From Here to Eternity

We drank coffee and ate danish in near-

silence. In one daypack, we loaded extra water and hard candies; in another, camera gear; in the third, Marilyn. Joel's grown children, Katie and Zach, decided to join us for the first few miles of the hike. Some of us swallowed ibuprofen to get ahead of the aches and pains, then we packed into the rental car and set off along the same roads I had driven with Marilyn on the day I made my promise.

Pulling into the trail-head parking lot at 3 a.m., we found nearly every space already full. We waited at the trail-head register behind four fellows from Texas dressed in snazzy gear and looking ready for the Matterhorn. When our turn came, we checked our watches and signed our names. It was 3:10.

I told myself the lightning flashes were moving gradually eastward, away from the peak, but I wasn't really sure. It wouldn't matter much until we were above the timberline, so we started up a smooth, wide trail through pine forest, gradually gaining altitude, finding our footing by the light of headlamps.

After an hour of easy walking, we were huffing and puffing a bit. The trees were shrinking, and we heard the sound of rushing water. We came to a bridge made of rough planks across a little chasm filled with wildflowers and a plunging freshet. Just beyond the bridge, the blaze-orange letters of a warning sign caught the beam of my lamp:

LIGHTNING HAZARD, it said.

The sign continued in carved letters painted black. "When electrical storms approach, turn back if possible. Avoid high points, horses, ridges and campfires. Take shelter in low pockets away from the trail." Lightning kills hikers every year in the Colorado high country. We studied the sign, looked up and decided the flashes overhead were moving toward the prairie.

Above the tree line, we found ourselves on the edge of a huge, sloping meadow, strewn with boulders, dotted with scrub and blossoms. From here, we could see the trail ahead for more than a mile, winding like a snake and rising gently. The headlamps of dozens of hikers marked the way, like a string of itty-bitty Christmas lights. Behind and below us, the lights of Denver, Boulder, Longmont and Fort Collins glittered by the millions on the flat bed of the high plains. To the west, in the gray hour before daybreak, loomed the dark dome of Longs Peak, seeming very, very far away.

The Keyhole Route circles almost all the way around the mountain. From the timberline, we would be moving north, then west, then turning south when we reached the far side of the mountain, only to turn once more for the final climb facing east. The peak is so well guarded by cliffs, overhangs, chasms and sheers that the trail must hunt the whole mountain to find a way through.

Rising between us and our goal was a homely rock pile called Mount Lady Washington, 13,269 feet. Thousands of people hike past it each summer, yet no one has ever bothered to mark a trail to the top. Being the mountain next to Longs Peak is, geologically, like singing backup for Beyonce. Over Lady Washington's shoulder, Mars twinkled in the clearing sky.

We were making fine time, reaching Granite Pass at 5:50 a.m. -- just as the sunsphere bubbled up in the east. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a sunrise, though I've witnessed some fine ones: on the mirror surface of a Maine cove, in a steaming gray-green English pasture, through a window casting an aura around the downy head of a newborn baby. This sunrise was less intimate than any of those. It seemed to be happening far away, in another world. The passing storm clouds hung in a low, black line parallel to the straight, dark prairie horizon. Together, these lines framed daybreak as if it were some cosmic performance. We could actually watch Earth turning, scrolling slowly down the face of a fireball the terrible color of a blood orange. That morning, the normally mundane recurrence of sunrise evoked the original miracle, the original power, suggested by God's first command: Let there be . . . light.

Nearby, boulders lay scattered and stacked as if some boy-giant had been playing here the day before. After a rest, we continued up the trail through delicate alpine tundra. What the tundra lacks in scale, it makes up for in color -- but you have to look closely. Tiny wildflowers in whites, yellows, purples and blues. Moss and lichens jet black, creamy and the electric yellow-green of original Gatorade. Steel-colored rocks -- gneiss, schist and granite -- striped with bronze and white, peppered with black and silver.