Begin the Begin

I don't know if I can do it. When I look at images of Aconcagua, like the one above, I don't know if I have the courage to do it, the stones people might say, if I were a man. This mountain scares the hell out of me. And it should. It's the tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere, and the tallest in South America - in fact the tallest outside of those man-killers in Asia, the Himalayas. Aconcagua takes people, too. They die of the cold - the weather blows in from the Pacific, turning from rain to snow and ice so fast it seems like sorcery might be to blame. Or they die falling, or from the altitude, like the two journeymen American climbers who died on the mountain a couple years back.

So, I'm afraid - afraid in a way that I never was of Kili. I always knew I'd summit the Roof of Africa, if I didn't understand until the ascent how cold, filthy, wet, ill, in pain and generally sick of the mountain I'd get. But I knew down deep in a way I can't explain that I'd stand at Uhuru Peak, even if I fretted to everyone I wouldn't. And I never really worried Kilimanjaro would kill me, not that gorgeous, glamour-puss of a mountain, with its legendary snows that so entranced Hemingway.

I can't say that about Aconcagua. Perhaps in part because I now know what it takes to reach the top of one of the Seven Summits - and Kilimanjaro was a relatively easy one. Aconcagua is not. Kili is 19,341 feet tall. Aconcagua is 22,841 feet tall - 3,500 feet higher. I was on Kili one week. I'll be on Aconcagua three. About 30,000 people a year climb Kili, though fewer than half summit. About 3,000 climb Aconcagua. Not many, I think, are women.

Certainly not many are 51-year-old women trying to find their footing, to keep their sanity, after losing their brother to a heroin overdose. And a partner to...whatever it was that caused him to pack up and run without leaving so much as a note, or a forwarding address. And parents, so much more slowly, to illness and accidents common, like dementia, and not, like a broken neck. That my parents are still living, despite their emotional and physical pain, and at home, has seen me through what has been a horrific few years.

These last years haven't held more loss than what just about anyone eventually encounters in life, but last July I recognized I was in trouble. When my ex left the way he did, on top of all the greater tragedies, it almost destroyed me. Suicide skirted my thoughts, though hanging on to whatever self-esteem I had left kept me going. I refused to pull a Plath, to become another woman writer sticking her head into an oven, metaphorically or not, over a male companion without her talent or success. Even though inside me, in a dark, ugly place, slithered the conviction that I simply wasn't good enough for him.

And so I needed a plan, a dream, a goal, a scheme - something grand enough it would see me through the days when I hurt so badly I locked myself inside my room, sobbing and screaming into a pillow so I wouldn't scare my parents. Ascending Kilimanjaro and Aconcagua was a big part of it - just like finding a home at Woman's Day as an online columnist was, though I still can't quite believe that happened. (And if you haven't read my work on the Woman's Day site, please do. I'm really, really proud of it and it deserves to be read.)

Kilimanjaro saved me, and so did Aconcagua, and I won't abandon those summits. No matter how much it hurts to get there, or how terrifying it is to try. I'm close to choosing my guides for Aconcagua, and the date of my climb. I'm pushing it back into January, I think, though I hate to do it. But I need the added time to train. I'll be back at here, just as often as I can, and I hope you'll rejoin me. I've missed you, and this blog. It's me completely unfiltered, and I like to believe that's not a bad thing.

If you'd like to cheer me on, or warn me off, or anything in between, please comment below. And thank you for coming back. I promise it won't be dull.