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Vishnu the Sustainer

Enormous beauty can slam a person right into humility. Jim knew this.

By Michael Wolcott

ForJIM MERRIMAN

LAST MONTHI made my second (failed) attempt to climb Vishnu Temple, arguably the most dramatic and well-known summit in the Grand Canyon. From its base near the Colorado River, the mountain rises nearly 5,000 feet to a tiny nubbin of Kaibab limestone floating in the Arizona sky.

My first stab at Vishnu was in 1995, not long after I learned that my friend Jim had died. The headline was a tease: Grand Canyon victim was trying to gather coins. The story read like this: A loner lives in the woods near Mather Point, where tourists make wishes and toss coins across the safety rail. Park rangers ticket him for climbing the rock where the coins land, but he goes back until his luck runs out. The end.

Police hadn't found next-of-kin, so my friend's name was not in the paper. At first, I doubted that Jim was the dead man. He was too good a climber to fall from rock he knew so well, and too proud to let tourists see him scramble after change. But I didn't think he would be drunk, which he was.

The booze was ten years behind Jim when we met in 1991. A one-time street alcoholic, he had turned his life around - twice - to become that rare and dignified thing: a free man.

"I can't live in a box," he used to say. Getting sober gave him back the house, the job, and the credit cards, but that stuff didn't mean much to him. "All I wanted was to be in the mountains or down some canyon. So I had to let it all go, you know?"

So he did. He lived out of a cheap backpack, finding homes across the West in bright and rocky places. Odd jobs bought beans and rice. Grand Canyon was his winter camp that year.

We met on the rim trail between park headquarters and the tourist lodge where I worked. It was late November and snowing, but he wore just a T-shirt, a cheap windbreaker and a cut-off pair of Levi's. His legs were built for steep, lonely places; the beard winter-colored and big enough to hide a bird's nest; the skin weathered like good boots.

We struck up a conversation and found we had the same basic addictions - to alcohol, wild places, and solitude. I was 35 then, just back from the Wyoming Rockies and wondering if I would cut the last cord and finally disappear into mountains. Jim was 50 and had surrendered to wandering.

For the next year-and-a-half we would conduct our friendship in chance meetings on that trail, standing for an hour or two of talk or walking for miles while sun fire flared off the canyon walls.

He did most of the talking. He liked to brag about his "penthouses," secret perches and shallow caves where he would land for weeks at a stretch - camps with million-dollar views and no neighbors. His needs were few - big landscapes, silence and privacy. And a ready way out.

"I like it here at the Canyon. All that room below the rim, AA meetings in the village when I get lonely. And when it's time to go, man, I'll be gone."

He had family somewhere. Once, I asked about his kids, and knew instantly that I had trespassed. After that I let him talk along his own lines. Once he started, he seemed almost afraid to stop. He loved to talk about animals.

"I like the ravens and coyotes. We get along. And the bighorns. One walked into my camp the other morning and came back later. I think we're gonna be friends."

We talked about hitting the backcountry together - maybe climbing Vishnu Temple - but never did. So after my latest shot at Vishnu, I visited Mather Point. A few terrifying heartbeats on the other side of the iron safety rail stood a knob of cream-colored limestone. Sunlight glittered off the coins. The tourists tossed dimes and quarters, wishing for something more than a killer snapshot. A few just went blank, and seemed to forget themselves. Enough space and the right light can do that. Enormous beauty can slam a person right into humility. Jim knew this:

"When you look at the Canyon, you're looking at billions of years, man. How important are we next to that? I feel God all around me here. My little troubles just dry up and blow away."

Michael Wolcott'sinward and outward travels are explored in this space every month.