But a mountain just the same.

Our plan is to climb it.

Do you see that point on the top?

I want to stand on that point.

This is the beginning of the end of my Alaska travels.

The plan is to take the Seward Highway for one last jaunt through the Kenai Peninsula: We will stop in Cooper Landing for two days, drive to the bottom of the peninsula and spend two more days in Homer; then, return to Anchorage by Friday and catch a home-bound plane on Sunday.

There were five of us: Half-Ass, Honey Bucket, and Tom and Jane.* We arrived at Cooper Landing after sunset, secured a room at the Kenai Princess lodge (which we only paid twenty five dollars for because H.B. works for the company), cooked dinner, and retired early. We needed rest because tomorrow -- barring avalanches, earthquakes, sprains, and grizzly attacks -- we will stand on that peak: Mr. Mt. Cecil Rhode.**

“For years Cecil Rhode Mountain . . . appeared to eye me contemptuously,
daring me to climb it. And for years, I had scanned the mountain's thick,
pyramidal base, its nearly vertical northern face, and its knifelike upper ridge. . .
wondering how I could break through its swaths of hemlock, Devil's club and
buck brush to reach its summit.”

Clark Fair -- Kenai Watershed Forum

This is an aerial (postcard) view of the Kenai River basin. The closest mountain on the right is Cecil Rhode. His peak is out of view. On the other side of the Kenai River, inside the small drawn circle, is the Kenai Princess Lodge

Our plan was to climb straight up the right, front face of the mountain, to the ridge line. Then cut left along the ridge, to the peak. I wasn’t sure if I cared for the plan.

See -- Two years ago I blew out my Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) in a freak accident in softball. Now I have a knee that enlarges like a menstruating grapefruit if I so much as look at a hill.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. I was supposed to fully recover. Which is why one bothers to endure major reconstructive surgery, intense rehabilitation, massive hospital bills, and a short – and oh-so sweet, addiction to Vicodins and Jerry Springer.

But you see, I am often something of an idiot. Less than three months after surgery, instead of basking in the glow of Springer and Vicodins, I chose to travel to Peru, engage the four-day Inca Trail -- taking me 13,000 feet into the Andes -- to the lost ruins of the Inca City of Machu Picchu.

Decker arrives at Machu Picchu

The problem was, the Inca Trail snaked along a series mountains, up and down, up and down, forcing the knee to work double-overtime. And it wasn’t the uphill that had me groaning in pain. It was the downhill; something to do with the angle of the knee when it steps downward and the impact of your body weight bouncing on the joint. Whatever. Going downhill -- for us poor ACL bastards -- is a Whole Lotta Suck.

Do you see where this might lead to trouble?: You monitor your injury as you climb. Uphill – no problem. It feels good, and you convince yourself that this time the knee will be fine. You really, really want it to be fine; need it to be fine. After all, you are young and strong, so you keep climbing, and lying to yourself about how strong and young you are. But what happens when you get to the top?

Well, it’s something like painting yourself into a corner. . .

“I knew that the view from up there –
of Kenai Lake and the Kenai River valley,
of the Quartz Creek drainage, of Cooper
Lake and Cooper Mountain,
and of Round Mountain across the way,
acting as a gateway to the lowland flats and the
freshwater lakes sparkling all the way to Cook Inlet –
would be amazing . . .
but how would I endure the swaths of hemlock,
Devil's club and buck brush to reach its summit?”

Clark Fair

The Wrath of Cecil Rhode

We park the car at the foot of Papa Rhode, and walk 2 miles up a dirtstone road. Then cut off the road and onto a path that brings us through the green and up the face of the mountain – aiming for the ridge line.

The mountain has five phases:

The Forest: where the incline is not so steep, the devil’s club not so fierce, the buck brush not so coarse, and the Grizzly Bears not so hungry.

Cottonwood and Alder: The Alder is a dense brush, about 8 feet high. The incline is so sharp and intense we must climb on all fours, using the roots of the cottonwoods as handles to pull us up. Beware the spiny pricks of the Devil’s Club.

Christmas Tree Land: (Coined by Half-Ass): so named for the thin strip of pine trees that wrap like a green band around the wrist of Old Father Rhode. Christmas Tree Land is -- relatively speaking -- a flat and easy walk.

Half-Ass shows his disdain for cameras in the middle of Christmas Tree Land. Notice the deranged glare; notice the massive middle fingers and protruding muscles and veins in his forearms (apparently, constantly and aggressively flipping people the bird has exercised these particular muscles quite well)

Grasslands: The incline is steep again.

The Ridge: This is the last phase. Here there is little more than stone and shale and a sharp grade.

When grasslands begin to end, and the ridge comes into view, we see about seven mountain goats grazing on the last of the grass on a shelf.

