Ryuhiko - 02

Ryuhiko-02-20150119

Over the next couple of days it seemed that it was always Mary Silva who accompanied Shin. The next morning the two of them set out toward a place called Spiny Ridge Peak where Shin took routine measurements. On the way they passed along a ridge above the south and west side of White Mountain Glacier. When they had first come into sight of the glacier Shin had stopped. Mary could see love in his eyes yet they were filled with tears. She started to say something but as he wiped a tear from his cheek she decided to remain quiet. He moved silently along the ridge turning north just below the peak of Mt. White. Most of the time between White Mountain and Spiny Ridge Peak they were on a narrow ridge from which they could look down in to deep valleys below.

From the spot where Shin took his measurements on Spiny Ridge Peak it was over a thousand feet almost straight down into a bowl of lush green. The glacier was due south of them now and just below the glacier Mary could see a stream and two small lakes. Far down the valley on the southern ridge she could see more snow.

“Another glacier?” she asked, point toward the snow field to the southeast.

“No,” said Shin still staring at the glacier. “No, just an ancient snow field.”

“You are in great pain,” Mary said quietly.

“Yes,” Shin almost whispered. The tears began to roll freely. “You see that snow. Some of that snow is hundreds of years old, but there is less of it each year. I'm not just talking about the glacier. I'm talking about snow fields that never totally melt over the summer. They just keep accumulating snow. Or they did. But now many of these high snow fields are in danger of literally sliding down the mountain because the warmth is getting to bottom of the snow pack, creating ice and water and becoming slick. What happens when these snow fields are gone? People don't think it through. First there will be floods and lots of people will say 'how can we be in danger of drought when there's this much water?' It will flood because all of a sudden a tremendous amount of extra snow and ice is in an area where the snow melts each year. Once the floods pass there will be droughts reaching as far as the melt off of the snow field extended because there's not enough snow falling in the mountains and there's no snow field left to provide water when there isn't a snowy winter, and it just all dries up. And my glacier is melting. It has been here since the Ice Age but it will probably be gone in my life time.”

“The argument down below,” Shin continued after a few moments of silence, “is that this is a natural phenomena. That's why I'm up here. Is it natural or is it the results of human polution? So far my money is on human polution. I'm looking at instruments thousands of feet above and many miles away from even a minor concenetration of human life yet the readings look like I'm taking readings in the middle of at least a fair size town. It may not be all the result of humans but we humans could sure help by not contributing.”

There was nothing Mary could say. In fact, it was almost more than Mary could bear. She turned her head away from Shin and whispered “Me. Me ka kopo!”

“What?” asked Shin.

“Nothing.” Mary lied.

Standing there for what seemed ages, Shin suddenly came to life. “I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to bring you here to burden you with my issues.”

“I don't think they're just your issues,” Mary replied. “We're all effected.”

“I know, but it just seems like no one gives a damn except those of us who make our weekend pilgrimages up here.” Shin attempted a smile. “I've just been wierd this way all my life.”

“I know,” Mary said without thinking.

“What?”

“I said, I would have guessed.”

Shin went about taking his measurements. His backpack was filled with folding tripods, surveying equipment, GPS devices and other measuring tools. His tripod had a plumbob hanging from directly under the plate to which a device is attached. It took Shin only a few moments to find a metal plate embedded in the ground. He put the point of the plumbob directly above the metal plate.

“I put that here several years ago,” he told Mary. “that plate is screwed to the top of a two foot spike. The plate has the exactly coordinates of this spot in case other researchers want to use the spot and don't have a GPS device. Also, this way there is no doubt that I'm at exactly the same location every time I take a measurement. My instruments are checked for accuracy at the beginning of every trip by an independent testing company and again after the trip. I don't want anyone getting away with saying that the glacier is shrinking because of my measurement technique or instruments.”

“You are definitely into this. I mean, you're going to prove it to the world,” said Mary.

