Thor Whispers to Icarus on a Winter’s Day
Mount Thor—as titanic as the god it’s named for. It had taken weeks to get to the remote island in the northeast of Nunavut, but as I stood under the 5,000-foot peak, the only thing that mattered was the next six hours.
I remember the first rock wall I ever climbed. I think I was seven or eight. I had just finished my first Little League practice at Pier 40, and we all ran to the rec room. It was any kid’s dream in there—foosball tables, air hockey, a TV always on, vending machines packed to the gills—but I was always in the adjoining room, where the 10-foot ceiling felt like 10,000, and the rock wall spanned for miles.
I had never climbed that far north before. I always enjoyed winter weather, but there was something about the Northern Canada air that pierced through any love I previously had for the cold. I knew I couldn’t climb in the parka I was wearing, so I shed the fur. The wind immediately gusted and blew a chill straight down my spine.
The first climbing experience I had outside that room in Pier 40 came a couple of years later, in Vermont. We always spent our winters there, skiing mountains like Stowe and Stratton and all the rest in between. The first summer weekend we spent there, I asked my parents why we were driving to a ski mountain when there was no snow on the ground. When we got there, I looked around and saw what summer did to a ski mountain: alpine slides rolling down the mountain trails, putt-putt courses outside the base lodge, ziplines and giants swings. A 50-foot wall, with a hundred or so colorful climbing holds. I sprinted over to the line and waited what felt like a lifetime to get to the front.
My Inuit guide made a motion that he wanted to leave, so I nodded and said qujanarujussuaq, one of the only Inuktitut words I knew. He bowed, set off back through the Akshayuk Pass, and didn’t look back. I guess he didn’t want to sit and wait for hours at the bottom of that mountain with no promise of me ever making it back to him. I didn’t blame him.
I remember getting strapped into all the harnesses and helmets after waiting in that line for ages. I remember how restricted I felt after they tightened all the straps. How was I supposed to move around the rocks if I couldn’t move my left leg more than a foot without it getting tugged or caught? I had never climbed with ropes before—granted I had never climbed anything higher than that 10-foot wall back home. They told me to start, so I grabbed the holds and flew up the wall. I remember feeling like Spider-Man clinging to the sides of skyscrapers, gliding up and up and up until I reached the bell. I struck it with my hand and looked down at the 50-foot drop below me. I jumped, expecting to feel the cool air rush against my face as I plummeted, but as soon as I was free, I felt a tug, and the operators lowered me gently down with the ropes.
I strapped the chalk bag into my belt and tightened my climbing shoes. Starting this climb, I knew there were only going to be two ways down, and one would be far harder than the other. I looked up once more at the monumental peak that I faced and reassured myself that I knew which way I wanted to come down. I grabbed a hold of a jut and slotted my shoe into the crack. “Midgard Serpent” was the name of this route, or Jörmungandr, to some. As Thor’s mythological archenemy, I couldn’t tell who I should be more terrified of.
The first time I climbed actual rocks I was thirteen. I remember I was hiking through the woods around the house in Vermont. It was a late afternoon in October, and already the temperature was dropping. I waded wearily through Utley Brook; the cold water piercing through the skin in my legs as I held my shorts up above the water. I marched through the trees on the other side. Eventually, I found myself face to face with a steep cliff of rock. There was a trail to my right leading homeward, but I had no interest in it anymore. I grabbed two of the jutting rocks and started to climb.
It was impossible to tell how high I was now, but my breath was already growing short—I had been climbing for hours now, and my watch had slipped off my wrist some 300 feet below. I heard a bird fly behind my back. I imagined it was a bald eagle, but since I was in Canada, perhaps it was just a goose. It was probably already at the peak, flying freely, while I stayed here, thousands of feet from the ground, thousands more from my goal.
I remember my first fall. It was on that same face just past Utley Brook. I had already climbed up and down that face a hundred times, so to fall on the hundred and first time terrified me. I had reached the top of the peak, and as I was pulling myself up, the foothold where my left foot was broke off the cliff, and I fell with it. After all was said and done, and all the broken bones were unbroken, I couldn’t wait for the hundred and second climb.
By the time I neared the top, I couldn’t see straight. Each hold I saw was accompanied by two others on either side, and each time I grabbed the middle one I prayed that it was real. One hand up, one foot up, one deep breath, one hand into my bag, next hand up. I thought of nothing but hands and feet and chalk. I looked up once more and could only see the face of the mountain leering over me. It had been hours, and I knew I couldn’t continue much longer, but I knew that I couldn’t stop trying. I heard a crack and a boom. On another face of the mountain, a 200-foot block of pure granite tumbled down the side of the mountain, plummeting to the ground and exploding into thousands of pieces of stone, tossing off the face of Thor, like pebbles kicked down the street by children at play. The boom echoed around the mountain like a Church bell, tolling noon on a summer day.
I thought of the tale of Daedalus and his son Icarus. The cautionary tale—only danger comes to those who fly close to the sun. We are supposed to pity Icarus. But I always pitied anyone who didn’t feel the warmth of the sun, who didn’t fly as high as they possibly could. I imagined that he, too, laughed as he fell.
Author Bio
Nick Singer is a Senior creative writing major at Kenyon College in Ohio. He has spent his time mostly writing fiction, though he occasionally writes some poetry. He is originally from New York City, New York and plans to return to the city after graduating.