H.A. bursts into top speed, breaks away from the pack, and doesn’t stop until he is in petting distance from the animals.

Here we see Half-Ass and his ass racing upward on all fours to frolic with Dall Sheep. Note the first of three false peaks above the sheep

The four of us quicken our speed too, in hopes to see mountain goats before Half-Ass scares them away.

Only, he does not scare them away. No, he seems to be communicating with them. I’m telling you, this guy is Dr. Doolittle on acid. It’s not until we get closer that the Dall bleat in suspicion and wander away.

As we move through the phases of the mountain, I feel twinges of pain where my knee used to be.

Hours later, somewhere on the ridgeline, in the land of rocks and shale, I take a seat and drain the last drops from the water bottle and absorb the view.

I see the universe from up here. I thank the poet, Cecil Rhode, for allowing such a spectacle.

“You welcome me with open arms, Mt. Cecil – is it because I am a poet too?” I thought.

But when I stand to continue, a sharp pain bolts down my leg, through ankle, into foot, and swirls around my toes until I nearly collapse.

“Do I insult thee, Papa Rhode?”

My brain cells conduct an emergency meeting and decide, almost unanimously, to abort the mission to summit Mt. Cecil Rhode.

“If he ascends any further,” my brain cells concur, “he might not come down.”

“But if he quits now,” argues a lone, foolish brain cell, “he will have failed: failing bad.”

“Let’s vote,” says the chairman.

The vote is 397,980,005,059,900,250,090,031,080 to 1, so I search for an appropriate spot to take a nap, thinking, “screw it! If you’re going to admit defeat, then you might as well nap. Besides, it will give the grapefruit some rest before trying the harrowing trip downhill.

When Tom notices I am missing, he backtracks and asks if everything is OK.

“I’m fine,” I say, “but the knee is trashed. I don’t think I can go on.”

“The peak is only about an hour away,” he yells. “You’ve come too far -- you can’t stop now.”

Against good sense, I stand up and re-engage the mountain.

The peak comes at a magnificent cost.

At the summit, haggard, broken-jointed, and frazzly, Half-Ass brings me to a small metal disc embedded in a stone. This is the peak marker:4500 (some odd) feet. Half-Ass explains that I have to touch it to officially claim victory.

I kiss it, though I loathe it, and find a suitable sitting rock-- with a spectacular view of Kenai Lake -- and lean back with my hands behind my head as though the King of Alaska, receiving my hourly blow job.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Half-Ass warns, “We gotta leave in a minute,”

“What!” I say, lurching forward, “Are you kidding? I just got here. We’ve been climbing this mountain for seven hours. We don’t have time to enjoy it?”

“There’s not much daylight left,” he said. “If we get stuck here in the dark, we’re in big trouble. We’ve got bears to worry about and navigation.

We are not prepared to spend a night up here if we get lost.”

I look toward Anchorage. The sun is just beginning to bleed orange across the horizon. Indeed, there is no time to waste.

I can’t believe this is happening. If ever there was a metaphor for “Enjoy the ride,” this is it. During the ascent, I couldn’t wait to reach the peak, soak in the sun, and let the world below exist without me for awhile.

Yet, in an instant, the peak is a memory.

I set up the timer on the camera for this shot of the last happy moment I will have for countless hours, and we all stood up to climb down that Bastard Cecil Rhode.

“What followed was the worst descent I've ever endured. . .
I shot like a rocket down the snow a couple hundred feet into a pile of rocks.
Reaching the bottom from that point involved plenty of
tumbling off small cliffs, dangling helplessly from limber
alder branches, stabbing Devil's club stickers into our
palms and falling, plenty of falling.”

Clark Fair – on descending Mt. Cecil Rhode

Upon the first step down – my leg shaking and howling -- I know I am in a deep snag. I take two, three, four, about five more steps and stop:

Searing pain.

Razors.

Blazing heat.

Adrenaline.

Bald fear.

“Why do you forsake me Poet Mountain God?” I think as I look at the harrowing descent ahead.

I panic. Everyone is well on their way down the shale. H.A. turns to check on me.

“I can’t get down,” I yell at him.

“You have to!”

I sit down, assume the crab position, and waddle through the jagged stone.

“Is my poetry so bad, oh Cecil the vicious mountain Bard?” I wonder. “Is that why you despise me?”

I remember reading somewhere that the cost of a helicopter rescue is around five thousand dollars and pause for a moment to consider it.

But five thousand dollars is inconceivable, so I resume the crab position, and waddle, petrified, down the mountain.

I clear the shale, and the mountain becomes a slanted, grassy field. This seems more conducive to ass-cruising, so I sit on my butt and slide – using feet as rudders – slowly down the mountain.