“Truthfully, I'd love to be proven wrong. This is one hypothesis for which I'd just as soon not demonstrate any supporting evidence.” Shin took a moment to take a measurement then looked back up at Mary. “Unfortunately, I don't think I'm wrong. This is where I come to measure the glacier and snow fields. I have some air sampling instruments up here as well as at the Weather Cluster we visited yesterday and a place I call 'Watcher's Peak' just over there.” Shin pointed to another peak about a mile north-northeast of them. “Those little lakes are called upper and lower White Glacier Lakes and the stream is Eddy Creek. I have a water sampling station just down there where the creek starts to turn north. There's almost as much crap and polution in the air up here as there is in most small midwestern towns. And that stuff gets into the snow which ends up in those lakes and stream.”

Spiny Ridge Peak was about three and a quarter miles from their base camp. Shin was much more talkative on the return trip. He stopped at high spot along the ridge leading east from White Mountain Peak. The promitory was at 9,720 feet altitude and was their last look at Shin's glacier and the beautiful valley before they headed down the mountain side to base camp.

That evening the researchers sat around the campfire sharing their day's activities. The WSU students had gone back to the road and followed it around to Spruce Gulch Lake to get water samples and check for wild life. Some of them had scouted out the eastern slope of Twin Peaks North Mountain. Twin Peaks North is about 10,200 feet high. It is, by far, the highest peak in the area. They had been studying the topo maps and noticed that, if they went a short distance south of the lake and were able to stay at about 8,800 feet, they could move around the east side of the mountain until they came to a place where they could ascend to the summit without climbing gear.

“What does that have to do with your research?” asked one of the French researchers named Adrien.

“Nothing,” responded one of the students.

“Then why do it?”

“Because it's there and we want to climb it.”

The French researcher, who was a very serious man in his fifties, shook his head goodnaturedly while the rest of the group laughed.

Of course everyone was interested in Shin's measurements. It had been almost eight weeks since he was there last and a lot of hot weather had been recorded.

“I haven't had a chance to look at the weather and air data from Weather Cluster or Spiny Ridge, but there hasn't been as much change as I had feared,” reported Shin.

“I looked at some of my weather data. It was an average of almost 2% warmer throughout the past month. It just keeps going up,” offered the faculty member who was heading the WSU group.

“And the level of shit in the air goes up with it,” chimed in Trevor, the grad student from Berkeley.

“Is that a technical term?” joked one of the WSU students.

“Of course,” laughed Trevor, “and a shit-load is a measurement of an intolerable amount of shit.”

Everyone laughed. This was a time when they all could express their fears and frustrations without someone calling them geeks or nerds or environmentalists as though geeks, nerds and environmentalists are the dumbest creatures on the planet.

“I went down to your water sampling site,” said Jacques, the younger of the two French researchers. “I couldn't believe some of the stuff I found. It was trace, thankfully, but there were metals and compounds that you don't normally find around here and definitely don't want in your drinking water.”

The discussion went late. One by one each person said 'good-night' and made their way to their tents. Shin was sitting staring at the embers. Guess it was his job to put out the fire tonight. He looked up to see Mary still sitting quietly.

“I thought I was the last one up,” Shin smiled.

“You seemed so deep in thought,” said Mary.

“Always,” Shin smiled again. “that's my problem.”

The two poured water on the fire, said 'good-night' and went to their own tents. Shin poured a thimble from his hip flash and laid on top of his sleeping bag thinking about Mary. He hadn't spent time thinking about a woman for a long time, but Mary was different. She seemed to care and she was extremely intelligent. He really liked her, but he didn't think she was interested in him. 'Oh, well,' he thought. 'That's the story of my love life.' He knocked back the last little sip of whiskey, crawled into his sleeping bag and went to sleep.

Some hours later, while Shin was in a deep sleep, the dark figure again visited Shin's tent. As before it sat perfectly still as Shin slept. But this time a whisper could be heard if one were there to hear it. “Me, joang ke tseba?”