The Falling Valley by Dan A. Cardoza

​The Falling Valley

Here at Yosemite, the sky is a vast lake full of locked doors. Each door is Santa Fe turquoise. The sole intent is to keep evil spirits and love at bay. 
     It’s early October, no rain in the forecast, though the tent zipper is a frosted rattlesnake skeleton spine. It zings and hisses as I open it. There’s a definitive smell of smoke and chill in the air. We are both aware it’s the quadrivium of the autumnal equinox. The time of year, anything can happen and probably will.
     You can’t climb Half Dome unless you have a pass, and the cables are up. Generally, from late May through Columbus Day weekend. I’m not sure why the park brochure references Columbus unless it’s because he was an explorer?
     The parallel, industrial cable wires are made of high tinseled steel. The cable is made from several strands of metal wire, twisted into a helix, forming composite rope. At Half Dome, each cable is threaded through the eye of vertical stay. The lengths of cable are connected by pre-determined cable clamps, each with two bolts and nuts. The ascent is over four hundred feet, nearly straight up. As in love, you can’t fall out unless you slip. Unless everything you know and trust about cables is humanly flawed.
     The backside of the silvery planet arches it’s back clear up to her plateau. At the very top, you can look out at the entire Yosemite Valley. If not for a wall of spruce and cedar conifers, you could treat your eyes on a view of the golden scaled Pacific. To climb here is to feel as though you are in space.
     It’s the time of year, most waterfalls, Bridalveil, Vernal and Sentinel, have emptied and hushed, having spilled their watery entrails all spring and summer to entertain tourists.
~~~
In the clumsy hours of 2:00 A.M., Max and I sip Jack Daniels and swell ourselves with makeshift S’ mores: Small Mellow marshmallows, chocolate, and Ritz Crackers. Before tonight, we’ve managed to navigate inside the friend zone. A goodnight kiss destroys all this in sequestered nylon staked tent. The sex is voltaic, electric. 
~~~
Our fantasy future and planned climb keep us mostly awake. Everything about who we are is evolving. Our sense of what we are becoming takes away some of the typical climbing angst. Being less cautious seems natural, almost demanded.
     In the early dark of morning, we fumble stick matches and hand me down cookware. Our Dutch Brother’s coffee, brown eggs, and Paleo, organic bacon, tastes better than any last meal. After relaxing a minute, we store unneeded gear and begin our trip.
     The hike to the end of the trailhead, at the base of Half Dome, ends in five hours. Just to get here is exhausting. Exhilarated with a second wind, we take our place in the climb lottery line.
 My voice is chatty when I mention to Max, the column ahead of us might be, “Two-hundred hikers tops.”
     Max calmly stretches his neck, says, “Mostly groups and couples.”
     Up ahead, to our right, we can’t help but notice the man recovering on a granite boulder the size of a chair. He’s just finished barfing in the face of fear.
     As we move toward the start of the cables, we find ourselves next to him. His cheeks are shiny grey porcelain, precisely the same texture as the weathered skin of the long-abandoned dead on the slopes of Mount Everest.
     I can’t help myself, “Are you ok?” I ask.
 Max gently taps my shoulder as if to move us forward in line. Max nods his head one time at the gentleman, the way some men do as if to say, “Hey, I’m sorry, man.”
 Before we can take another step, the man makes eye contact and reluctantly answers me, “I will be fine. At least I’ll live to see another day.”
Max again petitions, “Emily, please keep moving, they’re stacking up behind us?” 
     In one growing, fearful line, we shuffle forward, higher and higher. Any fucking vagary of what death might look like evaporates into the building cumuli above us. 
 It’s not until we’re halfway up that Max asks, “Did you catch what the sitting man muttered when we walked past him?”
     Max swears he said, “Half Dome is a tombstone.” 
 Blessed with a mild case of Tourette’s, I say something absurd like, “He said, Love, is a doom zone.” 
     You’ll find a park ranger at every Yosemite entrance booth. Any ranger will always appear anxious to speak about their beloved Half Dome. You can see it in their eyes and smiles. Half-Dome is their Candy Crush. Even though all we want is the ubiquitous green tourist pamphlet, spackled in hiking trails, you can almost feel their frustration. They live to share. They are fully aware there is something sacred at altitude, yet they have been instructed to be brief. So instead, they check our pass, contort their faces, and wrestle back their tongues. Then they ask us to hurry along.
 Half Dome is a granite menhir at the eastern end of Yosemite Valley. Half Dome has its own zip code, 95389. The utilitarian green brochure, with utilitarian font, describes it as a colossus, with a combined weight of a thousand Giza Pyramids. It’s named after its distinct shape, an iconic half Saturn. Its sheer face hints at something much expansive, a forever half of something esoteric. It’s an operational definition of itself.