I stop every fifteen minutes for rest because my ass is throbbing like a cartoon fist from colliding with rocks and stumps and Devil’s Club.

As you might suspect, the back of my pants are shredding, so I remove a pair of plastic rain pants from my pack.

The pants are a curse and a blessing:

The blessing: Now, my plastic-coated ass can slide down the grass blades like a toboggan on and ice patch.

The curse: My plastic coated ass is sliding down grass blades like a toboggan on an ice patch.

It happens like this: I start slowly, controlling the pace, avoiding collision. Then, inevitably, I gather speed, jutting down the mountain completely unable to stop, until slamming into a stonepile or dirtmound and ejecting my ass into the air then dropping my lifeless carcass wherever that Goddamn Cecil Rhode bastard wanted to drop me.

Fucking poets.

I think: “Five Thousand Dollars isn’t so much. I could get a second job, take a roommate, downgrade to Pabst – it can be done.”

I think of Dead Man Walking Way, and how scary the wilderness is at night – with Hell’s Bears looking for victims in packs of twenty, and how that sun is dropping like an orange nickel into a gloomy wishing well.

I think: “My bum can’t survive this gauntlet.”

It only takes 86 years to reach Christmas Tree Land, where H.A. and H.B. are picking berries and waiting for me (looking as though the mountain isn’t kicking their asses). I hate them as deeply as I’ve hated anything. More deeply than I despise three bean salad or Dr. Laura or Uncle Vito.

The three of us then embark into the steep, muddy grade of Cottonwood Land and we all assume the ass-slide position.

Really -- if not for the flaming Molotov cocktail where my knee used to be; if not for the rocks and stumps bouncing off bones; if not for the mud funneling into my pants legs and collecting at my groin; if not for my underwear sliding so far up my asscrack that I’m still shitting cotton balls -- the Cottonwood mudfall would be a blast.

When the incline tapers, the mud stiffens, and the mountain becomes forest, I return to the upright position, find a sturdy walking branch and slowly clambor down – enjoying the sensation of cartilage-free bones in my knee rubbing against each other.

Suddenly it is dark and I don't even care. Screw the bears. I want the bears to come.

“Come here beary beary bear!”

I pray that a grizzly will saunter over, eat me, carry me off the mountain, and vomit me out when he reached the bottom.

Hell, I’ll even tip him.

No such luck.

When we emerge onto the dirtpack road, it is almost entirely black. For two miles, I surge forward – each step a flaming barb through my leg – until we arrive at the parking lot where Tom and Jane are waiting with a six-pack of beer and an industrial-sized bottle of codeine.

I hobble to their car – unknowing of the treasures they are about to render – grateful just to be alive and at sea level; vowing to never do that again, and preparing to crumble into the back seat of the car and shut down.

Jane sticks her hand out the window and presents the beer. I hold the beer in hand and rotate it and gaze at it lovingly.

I love you beer.

I snap the top and take a long, long, long swill.

Then she holds a dark, mysterious plastic bottle out the window: codeine. (Tom and Jane are fun-loving pill poppers).

Everyone agrees – I should take four doses.

I love you codeine.

Back at the lodge, we sat around the living room table with two bottles of port wine between us, and relived the hike.

It was a bittersweet moment:

Bitter: because this was my last mountain climb and I am already missing it. Now I am doomed to forever yearn for the climbs of yore: when Christmas was the best day of the year, and your knee felt so healthy, you didn’t even know you had one.

Sweet: because I surrendered to the moment -- with the port wine in front of me, and the mountain behind – and drifted into perfect slumber.

The end.

*Their names are changed in accordance to the FBI’s Witness Protection Program

**Cecil Rhode was a poet that lived in the area. Information about him is scarce:

WHAT LITTLE I KNOW ABOUT CECIL RHODE

1) He lived in Cooper Landing.

2) He wrote poems.

3) He died in Cooper Landing (1979)

4) They named a mountain after him.

5) They buried him in the shadow of that mountain

The gravestone of Cecil Rhode is located in a cemetery in the valley beneath his mountain. This graveyard is an excellent metaphor for the inherent Alaskan respect for nature.

Unlike the typical cemetery, it is not a clear-cut field, with a plush lawn and neatly lined headstones. In this graveyard, no trees are destroyed; no earth dynamited or bulldozed. Instead, the deceased are buried in the hills and among the trees, and beautiful, assorted, home made, wood and stone grave markers pepper the area.

It took a while to find old Cecil’s stone, but in the search resides the reason (“Enjoy the ride,” right?) because we encountered dozens of these amazing, personalized, head markers and dozens of poems and tributes and photos and personal effects to help define the nature of whatever poor soul is buried below.

Yet Old Cecil’s stone is just a disappointing rock with a plaque.