 'sort of?'"

"Yea, I guess."

"You'll want some ski socks.  They are a little padded in the shins now.  You'll like them.  Do you have polarized sun glasses?"

"I think so.  I still have climbing goggles."

By the time we'd gone through the store, I had my arms full.

And when I got home, the new stuff spread across the floor with everything else.  Shit.  What should I pack?

I stayed home from work the day before we left.  I had to get this done.  I pulled out a big duffel and started to cram things in, but it wouldn't all fit.  At twenty-five dollars a bag, I didn't want two.  I pulled down a big travel suitcase with wheels.  Everything went in nicely.  O.K.  Now we were cooking.  Cameras?  What did I want to take.  I had an image of myself making oddly spectacular pictures worthy of the finest Chelsea galleries.  I had cameras and lenses all over the dining room table.  Then more.  iPod.  Audio Recorder.  Cell phone.  Chargers.  iPad.  Kindle.  More chargers.  MacBook Pro. Cables for three digital cameras.  Some magazines I hadn't gotten around to.  Portable hard drive.  The table was overflowing.  Where was I going to put all this?  I was sweating.  I still had things to do.

I went to work, but when I came home, it was all still there.  I had to prepare dinner.  I was exhausted.  Sick, surely.  But was it real or self-inflicted?  I couldn't face making the decisions.  They would have to make me.  I would decide in the morning.

When the cab came at 5:30, I wasn't ready.  In a panic, I threw some things into a backpack.  That will have to do, I told myself.  I have to go or miss my flight.  I hadn't really slept.  Muzzy, I said goodbye to a cat who knew what the bags meant.  She'd been freaky for days, but now she wouldn't come in.

"I'm leaving," I said.  "In or out?  In or out?"

She knows what that means, and she always goes inside.  This dark morning, however, she wouldn't even say goodbye.  She turned and ran away.

Salt Lake was bruise gray when the plane landed.  I hadn't seen it for fifteen years, I thought.  I really didn't remember much but the restaurants and clubs and the big convention center in the middle of town that held the retailers show.   The last time I was there, a tornado tore the roof off while the show was still going on.  There had been many injuries.  I, however, had gone to the mountains for a demo.  I never got to see the damage.

But my wife did.  She was there.  She was in the building when the tornado hit.  And then something had changed.  Something was rent.  Within months, she had left.

That's another story, but it was what I was thinking about as I waited on the bench outside for the hotel shuttle to arrive.  Welcome Back to Salt Lake.