around the face of the mountain; not fast, a steady fluid pace.
The mountain was called Supahn Dagi, thirteen thousand six hundred and ninety-seven feet at the summit. It was ninety-nine percent rock. It was located thirty miles south of Malazgirt and Patnos in the heart of what for a thousand years had been called Kurdistan, a wasteland of rugged mountains and high valleys.
Over the dry smell of decomposing rock and wind-scoured soil he caught a momentary scent of cedar and oranges, strong and sweet. It could have come north from the shores of Lake Van.
He ran for a half hour, and then turned off the dirt road at a barely discernible goat track. It continued around to the north for a mile and began climbing steeply. He ran without effort, his rhythm established, his mind centered.
The rocky outcrops and barren slopes were beginning to have definition. It was 05:30 AM: Sunrise at 05:50 AM. He'd timed the first part of his exercise to arrive at a small meadow just below eight thousand feet, at dawn.
When he arrived, the sun began to light the surrounding mountains in orange and gold. An ancient poem came unbidden to his thoughts and he whispered it to the hills in the language of the Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet, Omar Khayyam who'd written it nearly a thousand years before.
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
Nearby a cuckoo sang, perfect bell tones, high and sweet. He took the pack off, stretched his arms up and bent quickly, touching his palms to the ground. He did this a dozen times, and then laid out the stove and a few items in preparation for breakfast. But food would come later.
Looking out across the lonely valleys toward the mountains beyond, he sensed the bulk of the rock rising vertically behind him.
That first time they went out, when Private Nicols finally caught up with Gilbert at the little plateau, and looked up at the pinnacles, he knew what Gilbert was going do and it sent a chill over him.
"Mr. Piers?"
Gilbert looked at him quietly, not interested, not ignoring him.
"Y'all ain't gonna climb that thing alone, are you? I mean no back up, no rope...shit! I don't want to bring you back in a doggy bag. Everybody in the lab, including the staff sergeant is gonna be pissed at me."
Gilbert said nothing.
The private went on, "You are going to do it." He'd been looking at the thing as he talked.
Finally Piers was forced to respond to the private to get him to shut up.
"Mr. Nicols, I like to do this in silence until the climb is done..."
Private Nicols, relating the story, laughed ruefully. "Them puppy dog's eyes weren't soft no more, it's like I got two arrers stuck in my face. What the hell, I shut up. Besides, I was...like, beginning to believe him, you know, that he'd climb the thing without falling off.
"Well he did climb it, an' just watching made my stomach churn. I swear to God I never seen nothin' done better. Ole Gilbert, he walked around the base touching the rock, feelin' it, lookin' up at it sorta strange. Then he don't say shit, like, 'well I'm goin' now', or 'see ya later'. He has this bag of chalk or something hanging from his belt. He covers his hands with it and then just starts, and while I'm trying to keep track of him he's already thirty feet up and moving fast.
It's like stretch...lift...stretch; stop, quick look around at the rock and off he goes again. The sun was up so I could see pretty good. He's going across bits of that face that don't have no holds I can see. When he'd got up five hundred feet or so, I put the glasses on him, and I catch his face real clear in the light. It was, I don't know, like one of them painted saints in an Eyetalian church. He's serious, man, real serious.
"I was follerin' him up this crack, a little wider than his body; he's kinda wedged in, moving up inch wise, like a caterpillar. Only place he slows down is near the top, and it's a hundred feet of worse than vertical.
"I wish there'd been another climber around to tell me what's going on, I mean I know he's doin' some real superior shit: Like technical stuff. It's like this thing," the private reached out and slapped the stock of his M16, "I know what every part of this sucker does, but when I'm puttin' them in the ten ring, I don't think on it, I do it. I know it!"
Gilbert turned and looked up at the gray rock spire. His first glance took in the whole tower as a unit, then up in a searching flow. He noted lines he'd followed in the past. His eyes moved in a series of steps, with pauses as though taking a breath before moving on.
He rated the whole structure as a variety of easy pitches of two or three in difficulty, a nasty chimney three-quarters of the way up—occasionally a four—and the backside route had a hundred feet of five mostly due to verticality and total exposure, a double overhang and bad rock.
It was approximately nine hundred feet from where he stood to the top of the pinnacle. There were four such columns on the north side of the mountain that stood menhir-like, searching for an ancient Mongol menace to the north. The bulk of the mountain loomed behind the sentinels another four thousand feet above.
Today he would take an easier route, straight up the north face. He imagined the climb in his mind as a whole event. His goal was not so much speed as economy. If possible, the climbing should be elegant. His purpose was more than just reaching the top; he knew he could do that. He climbed at a level only someone of comparable skill and attitude could judge and appreciate.
Having put his camp in order, Gilbert walked around to the north side and put his hands on the rock.
He felt a vague unease, but couldn't locate the source, so he set it aside. The ascent went fast. Two hundred feet from the top he realized he was attacking the rock, slamming his hands onto the holds, bashing his fists into cracks.
He stopped at the top of a crack beneath a difficult transition.
What is it? He felt split.
Experience demands that you climb with a clean mind. You must have a good attitude on the rock. Without rope, there can be no mistakes, only brief disappointment, perhaps terror and certainly death.
He carefully brought the environment back into focus. For a few moments the strange intentions submerged. The transition was difficult and he managed the hundred feet of pure tension moves to the top. It wasn't pretty. In a lesser climber the distraction might have killed him, but his level of technical skill took up the slack.
Dissatisfaction was not what he expected to feel as he sat atop the monolith. He tried to compose himself, but couldn't. He felt something reach out for him.
After ten minutes of it and no letup, he stood atop the thousand-foot basalt pillar and began a Tai Chi exercise. He concentrated on the moves and for the first fifteen minutes regained a kind of harmony.
The private concluded his story with the strange things he saw atop the pinnacle.
"When he got up there, I couldn't see too good, so I backed off down the road and had a look with the