     The front side is an escarpment, almost 9000 straight up. Rumor has it; Ansel Adams took black and white photographs of the cliff’s face, hoping one day it might become his sepia Mona Lisa. It’s stellar and solar vertical lines point straight up, perhaps to other worlds. The backside of the monolith is smooth and convex. It’s the pedestrian side of the Dome. Its alien configuration seems out of place, best suited for one of the valleys of the Red Planet.
 Max and I struggle against fear. We are best friends, and now we are stumbling into love. There’s not much that’s riskier? This beautiful day, under a closing sky, we think everything, as an upside. Dual cables, like gothic prophets, intend to lead us up the mountain.
     The raised cables act as sinew, as they stretch from post to post. The posts stand nearly four feet tall and string approximately fifteen feet apart. They’ve been cranked taut, so you clutch them at waist height, and literally pull yourself along. Dual, straight lines, they stretch you all the way to the summit. 
     The arched cables are life support, and like us, they will end at the beginning of twilight. At this time of day, you can’t see stars, save for past experience, you wouldn’t even know where they’re hung. They seem awfully close this early evening.
     As we tug ourselves upward, passing climbers share nervous laughter, a kind of gallows humor. A somber and chiseled man behind us, with an R.E.I pack, asks us to please hurry along, as if he’s on some kind of mission. And so our pace quickens each step ahead intentional.
     As we span ever higher, we wonder out loud about the obvious danger. 
 I ask Max, “Why does the Federal Park Service support and advertise such a harrowing climb?”
 I get no answer. 
 It’s clear the monument’s spine has been drilled, stabbed, and bolted. This time, she is restrained with Lilliputian cables and posts instead of barbed wire fencing. At each support, planked 2” X 12” timbers cross our upward momentum — each one anchored to her granite flank for traction. 
     No one has to tell us, but we know they’re here if just to keep Max and me from slipping or falling, especially today because the granite below us is icy. We wear gloves to reduce the chance of cable splinters. We pull and pull. 
     As in life, each day offers us the potential of exploration. There’s something or somewhere out there to challenge us, to move us forward, like love. Sometimes it pulls us, sometimes it pushes. At our age, it’s expected. 
     After a short time at the top, we reverse and head back in the direction of our past. From way up here, we can see all the places we’ve been, some for the very last time. With each step, we darken. 
     As we plummet, we feel fatigued and pressed, with a five-hour hike back to camp waiting for us at the bottom. We accelerate, commit infinitesimal mistakes, and anticipate failures. There’s no backing out now. But we’ve made our separate lives appear as obstacles to survival. And so we go down, conflicted, and confused.
     In shifts, we all descend in chaotic order. The decline is half-fear of the tumble. 
 Max and I are on our own now. We are on a tethered walk in space. The moon is a scythe chopping stalks of alarm. The elements begin to torment us, raise our anxiety. The winds are wolves running toward us. Other couples pass us, nervously giggle, raise their chins, and pretend.
~~~
I can’t tell you how or why Max and I fell.
 We are both emotionally fit. Max works at FedEx. His legs are tempered with stainless steel hinges for knees. His hands are vice grips, I know. When we kissed for the first time, I couldn’t get them off my tits. Now it’s too late. Now I wish he’d held me tighter, never let me go. 
 I’m ok so far in dealing with our loss. I think we both are, not sure though. And it’s not a total loss. Max and I were just getting started. Sure, I admit grieving is difficult, but I’m young, I deserve a new beginning. It’s a challenge anytime you have to mourn a love in transition. 
 But the good news, we were clearly falling in love. And we both fell. And now we can’t ever be friends again. 
 Max slipped, I slid, and we ended up free-falling off the side of the mountain. Let’s be honest. It could have been worse. At the very least, we can boast we had something to lose. 
 Love is an emotion as unique as grief.
     Each year at the beginning of fall, near the bottom of the sheer face, hikers from all over the world swear they hear flapping, something falling out of the sky. Some are lovers. Some listen to their hearts fluttering against their ribcage. 
     Too soon it’s winter. The canyon floor is white spiced in snow, frosted shiny with hyaline wings.


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Dan A. Cardoza’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have met international acceptance. Most recently, his work is featured in, or will soon be featured in the 45th Parallel, Bull, Cleaver, Entropy, Five on the Fifth, Gravel, Literary Heist, Montana Mouthful, New Flash Fiction Review and Spelk.